翻譯：THE OPEC oil cartel is about to turn 40, and the mood in the run-up to the grand heads-of-state party in Venezuela in less than three weeks time is jubilant. Not quite two years ago,oil was $10 a barrel and the cartel was on the brink of collapse. Now the oil price is well above $30 a barrel, and it shows little sign of coming down.

翻譯：The total quantity of petroleum now thought to exist on Earth is about 14 trillion gallons. In weight that is only one-ninth as much as the total existing quantity of coal and ,at the present moment, petroleum is being used up much more quickly. At the present rate of used, the worlds supply of petroleum may last for only thirty years or so.

翻譯：A third means of assessing the maturity of rocks is by the pyrolysis of a small amount of the source rock. The temperature is raised rapidly and the material vaporized or formed by thermal breakdown of the kerogen is passed through a detector which records, on a temperature base, peaks representing these two bursts of volatile material. To a first approximation the peak at the lower temperature represents oil already generated; the peak at the higher temperature indicates oil capable of being generated at adequate maturity.

翻譯：Land maps are essential in establishing control wells and provide fundamental orientation. As Fig.2 illustrates, land maps which are readily available within most companies as well as readily available commercially, provide offset operators, total depth, formation tops and development dates. The land map is essential in establishing orientation and control.

翻譯：The transportation of oil has also led to the spectacular development of gait ships ,the largest ships that ever sailed the oceans of the world .in the last few years ,since it has been necessary to ship oil from middle East-one of the largest oil producing regions-around the cap of Good Hope in south Africa these tanks has grown to almost unblievable proportions.

翻譯：A major oil company usually initiates the sequence of events that leads to the drilling of oil and gas wells in foreign fields, but independent oil operators pay for most of the wells in the United States. In fact, about 80% of all wells drilled in the U.S. today are financed by independents.

翻譯：crude petroleum is not an equilibrium mixture, and on a geological time scale its composition is slowly changing. S.R.silverman found that heating at 121C for two weeks caused detectable changes, the low-molecular-weight components formed being isotopically lighter so far as the carbon was concerned, than the original.

翻譯：In these early days, as lamp oil, was the important product and the main objects of refining was to extract as much of it as possible from the crude. Lubricants and some fuel oil were also sold, but gasoline was burnt off as unwanted and bitumen was also largely useless.

翻譯：Gas lift is the method of artificial lift that uses an external source of high-pressure gas for supplementing formation gas to lift the well fluids. The primary consideration in the selection of availability and compression cost of gas.

翻譯：The application of physics to the study of rocks (geophysics)is very important in petroleum geology. In its broadest application geophysics makes a major contribution to understanding the earths crust and, especially through the application of modern plate tectonic(板塊構(gòu)造)theory, the genesis and petroleum potential of sedimentary basins. More specially, physical concepts are required to understand folds（褶皺）, faults（斷層）, and diapers（底辟）, and hence their roles in petroleum entrapment.