ConocoPhillipsConocoPhillips Company is an American multinational corporation engaged in hydrocarbon exploration and production. It is based in the Energy Corridor district of Houston, Texas. The company has operations in 15 countries and has production in the United States (49% of 2019 production), Norway (10% of 2019 production), Canada (5% of 2019 production), Australia (12% of 2019 production), Indonesia (4% of 2019 production), Malaysia (4% of 2019 production), Libya (3% of 2019 production), China (3% of 2019 production), and Qatar (6% of 2019 production).
2000s energy crisisFrom the mid-1980s to September 2003, the inflation-adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil on NYMEX was generally under US25/barrelin2008dollars.During2003,thepriceroseabove30, reached 60by11August2005,andpeakedat147.30 in July 2008. Commentators attributed these price increases to many factors, including Middle East tension, soaring demand from China, the falling value of the U.S. dollar, reports showing a decline in petroleum reserves, worries over peak oil, and financial speculation. DiluentA diluent (also referred to as a filler, dilutant or thinner) is a diluting agent. Certain fluids are too viscous to be pumped easily or too dense to flow from one particular point to the other. This can be problematic, because it might not be economically feasible to transport such fluids in this state. To ease this restricted movement, diluents are added. This decreases the viscosity of the fluids, thereby also decreasing the pumping/transportation costs. One industrial application is the transport of crude oil via pipelines.
Source rockIn petroleum geology, source rock is rock which has generated hydrocarbons or which could generate hydrocarbons. Source rocks are one of the necessary elements of a working petroleum system. They are organic-rich sediments that may have been deposited in a variety of environments including deep water marine, lacustrine and deltaic. Oil shale can be regarded as an organic-rich but immature source rock from which little or no oil has been generated and expelled.
Emission intensityLife-cycle greenhouse gas emissions of energy sources An emission intensity (also carbon intensity or C.I.) is the emission rate of a given pollutant relative to the intensity of a specific activity, or an industrial production process; for example grams of carbon dioxide released per megajoule of energy produced, or the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions produced to gross domestic product (GDP).
UpgraderAn upgrader is a facility that upgrades bitumen (extra heavy oil) into synthetic crude oil. Upgrader plants are typically located close to oil sands production, for example, the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, Canada or the Orinoco tar sands in Venezuela. Upgrading means using fractional distillation and/or chemical treatment to convert bitumen so it can be handled by oil refineries. At a minimum, this means reducing its viscosity so that it can be pumped through pipelines (bitumen is 1000x more viscous than light crude oil).