History of Conventional and Unconventional Oil Technologies - 44th ICOHTEC Meeting @ the 25th ICHSTM, Brazil 2017
History of Conventional and Unconventional Oil
Technologies
44th ICOHTEC Meeting @ the 25th ICHSTM, Brazil 2017
Scholars are invited to contribute to the panel sessions on the history of
the oil & gas industry organized for the 44th ICOHTEC meeting
that will be part of the 25th International Congress on the History
of Science, Technology and Medicine at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 23-29 July 2017
The call for papers is issued on behalf of the International Committee
for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC).
1. Unconventional
History: Sixty Years of Science and Technology in Hydraulic Fracturing
The goal of this session is bringing
together practitioners from academia and industry, as well as experts from the
civil society to present and discuss the historical development and application
of technologies for unconventional gas and oil projects during the past sixty
years.
Humankind
has used petroleum for centuries, but modern oil society started only in the
1860s; this timing did not come from lack of interest or knowledge about the
potential of oil as fuel, rather because man was still not ‘technologically
educated’ to start the process of mass production and consumption of oil. Since
the beginning of the oil business it was felt necessary to maximize the
performance of the fields and, relying on the limited geological evidence
available at the time, early technologists conceived methods to extend the life
and enhance the productivity of wells using explosives and steam or acid
compounds to remove depositions of paraffin. Those were unconventional methods
applied to conventional wells.
After almost
seventy years of ‘standard drilling’, a new technological trajectory in
exploration and production was introduced by late 1920s when horizontal
drillings were successfully experimented. The inception of hydraulic fracturing
technology gained momentum in the United States when, in the 1940s, the
relationship between well performance and treatment pressures was theorized.
Following years of field-testing and development of an operational procedure,
in 1949 the first patent for hydraulic fracturing treatments was issued. Since
then, hydraulic fracturing technology has been continuously improved, developed
and utilized in numerous countries. But how and to what extent? Since the
2000s, the number of fractured unconventional deposits has started to
significantly affect on the total number of wells cultivated in the world. A
literature review of the scientific publications from the past twenty years highlights
how hydraulic fracturing is almost entirely discussed from political or
environmental perspectives. There is a lack of analytic literature on the
history of hydraulic fracturing intended as compendium of technologies achieved
along the past several decades.
The study of
the history of the oil industry often requires the historian to merge together
humanities and science and an understanding of hydraulic fracturing – intended
as cumulative process of technology and the creation of a technological system
– implying a wealth of knowledge that historians of science, technology and
energy do not have so far. The session aims to remove that hindrance and to
stimulate new historical research that will increase our understanding of the
artifacts, methods and skills that are going to secure for some more decades
the energetic abundance at the base of our last two
centuries development; and, giving us the necessary time to perfecting
alternative energetic resources.
2. The
Workflow of Oil: Upstream, Midstream, Downstream Technologies in 19th
and 20th Century
The historians and industry
professionals invited in this session will discuss the dynamics, people, facts
and artifacts that along two centuries forged and improved the three rings of
the petroleum production chain: upstream, midstream and downstream. The
lectures are framed in a national and transnational contest with global
outreach, and developed following multidisciplinary trajectories focused on
science, technology, politics, economics, and environment.
Industries
do not emerge accidentally; the evolution of oil & gas industry – a
multi-faceted, energivorous and expensive technological system – can be
compared to a small industrial revolution, whose effects have been felt over a
long period of time. The development of a complex production system such as
petroleum (crude oil, natural gas, condensates, LNG, and LPG) is not a linear
process. It has stages of experimentation, trial and error, disappointments and
success that requires large investments and the scholarship of skilled
scientists and technologists. Oil in the history of the modern society is often
sized just in terms of barrels produced, consumed, or spilled, while historical
analyses on subjects like oil exploration, production, refining, and logistics
has received limited attention from historians. As consequence, it seems that
often oil is almost given for granted ‘in the tank’, with little clue on its
production, and past background.
The western society is partly defined by the concept of ‘knowledge society’
in which development is deemed to follow the application of new ideas and
paradigms. Considering the several roles that oil plays in daily life, the production of new
scholarship on the history of oil technology bears great scientific relevance
in academy and industry.
The oil
& gas industry may be defined a precise mechanical system composed and
assembled by unique and irreplaceable parts, and the studies presented in this
panel will show how those parts are organized, coordinated and work together.
The ultimate goal of the session is to foster the knowledge on the workflow in
oil production; that will lead to a better understanding of the scientific and
technological challenges experienced during past two centuries by oil industry
to feed the complex energy ecosystem of our society.
The deadline to
submit your abstract is February 28, 2016. Abstracts (max 300 words) have to be
accompanied by a one-page resume (max 600 words) and sent to francesco.gerali@uwa.au.edu, in copy to fgerali@ou.edu.
Thanks for your attention, I look forward receiving your proposals.
Cordially
Francesco Gerali
Sessions
organizer:
Francesco
Gerali, PhD
Research
Assistant
School of
Library and Information Science
The
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK.
Honorary
Research Fellow
School of Humanities,
History Discipline
The
University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA