During the oil-boom days of the early twentieth century, a few lucky or shrewd individuals made millions of dollars virtually overnight. It is a familiar theme in the romantic mythology that sprang up about the era. But the people who produced those millions are the real story, told in these word-for-word recollections of early-day workers in the ""oil patch."" In vivid, often poignant detail these men and women recall the grueling toil, primitive living and working conditions, and ever-present danger in a time when life was cheap and oil was gold. In the late 1930s employees of the Federal Writers Project, a branch of the New Deal Workers Progress Administration, recorded the voices of these pioneers as they offered their memories, sometimes wryly humorous and sometimes bitter, of the turmoil that was the daily lot of the oilfielders. We meet colorful, tough-talking ""Manila Kate,"" who took over her husband's drilling outfit after he died in an explosion. A welder vividly recalls the death of his closest pal, a skilled hand who loved to take chances. In an oil-field shantytown the support of good-hearted neighbors assuages the pain of a bereaved and impoverished family. A ""shooter"" recalls the deadly danger of the ""soup wagon"" the buckboard that delivered the nitroglycerin to the well - or blew up on the way. While many of the individuals witnessed bizarre accidents that became almost routine in the early oil fields, their personal stories also show how uncertain job security and wages could be, even before the Depression, when dry holes and plummeting oil prices left thousands of workers broke and homeless. Many of the interviewers provide valuable technical details about early oilfield operations. Yet it is the stories of the people, the workers themselves, that endure. The early oil industry was built upon their toil, their pain, and their courage, all of which are evident in every word recorded here.

A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021 ‘Thrillingly and wrenchingly funny … like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy’ DAVID LIPSKY ‘After reading The Good Hand you may reassess whether you have ever truly done a hard day’s work in your life … This lyrical and engrossing memoir is an extraordinary tale … Undeniably powerful’ SUNDAY TIMES The must-read memoir of 2021. Michael Patrick Smith grew up in a ramshackle farmhouse where his father beat the walls and threw dinner plates. As a restless young man left unmoored by the crashing economy, Smith cut a path to North Dakota to rent a mattress on a flophouse floor. Sleeping boot to beard with the other rough-edged men looking to earn a cent drilling for oil, Smith wanted the work to burn him clean – of his violent upbringing, his demons, his disjointed, doomed relationships. He did not expect, among these quick-fisted, foul-mouthed hands, to find a community. The Good Hand is a memoir of danger and exhaustion, of suffering, loneliness and grit, of masculinity and of learning how to reconcile yourself to yourself.

Constantly in the news and the subject of much public debate, fracking, as it is known for short, is one of the most promising yet controversial methods of extracting natural gas and oil. Today, 90 percent of natural gas wells use fracking. Though highly effective, the process-which fractures rock with pressurized fluid-has been criticized for polluting land, air, and water, and endangering human health.
A timely addition to Oxford's What Everyone Needs to Know(r) series, Hydrofracking tackles this contentious topic, exploring both sides of the debate and providing a clear guide to the science underlying the technique. In concise question-and-answer format, Alex Prud'homme cuts through the maze of opinions and rhetoric to uncover key points, from the economic and political benefits of fracking to the health dangers and negative effects on the environment. Prud'homme offers clear answers to a range of fundamental questions, including: What is fracking fluid? How does it impact water supplies? Who regulates the industry? How much recoverable natural gas exists in the U.S.? What new innovations are on the horizon? Supporters as diverse as President Obama and the conservative billionaire T. Boone Pickens have promoted natural gas as a clean, "21st-century" fuel that will reduce global warming, create jobs, and provide tax revenues, but concerns remain, with environmental activists like Bill McKibben and others leading protests to put an end to fracking as a means of obtaining alternative energy. Prud'homme considers ways to improve methods in the short-term, while also exploring the possibility of transitioning to more sustainable resources-wind, solar, tidal, and perhaps nuclear power-for the long term.
Written for general readers, Hydrofracking clearly explains both the complex science of fracking and the equally complex political and economic issues that surround it, giving readers all the information they need to understand what will no doubt remain a contentious issue for years to come.
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In Chapter One, L. Khotseng and G. Vaivars provide an overview of the recent advances in electrocatalysts for direct methanol fuel cells for both anode and cathode catalysts in order to present direct methanol fuel cells as an alternative power source for portable devices. In Chapter Two, Nobuyoshi Nakagawa, Mohammad Ali Abdelkareem, Takuya Tsujiguchi, and Mohd Shahbudin Masdar propose a fuel supply layer using a porous carbon plate (PCP) for DMFCs allowing for the use of high methanol concentrations. The proposed layer is comprised of a thin PCP layer, as well as a gap layer that has a mechanism to supply the methanol as a vapor. Next, Chapter Three by D.S. Falcao, J. P. Pereira, and A.M.F.R. Pinto review the multiphase flow in fuel cells modelling approaches while also reviewing the flow visualisation techniques for flow analysis in fuel cells. Chapter Four by B.A. Braz, V.B. Oliveira, and A.M.F.R. Pinto closes the book by discussing the key work that has been done to improve the passive DMFC performance and providing a review on the most recent developments in passive DMFCs.

