Oil/gas pipe lines

[Bowler1]

For my current WIP, the characters are on a planet/moon with a very thin atmosphere and they are around a gas giant, with an icy surface that has basic life in what free water there is. This allows for oil and gas reserves which the colony is using, and the oil/gas is piped to the colony for its use. I have a character working on these pipelines as a good excuse for him to be on his own. To explain all the above without boring the reader half to death I need a little accident on the pipeline, not a major blow out, just enough for him to report back in for a discussion with another character. I’m thinking gas might be best as it would have more pressure to beak a seal, but does temperature affect gas density, I think it does. Would oil be better? I’m planning for him to have stopped the flow at a pumping station for him to affect repairs and he is calling back in to restart the pump. The tension/plot comes when his working mates are rounded up to be taken back to the colony for their own safety, but at gun point and another character tells the original one to go hide, why have guns if everything is fine. I’m giving you all more detail than is needed to answer my question, but I need to at least have a little basic engineering for this section, and sadly I drive spread sheets for a living!

So, any engineers in the oil industry out there??
Failing that, believable made up stuff. I really know Chrons members can do that!

Thank you.

[iansales]

Oil and gas are created from decayed biological matter. You'd need some sort of jungle moon for there to be enough biomatter to generate viable oil or gas deposits.

[Boneman]

You're going to have problems pumping it, if it's a very thin atmosphere, but I guess you'll have equipment that can pressurise it. Crude oil can be very corrosive, (contains a lot of other substances that the cracking process removes) and you only need a small flaw in the welding/seal of the sections of pipeline for it to be worked on over a period of time.

[Bowler1]

I thought the Moon Europa had the possibility for life below the ice and this is what I'm basing my ideas on. Given enough time I assumed even primitive life would build up enough matter for some sort of deposits to form.

Agree Boneman, which is why I have my lad out there working. So do you think it would gush out to start or spray from a small hole to start?

[ctg]

Ian Sales, if hydrocarbon's are biological matters, then how come they were able to find lakes, if not oceans, from Saturn moon Titan? Or Methane in the atmosphere of Mars? Or can you explain how Vietnam's Tiger Oil fields are possible, or in that matter, the vast oceans of oil in deep sea areas? Or then maybe you could give me some sort of hint on how Russians are able to renew their deep drilled oil fields, year after year, decade after decade.

[allmywires]

Bowler: Oil and gas deposits are created by the decomposition and oxidation of biological matter in sediments. A decayed body will not turn into oil or gas after a certain amount of time: it all depends on pressures and the environment in which it's buried. Sediments are usually caused by deposition of degraded rock, and the settling and lithification of particles. In a world without water, this would be very unlikely, unless all your rocks were sandstones in a desert environment (but for oil and gas formations, you usually need a pattern of rocks, which one this world goes sandstone-shale-sandstone, where the porous rock is sandstone and the rock that seals it in is shale)

With regards to the leak, I think whatever way you do it would be believable. I would find the provenance of your resources more of a problem. Maybe you could have there being sub-zero hydrocarbon lakes you are mining? I don't think oil/gas deposits from biological sources would be believable here.

ctg: as I explained above, on OUR planet hydrocarbons form biologically. On a planet where temperatures are low enough for hydrocarbons to exist in their liquid form, and have not been altered since their formation due to lack of reaction, lakes would occur.

I don't want to go into a lesson of geology, but life exists in the ocean, a huge mass of it in fact. When it dies, it sinks to the bottom. When layers of sediment are deposited above it, it decays and oxidises. After millions of years in the right conditions (not every dead sea animal decays this way) oil and gas reservoirs are formed. The Russians do not 'renew' their fields - they are drilling deeper into ones that already exist.

[ctg]

Okay, if you say so then I have to believe ... or not.

[Boneman]

Originally Posted by Bowler1

Agree Boneman, which is why I have my lad out there working. So do you think it would gush out to start or spray from a small hole to start?

Depending on the pressure in the pipeline that is pumping the oil. A pinprick hole would spray quite amazingly if the pressure is high and it would develop into a gush as the hole enlarges (again, quite quickly).

[iansales]

ctg, a hydrocarbon is any molecule containing hydrogen and carbon atoms. Oil (petroleum) is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, so equating it with methane would be like confusing an egg and a black forest gâteau.

[ctg]

Ah, there we go, a mixture of atoms, not just some bloody fossil matter. So, it's not like petroleum only exist because some biological matter decayed over the time, but it can form up over certain period of time in correct conditions. And for the note, methane is consider as hydrocarbon, is it not?

Nobody has been able to explain Methane in Mars atmosphere and it's one of the mysteries in our solar system for time being. It can be utilised by generators to produce electricity, but same thing applies to many, many other things. And my point, without hijacking the thread, is that nobody gives a flying *uc* about the oil or gas pipelines in the science fiction novels, when it's the characters that they are watching. People didn't go overly overboard when Ben Bova wrote about the gas mining in the Jupiter, or that one of the characters were considering about doing skydiving in the gas giant atmosphere.

[iansales]

Liquid methane is still not oil. And if you ignore the implausibility of your central premise, yes, people will notice - especially if you've not taken the effort to justify it within the world of the story. Doesn't mean you have to include the equations, but it does mean you're going to have to do some fancy hand-waving if you have, for example, economically-viable petroleum deposits on a dead icy moon.

[ctg]

As far as I understand, and have seen, methane can be used to power *whatever*. And I'm going drop it off from now on. Thing is, like you say mister sales, a writer cannot brush off everything, but in the same time, going overly scientific doesn't help the story becoming successful, either. You will find sooner than later yourself in the corner because of the scientific restrictions. Therefore, the writer has to either figure out a logical solution or write in something that rub against the general tone. So, I don't think anyone going to shout: "you [whatever]" if you go, and apply some general principals without giving them overly long explanations.

[Sapheron]

There's no need for a jungle. The forests in the Carboniferous were a big hydrocarbon source, sure; they made the majority of our coal. However, oil and gas are also often made from oceanic sediment, with the organic matter primarily coming from planktonic micro organisms. Indeed, this is a more common source of oil and gas than forests or jungles.

So I see no problem with the source.

[The Judge]

This may be a silly question, since I am a scientific ignoramus, but it's puzzling me -- why does the moon have to be a jungle, or other Earth-like world, now for the whatever deposits to exist? Could not all the biological necessities with the dead sea creatures/forests have happened aeons ago, when it was more early Earth-like, and its surface have changed drastically over the millennia because of some external forces? Or is that not feasible?


EDIT: Sapheron posted while I was still puzzling...

[allmywires]

Originally Posted by The Judge

This may be a silly question, since I am a scientific ignoramus, but it's puzzling me -- why does the moon have to be a jungle, or other Earth-like world, now for the whatever deposits to exist? Could not all the biological necessities with the dead sea creatures/forests have happened aeons ago, when it was more early Earth-like, and its surface have changed drastically over the millennia because of some external forces? Or is that not feasible?

You're right, it doesn't need to be now. A plausible source could be if the moon/planet had water, had thriving organisms and sediment production, which then for some reason dried up and left the oil/gas deposits behind.