Unleaded Gas Supply and Chain Distribution in Alaska (Research Paper Sample)

Unleaded Gas Supply and Chain Distribution in Alaska
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Unleaded gas or simply unleaded fuel will remain to be one of the most important discoveries of the world. The vital element that keeps our automobiles moving from the simple lawnmower to huge trucks, buses ships and airplanes. It includes mainly petrol and diesel. It is fascinating to wonder and enquire about unleaded gas. Where does it come from? When did it exist? How has it transformed our world? These and many more questions are going to be explored and answered in this article. However, this article will answer these questions with our main focus as Alaska, one of the leading exporters and users of unleaded gas in the world. The article further seeks on the supply and chain distribution of unleaded gas in Alaska. Unleaded gas is one of the many products of crude oil. Crude oil is a complex, naturally occurring liquid mixture primarily composed of hydrocarbons, but also including oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur compounds which has been extracted from the ground since the 18th century (McKain and Bernard, 1994). It exists naturally from the fauna and flora that were alive many million years ago and are termed fossil fuels. For the case of Alaska which is our point of reference, Prudhoe Bay is the largest reservoir in the state and North America as well. Located at 400 miles north of Fairbanks and 650 miles north of Anchorage, Prudhoe Bay produces approximately 480, 000 barrels of oil per day (Sweet, 2008).
Prudhoe Bay spreads over 213,430 acres. Its other associated oil fields are the Milne Point oil field that is located to the west. To extract the crude oil, preparation of the rig area is done. This includes clearing the site and setting up safety noise barriers. After site preparation, drilling is now ready to commence. Drill rig is brought to the location and a surface hole is first dug which is up to 100 feet below. Further drilling is done up to the desired distance. After the target distance is achieved, cementing and testing is done where steel casing replaces the pipe. What follows is the well completion where holes are created to connect the rock holding the oil and the well head. After this, fracking process follows where unlocking of the trapped oil and gas begins. A fracking fluid, which consists of water and sand is pumped at high pressure through the perforated holes and unleashes the oil. The extracted crude oil is impure and has to be filtered. Impurities in the crude oil includes sand, sludge, salts, water and sulfur. To remove impurities, the crude oil is pumped into a Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) where desalting is done. It helps eliminates harmful substances such as sulfur, water, salts, and even mechanical impurities, which ensures a long operation of pipelines. This helps to ensure that the crude oil is of good quality before refining. Refining process is then ready to start. It is passed to a heating chamber where it is heated to boiling point. Since the different constituents have different boiling points, they distill at different rates. Naphtha with the lowest boiling point is collected first while bitumen with the highest boiling point is collected last. Catalytic cracking can follow to further reduce the heavy weight molecular products like bitumen into finer products which are cheap and sell faster.
After extraction, Prudhoe Bay transports its oil to Valdez Port in Central Alaska through a 1287Km long Trans Alaska pipeline. From Valdez Port, oil is further redistributed to other parts of the country. From here, transportation of oil is mainly done through shipping. Other forms of transportation used are tankers and pipeline. Teroso Company in Alaska is one of the many companies receiving their oil from the port. They do further refinery and resell unleaded gas to petrol stations and natural gas companies having met the required octane rating. Octane rating is a standard measure for ensuring the production of good quality oil. It is a measure of how resistant a fuel is to burning. A good and quality fuel should exceed an octane rating of 87. Delivery to petroleum stations are majorly done through