China is the world's most populous country with approximately 1.3 billion people. It has experienced tremendous economic growth over the last three decades with an average annual increase in gross domestic product (GDP) of 9.8% during that period. This rapid economic growth has led to an increasing demand for energy, spurring China to add an average of 53 gigawatts (gw) of electric capacity each year over the last ten years to its power generation capabilities. China is also the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, with about half of its coal use being for electricity generation. In fact, coal provides over 70% of China's current electricity needs, and fuels much of the new power generation capacity being built. While many of these new coal plants are among the most technically advanced in the world, the burning of coal results in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate emissions which contribute to air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions linked to global climate change. The current and potential future environmental consequences of burning coal are a major reason China has been actively seeking to increase its renewable energy capabilities. When current rates of use are considered, limited domestic reserves of coal, natural gas, and oil provide another impetus for change. However, China's announced intent to rely on domestic, sustainable solutions for its growing energy needs has led to a focus on developing "green" or renewable energy resources. In contrast to China, some argue that the United States does not have a comprehensive national policy in place for promotion of renewable energy technologies, with some observers saying that the higher costs of renewable electricity are not conducive to market adoption. However, for both countries, the reasons for increasing the use of renewable energy are diverse, and include energy security, energy independence, cleaner air, and more recently anthropogenic climate change, sustainability concepts, and economic development. Creating new, higher quality jobs could reasonably be said to be primary drivers of policy goals in both the United States and China.

A three-step methodology was developed to provide reliable prediction of a coal's behaviour in a utility boiler: (1) Extracting the combustion kinetic model parameters by combining experimental data from a pilot-scale test facility, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) codes and an artificial neural network. While the combustion kinetic parameters used in the model code will not correspond to the combustion rate of a single particle of coal, these parameters do describe the combustion behaviour of a "macroscopic" sample of tested coal.(2) Validation of the combustion kinetic model parameters by comparing diverse experimental data with simulation results calculated with the same set of model parameters. (3) The model parameters are then used for simulations of full-scale boilers using the same CFD code. For operational engineering information needed by the utility operator, the authors apply the predicted results to EXPERT SYSTEM, a boiler supervision system developed by Israel Electric Corporation (IEC). Four different bituminous and sub-bituminous coals with known behaviour in IEC 550MW opposite-wall and 575MW tangential-fired boilers were used to show the adequacy of the methodology. The predictions are done with the CFD code, GLACIER, propriety of Reaction Engineering International (REI). Preconfigured GLACIER models of the test and full-scale furnaces were purchased from REI and validated by our group. This book includes a detailed description of the methodology, test furnace facility and an example of the experimental and predictive combustion results from the four coals used to test the methodology. In addition, two previously unknown coals are examined prior to their firing in the utility boilers and prediction of their behaviour and operational parameters in the two boilers carried out.

