Natural Resources
Fossil fuel is crude hydrocarbons like coal, fuel, oil, and natural gas which is created from the remains of dead plants and animals. Found in countries like Kuwait, Iraq, and Venezuela (that have low demand for the material) and larger countries like Western Europe and India (high demands). The organic materials of living things sink into the ground and form combustible geologic deposits which then turn into these fuel sources. This happens due to the heat exposure or pressure in the earth’s crust in a process that lasts hundreds to millions of years.
Fossil fuel extraction is a tedious job, though less than it used to be. Instead of wildly picking an area where we think there might be fossil fuel we now have the technology to more accurately guess. People looking for the recourse will use geophones which receive reflected sound waves from an explosion that is also conducted by the people searching. Since sound waves travel through solids, liquids, and gases and different paces people are able to detect what is beneath them using this technology.
Most of our sources are found in the ocean floor and thus we must drop the drill and container which will extract and hold them to the floor in that certain spot. A platform is then created on water allowing for the process to continue.
After the oil is detected rotary drilling rigs are used to extract the oil or natural gas below the earth’s surface. The drill sinks into the earth while heated metal in the center of the drills spins at a high velocity and creates a hole down to the material. Then when the drill is extracted a pipe is entered (casing) and the recourses are pumped up to the surface. Recently more inventions have been created to extract fossil fuels, such as directional drilling (straight down then curving) and hydraulic factoring (making fissures that allow material to flow out of