Corrosion (1)

Corrosion is the destructive attack of a material by reaction with its
environment. The serious consequences of the corrosion process have
become a problem of worldwide significance. In addition to our everyday
encounters with this form of degradation, corrosion causes plant
shutdowns, waste of valuable resources, loss or contamination of product,
reduction in efficiency, costly maintenance, and expensive overdesign;
it also jeopardizes safety and inhibits technological progress.
The multidisciplinary aspect of corrosion problems combined with the
distributed responsibilities associated with such problems only
increase the complexity of the subject. Corrosion control is achieved by
recognizing and understanding corrosion mechanisms, by using corrosion-
resistant materials and designs, and by using protective systems,
devices, and treatments. Major corporations, industries, and government
agencies have established groups and committees to look after
corrosion-related issues, but in many cases the responsibilities are
spread between the manufacturers or producers of systems and their
users. Such a situation can easily breed negligence and be quite costly
in terms of dollars and human lives.
I.1 The Cost of Corrosion
Although the costs attributed to corrosion damages of all kinds have
been estimated to be of the order of 3 to 5 percent of industrialized
countries’ gross national product (GNP), the responsibilities associated
with these problems are sometimes quite diffuse. Since the first significant
report by Uhlig1 in 1949 that the cost of corrosion to nations
is indeed great, the conclusion of all subsequent studies has been that
corrosion represents a constant charge to a nation’s GNP.2 One conclusion
of the 1971 UK government-sponsored report chaired by Hoar3
was that a good fraction of corrosion failures were avoidable and that
improved education was a good way of tackling corrosion avoidance.

Corrosion of metals cost the U.S. economy almost $300 billion per
year at 1995 prices.4 Broader application of corrosion-resistant materials
and the application of the best corrosion-related technical practices
could reduce approximately one-third of these costs. These
estimates result from a recent update by Battelle scientists of an earlier
study reported in 1978.5 The initial work, based upon an elaborate
model of more than 130 economic sectors, had revealed that metallic
corrosion cost the United States $82 billion in 1975, or 4.9 percent of
its GNP. It was also found that 60 percent of that cost was unavoidable.
The remaining $33 billion (40 percent) was said to be “avoidable”
and incurred by failure to use the best practices then known.
In the original Battelle study, almost 40 percent of 1975 metallic corrosion
costs were attributed to the production, use, and maintenance
of motor vehicles. No other sector accounted for as much as 4 percent
of the total, and most sectors contributed less than 1 percent. The 1995
Battelle study indicated that the motor vehicles sector probably had
made the greatest anticorrosion effort of any single industry. Advances
have been made in the use of stainless steels, coated metals, and more
protective finishes. Moreover, several substitutions of materials made
primarily for reasons of weight reduction have also reduced corrosion.
Also, the panel estimated that 15 percent of previously unavoidable
corrosion costs can be reclassified as avoidable. The industry is estimated
to have eliminated some 35 percent of its “avoidable” corrosion
by its improved practices. Table I.1 summarizes the costs attributed to
metallic corrosion in the United States in these two studies.