The proliferation of pipelines to transport oil and natural gas represents a major area of contestation in the landscape of energy development. Battles over energy pipelines pit private landowners, local community representatives, and environmentalists against energy corporations and industry supporters, sometimes drawing opposition and attention from well beyond the impacted regions, as in the case of the Standing Rock/Dakota Access Pipeline. Stakeholders must navigate complex government regulatory processes, interpret technical and scientific reports, and endure lengthy and expensive court battles. As with other forms of environmental injustice, the contentious construction of pipelines often disproportionately impacts communities of lower economic development, people of color, and indigenous peoples; pipelines also pose potential short and long-term health and safety threats. With the expansion of energy pipelines carrying fracked oil and gas across the United States and abroad, the moment is ripe for teaching about pipeline projects and engaging students and community members in learning about methods for mobilization. Our volume examines pedagogical opportunities, challenges, and interventions that campus-community engagement, and other kinds of community engagement, produce in relation to infrastructuring in the form of pipeline development.

This book provides thorough knowledge and detailed information of oil shales using a range of conventional and unconventional techniques and methodologies combined to elucidate the composition of oil shale deposits. As these rocks are mined for energy production their composition and mineral constituents are of special interests to individuals and communities that are likely to be effected by these resources when mined and processed. The book highlights the environmental and health hazards of the spent shales after processing. These are significantly greater in volume than the rocks originally mined before processing. Toxic metals tend to double and triple their concentrations in the spent shales and will be leached into water sources and soils.Since oil shales as an energy resource are totally uneconomical; all oil shales, their mining and processing are heavily subsidised by governments and institutions using taxpayers money.

Today's energy situation has created a dilemma for coal use in the United States. On one hand, the environmental challenges of using coal appear formidable, particularly with growing concern over the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on global climate change. On the other hand, the projected demand for electricity, coupled with high fuel costs, presents a near-term opportunity for the greater use of coal to ensure energy security for America. This solution to coal's "Catch-22" can be achieved through technological advancements that enable coal-based energy plants to produce much needed electricity and fuels for secure and stable economic growth. This book examines the development of the technological pathway of advanced power systems using bituminous coal.

This open access book is an encyclopaedic analysis of the current and future energy system of the world's most populous country and second biggest economy. What happens in China impacts the planet. In the past 40 years China has achieved one of the most remarkable economic growth rates in history. Its GDP has risen by a factor of 65, enabling 850,000 people to rise out of poverty. Growth on this scale comes with consequences. China is the world's biggest consumer of primary energy and the world's biggest emitter of CO2 emissions. Creating a prosperous and harmonious society that delivers economic growth and a high quality of life for all will require radical change in the energy sector, and a rewiring of the economy more widely. In China's Energy Revolution in the Context of the Global Energy Transition, a team of researchers from the Development Research Center of the State Council of China and Shell International examine how China can revolutionise its supply and use of energy. They examine the entire energy system: coal, oil, gas, nuclear, renewables and new energies in production, conversion, distribution and consumption. They compare China with case studies and lessons learned in other countries. They ask which technology, policy and market mechanisms are required to support the change and they explore how international cooperation can smooth the way to an energy revolution in China and across the world. And, they create and compare scenarios on possible pathways to a future energy system that is low-carbon, affordable, secure and reliable.

This book gathers selected papers from the 8th International Field Exploration and Development Conference (IFEDC 2018) and addresses a broad range of topics, including: Reservoir Surveillance and Management, Reservoir Evaluation and Dynamic Description, Reservoir Production Stimulation and EOR, Ultra-Tight Reservoirs, Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources Technology, Oil and Gas Well Production Testing, and Geomechanics. In brief, the papers introduce readers to upstream technologies used in oil & gas development, the main principles of the process, and various related design technologies. The conference not only provided a platform to exchange experiences, but also promoted the advancement of scientific research in oil & gas exploration and production. The book is chiefly intended for industry experts, professors, researchers, senior engineers, and enterprise managers.

Fracking has the potential to extract hydrocarbons from previously inaccessible sources of gas and oil, but is regularly in the news because of environmental concerns surrounding the process. First used commercially in the mid-20th Century, only recently has fracking been deployed on a large scale, revolutionising the energy industry in the USA. As more nations seek to adopt or ban fracking, do the economic benefits outweigh the environmental costs? Presenting both sides of the debate, this latest volume of Issues in Environmental Science and Technology draws on a wealth of international expertise, ranging from the oil and gas industry to Friends of the Earth. The technology of fracking is examined in detail, as well as the associated economic, societal and global climate change considerations. Anyone wishing to gain a balanced view of hydraulic fracturing will benefit from reading this book, which is aimed at researchers in academia and industry, policy makers, environmental science students and the interested layman.

* Covers the timely topic of fuel cells and hydrogen-based energy from its fundamentals to practical applications * Serves as a resource for practicing researchers and as a text in graduate-level programs * Tackles crucial aspects in light of the new directions in the energy industry, in particular how to integrate fuel processing into contemporary systems like nuclear and gas power plants * Includes homework-style problems

While energy is essential for development, standard fossil fuels are often in short supply in countries where it is needed most. However, alternative fuel resources abound in the form of agricultural and municipal waste or 'biomass'. This report reviews the state of the art of biomass combustion and gassification systems, their advantages and disadvantages. It also encourages investment in use of these technologies to enable developing countries to better exploit their biomass resources and help close the gap between their energy needs and their energy supply.

While environmental disputes and conflicts over fossil fuel extraction have grown in recent years, few issues have been as contentious in the twenty-first century as those surrounding the impacts of unconventional natural gas and oil development using hydraulic drilling and fracturing techniques-more commonly known as "fracking"-on local communities. In Fractured Communities, Anthony E. Ladd and other leading environmental sociologists present a set of crucial case studies analyzing the differential risk perceptions, socio-environmental impacts, and mobilization of citizen protest (or quiescence) surrounding unconventional energy development and hydraulic fracking in a number of key U.S. shale regions. Fractured Communities reveals how this contested terrain is expanding, pushing the issue of fracking into the mainstream of the American political arena.

Fossil fuels don't simply impact our ability to commute to and from work. They condition our sensory lives, our erotic experiences, and our aesthetics; they structure what we assume to be normal and healthy; and they prop up a distinctly modern bargain with nature that allows populations and economies to grow wildly beyond the older and more clearly understood limits of the organic economy. Carbon Nation ranges across film and literary studies, ecology, politics, journalism, and art history to chart the course by which prehistoric carbon calories entered into the American economy and body. It reveals how fossil fuels remade our ways of being, knowing, and sensing in the world while examining how different classes, races, sexes, and conditions learned to embrace and navigate the material manifestations and cultural potential of these new prehistoric carbons. The ecological roots of modern America are introduced in the first half of the book where the author shows how fossil fuels revolutionized the nation's material wealth and carrying capacity. The book then demonstrates how this eager embrace of fossil fuels went hand in hand with both a deliberate and an unconscious suppression of that dependency across social, spatial, symbolic, an psychic domains. In the works of Eugene O'Neill, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson, and Stephen Crane, the author reveals how Americans' material dependencies on prehistoric carbon were systematically buried within modernist narratives of progress, consumption, and unbridled growth; while in films like Charlie Chaplin''s Modern Times and George Steven's Giant he uncovers cinematic expressions of our own deep-seated anxieties about living in a dizzying new world wrought by fossil fuels. Any discussion of fossil fuels must go beyond energy policy and technology. In Carbon Nation, Bob Johnson reminds us that what we take to be natural in the modern world is, in fact, historical, and that our history and culture arise from this relatively recent embrace of the coal mine, the stoke hole, and the oil derrick.

