About Petroleum
Unrefined, or crude, oil is found underground and under the sea floor, in the interstices between grains of sandstone and limestone or dolomite (not in caves). Petroleum is a mixture of liquids varying in color from nearly colorless to jet black, in viscosity from thinner than water to thicker than molasses, and in density from light gases to asphalts heavier than water. It can be separated by distillation into fractions that range from light color, low density, and low viscosity to the opposite extreme. In places where it has oozed from the ground, its volatile fractions have vaporized, leaving the dense, black parts of the oil as a pool of tar or asphalt (such as the Brea Tar Pits in California). Much of the world's crude oil is today produced from drilled wells. See also Petroleum engineering.
Petroleum consists mostly of hydrocarbon molecules. The four main classes of hydrocarbons are paraffins (also called alkanes), olefins (alkenes), cycloparaffins (cycloalkanes), and aromatics. Olefins are absent in crude oil but can be formed in certain refining processes. The simplest hydrocarbon is one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms (chemical formula CH4), and is called methane. See also Alkane; Paraffin.
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