Energy Sciences

Rationale

Our school is located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is home to a refinery owned by HollyFrontier Corporation. This refinery can handle 125,000 barrels per day and mostly processes sweet crude, but is also capable of handling sour crude. ¹ Sour crude contains more than 0.5% sulfur, whereas sweet crude contains less than 0.5% sulfur. The downsides of sour crude will be discussed later. Many students could possibly start their future careers in the oil industry for several good reasons. For example, William Monday, the deputy warden at the William S. Key Correctional Center in Fort Supply, OK reports that prison guards have a starting salary of about $11.82 per hour. Entry-level oilfield jobs start at about $20 per hour. It is interesting to note that in Oklahoma, Dairy Queen gives employees an extra $200 after being on the payroll for 3 months and many businesses and govenment agencies cannot find enough workers. If one is able-bodied enough to do the work, income can be doubled or tripled by working in the oil patch. ² Even if the Keystone XL Pipeline project into Oklahoma were stopped, the oil hub located in Cushing would continue to grow. Railroads and trucks carrying tar sands from Canada are filling in and railroads are carrying more crude oil that ever before. ³ In 2011, the oil and gas industry provided 300,000 jobs in Oklahoma and paid nearly $1 billion in gross production taxes. ⁴ In addition, approximately one-quarter of all jobs here are tied, either directly or indirectly, to the energy industry. ⁵ The oil industry in Oklahoma is generally painted in a very positive light and in my opinion, many in Oklahoma are hesitant to "bite the hand that feeds them." My students can easily see the benefits of the oil industry in our state. I would like my students to be able to understand the processes that form petroleum and refine it, so that they have an understanding of why petroleum can be used as liquid fuel energy. If they understand that, then they will also understand why refining petroleum and burning it contributes to an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and causes other environmental problems.They will also be able to make predictions about which types of fuels are most efficient.