Green Petroleum: How Oil and Gas Can Be Environmentally Sustainable

Can "green petroleum" reverse global warming and bring down high gasoline prices? Written in non–technical language for the layperson, this book investigates and details how the oil and gas industry can "go green" with new processes and technologies, thus bringing the world′s most important industry closer to environmental and economic sustainability.

This book unravels the mysteries of the current energy crisis and argues that solutions to global warming will come only from the development of new technologies. Discussed here are the reasons why petroleum operations, as they are now, are not sustainable; how each practice treads an inherently implosive path; and how each spells irreversible damage to the planet′s ecosystem. Fossil fuel consumption is not the culprit; rather, the practices involved, from exploration to refining and processing, are responsible for the current damage to the environment.

This groundbreaking new volume:

Explains why current petroleum industry practices are inherently unsustainable and offers unique new solutions for "greening" the petroleum industry Discusses hot–button issues, such as global warming, carbon sequestration, zero–waste management, and sustainability Shows engineers and scientists how to implement the processes necessary to be more environmentally conscious Offers, for the first time, a new theory that certain carbons do not contribute to global warming, but it is their origin and the processes involved which do

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: From the Pharaonic Age to the Information Age: Have We Progressed in Technology Development Skills?

Chapter 3: How long has this technological disaster been in the making? Delinearized History of Civilization and Technology Development

Chapter 4: Is Modern Science Capable of Discerning Between True and False?

Chapter 5: Fundamentals of Mass and Energy Balance

Chapter 6: A True Sustainability Criterion and Its Implications

Chapter 7: What is Truly Green Energy?

Chapter 8: Good Light and Bad Light

Chapter 9: Do You Believe in Global Warming?

Chapter 10: Is the 3R s mantra sufficient?

Chapter 11: Truly Green Refining and Gas Processing

Chapter 12: Greening of Flow Operations

Chapter 13: The Greening of Enhanced Oil Recovery

Chapter 14: Deconstruction of Engineering Myths Prevalent in the Energy Sector

Chapter 15: Conclusions

References

M. R. Islam is Professor of Petroleum Engineering in the Civil and Resource Engineering Department at Dalhousie University, Canada. He has over 700 publications to his credit, including six books, and is on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals. In addition to his teaching duties, he is also Director of Emertec Research and Development Ltd. and has been on the boards of a number of companies in North America and overseas.

M. M. Khan was recently a lecturer in chemical engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, before moving to Canada. He has written a dozen papers and coauthored a book on zero–waste engineering and sustainable technology.

A. B. Chhetri is a Carbon and Energy Analyst with Golder Associates Ltd. in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where he delivers consulting services in carbon and energy management. He has over twelve years of experience in energy development and management.