Los generadores son una parte imprescindible de muchos proyectos a la vez que generan unos gastos muy importantes. Este libro te introduce en ellos desde la perspectiva de la gestion. No se trata de hacerte instalador electricista o mecanico, sino de elegir el generador mas conveniente para tu proyecto y hacerlo funcionar de una manera lo mas economica posible. Aprenderas a mejorar instalaciones existentes, determinar la potencia necesaria, elegir de manera informada entre las distintas opciones disponibles, supervisar los aspectos claves de la instalacion y a evitar derroches de energia que comprometan la sostenibilidad de los proyectos."

Current discussions of U.S. and global energy supply refer to oil, natural gas and coal using several terms that may be unfamiliar to some. The terms used to describe different types of fossil fuels have technically precise definitions, and misunderstanding or misuse of these terms may lead to errors and confusion in estimating energy available or making comparisons among fuels, regions or nations. This book describes the characteristics of fossil fuels that make it necessary to use precise terminology, summarises the major terms and their meanings, and provides a brief summary of the United States' endowment of fossil fuels and the relationship between the U.S. fossil fuel energy endowment and those of other nations.

Concerns over national security, environmental stresses, and high fuel prices have raised interest in reducing oil consumption. Through the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requires cars and light trucks to meet certain fuel economy standards. As requested, the author discusses (1) how CAFE standards are designed to reduce fuel consumption, (2) strengths and weaknesses of the CAFE program and NHTSA's capabilities, and (3) market-based policies that could complement or replace CAFE. This is an excerpted and edited version.

Book and disk. This book deals with the application of a powerful set of techniques, collectively denominated Artificial Intelligence to general problems in the fields of the design, monitoring and control of thermal systems for energy conversion, with a heavier accent on design applications. As an introduction it gives some indications of the possible applications of AI in the area of the design and operation of thermal powerplants, and a tentative list of the actually implemented applications: the fact that the latter is much longer than the former is a sure symptom that the field of 'AI applications to Process Engineering' is in its infancy. Since AI techniques have been successfully and extensively employed in fields other than powerplant design, it is likely that the topics covered in this book will enjoy a rapid development in the near future. The dissemination of AI-related concepts in indeed one of the scopes of this essay.

The updated textbook is intended to serve as an advanced and detailed treatment of the evolution of the subject of stratigraphy from its disparate beginnings as separate studies of sedimentology, lithostratigraphy, chronostratigraphy, etc., into a modern integrated discipline in which all components are necessary. There is a historical introduction, which now includes information about the timeline of the evolution of the components of modern stratigraphy. The elements of the various components (facies analysis, sequence stratigraphy, mapping methods, chronostratigraphic methods, etc.) are outlined, and a chapter discussing the modern synthesis is included near the end of the book, which closes with a discussion of future research trends in the study of time as preserved in the stratigraphic record.

As the second volume of the "Digital Oil & Gas Pipeline: Research and Practice" series of monographs, this book introduces the implementation strategies, examples and technical roadmaps of two important aspects of the Digital Oil & Gas Pipeline construction: pipeline real-time data integration and pipeline network virtual reality system. Two example of pipeline real-time data integration are elaborated: integration of pipeline WebGIS (Geographic Information System) and pipeline SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) via OPC (OLE for Process Control) technology, integration of pipeline network virtual reality system and pipeline SCADA via OPC, JNI (Java Native Interface) and SAI (Scene Access Interface). The pipeline network virtual reality system aims for the pipeline virtual expression, interaction, and 3D visual management. It can be used for pipeline route visual design and plan, immersive pipeline industry training, remote visual supervision and control, etc. The implementation details of the pipeline network virtual reality system, including 3D pipeline and terrain modeling with X3D (Extensible 3D) technology, improving large-scene display performance and speed in the network environment using LOD (Level of Detail) technology, interaction of virtual pipeline scenes, and pipeline 3D visual monitoring, are also introduced. The knowledge and experience delivered by this book will provide useful reference for the readers from the industries of oil & gas pipeline, GIS, Virtual Reality, industrial control, etc.