To: Professor Branch
From: Andrew Jerram
Date: August 19, 2014
Subject: A brief journey through BP in the oil industry
Most of us use or rely on crude oil products every day of our lives, whether directly with gasoline to fill up our cars or indirectly through products we use each day at home and work. Yet few people really know or think about the amazing process which transforms crude oil into useful products and ultimately provide us the freedoms in lifestyles to which we have become accustomed. The journey of crude oil into refined products is long, arduous and at times contentious, from initial exploration, to transportation and refining. Multinational energy companies, such as BP face a multitude of international and national regulations, political, cultural and environmental challenges, in the highly complex business world in which they exist. The following memorandum provides details of BP’s various operations in the different aspects of the industry, spanning countries across the world, highlighting some of these challenges, the impacts of the operations and the truly global nature of the oil industry. (See appendix 1 for BP operations activity map).
Canada - Oil sands
In the US, BP sources much of their crude oil from the Canadian oil sands in the province of Alberta for supply into the Midwest market. Oil sands in Canada are the third-largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. One of the big questions facing BP and the oil industry in working to meet rising global energy demand is how to responsibly recover these resources. Oil sands are very thick or even solid in form, which means they do not flow as freely to the surface as lighter crude oils, making extraction very difficult. To help address this issue BP is funding a new heavy oil research laboratory at the University of Surrey in the UK to