I.2 Examples of Catastrophic
Corrosion Damage
I.2.1 Sewer explosion, Mexico
An example of corrosion damages with shared responsibilities was the
sewer explosion that killed over 200 people in Guadalajara, Mexico, in
April 1992.6 Besides the fatalities, the series of blasts damaged 1600
buildings and injured 1500 people. Damage costs were estimated at 75
million U.S. dollars. The sewer explosion was traced to the installation
of a water pipe by a contractor several years before the explosion that
leaked water on a gasoline line laying underneath. The subsequent
corrosion of the gasoline pipeline, in turn, caused leakage of gasoline
into the sewers. The Mexican attorney general sought negligent homicide
charges against four officials of Pemex, the government-owned oil
company. Also cited were three representatives of the regional sewer
system and the city’s mayor.
I.2.2 Loss of USAF F16 fighter aircraft
This example illustrates a case that has recently created problems in
the fleet of USAF F16 fighter aircraft. Graphite-containing grease is a
very common lubricant because graphite is readily available from steel
industries. The alternative, a formulation containing molybdenum
disulphide, is much more expensive. Unfortunately, graphite grease is
well known to cause galvanically induced corrosion in bimetallic couples.
In a fleet of over 3000 F16 USAF single-engine fighter aircraft,
graphite grease was used by a contractor despite a general order from
the Air Force banning its use in aircraft.7 As the flaps were operated,
lubricant was extruded into a part of the aircraft where control of the
fuel line shutoff valve was by means of electrical connectors made from
a combination of gold- and tin-plated steel pins. In many instances corrosion
occurred between these metals and caused loss of control of the
valve, which shut off fuel to the engine in midflight. At least seven aircraft
are believed to have been lost in this way, besides a multitude of
other near accidents and enormous additional maintenance.
I.2.3 The Aloha aircraft incident
The structural failure on April 28, 1988, of a 19-year-old Boeing 737,
operated by Aloha airlines, was a defining event in creating awareness
of aging aircraft in both the public domain and in the aviation community.
This aircraft lost a major portion of the upper fuselage near the
front of the plane in full flight at 24,000 ft.8 Miraculously, the pilot managed
to land the plane on the island of Maui, Hawaii. One flight attendant
was swept to her death. Multiple fatigue cracks were detected

in the remaining aircraft structure, in the holes of the upper row of rivets
in several fuselage skin lap joints. Lap joints join large panels of
skin together and run longitudinally along the fuselage. Fatigue cracking
was not anticipated to be a problem, provided the overlapping panels
remained strongly bonded together. Inspection of other similar
aircraft revealed disbonding, corrosion, and cracking problems in the
lap joints. Corrosion processes and the subsequent buildup of voluminous
corrosion products inside the lap joints, lead to “pillowing,” whereby
the faying surfaces are separated. Special instrumentation has been
developed to detect this dangerous condition. The aging aircraft problem
will not go away, even if airlines were to order unprecedented numbers
of new aircraft. Older planes are seldom scrapped, and the older
planes that are replaced by some operators will probably end up in service
with another operator. Therefore, safety issues regarding aging
aircraft need to be well understood, and safety programs need to be
applied on a consistent and rigorous basis.
I.2.4 The MV KIRKI
Another example of major losses to corrosion that could have been prevented
and that was brought to public attention on numerous occasions
since the 1960s is related to the design, construction, and
operating practices of bulk carriers. In 1991 over 44 large bulk carriers
were either lost or critically damaged and over 120 seamen lost
their lives.9 A highly visible case was the MV KIRKI, built in Spain in
1969 to Danish designs. In 1990, while operating off the coast of
Australia, the complete bow section became detached from the vessel.
Miraculously, no lives were lost, there was little pollution, and the vessel
was salvaged. Throughout this period it seems to have been common
practice to use neither coatings nor cathodic protection inside
ballast tanks. Not surprisingly therefore, evidence was produced that
serious corrosion had greatly reduced the thickness of the plate and
that this, combined with poor design to fatigue loading, were the primary
cause of the failure. The case led to an Australian Government
report called “Ships of Shame.” MV KIRKI is not an isolated case.
There have been many others involving large catastrophic failures,
although in many cases there is little or no hard evidence when the
ships go to the bottom.
I.2.5 Corrosion of the infrastructure
One of the most evident modern corrosion disasters is the present state
of degradation of the North American infrastructure, particularly in
the snow belt where the use of road deicing salts rose from 0.6M ton in
1950 to 10.5M tons in 1988. The structural integrity of thousands of

bridges, roadbeds, overpasses, and other concrete structures has been
impaired by corrosion, urgently requiring expensive repairs to ensure
public safety. A report by the New York Department of Transport has
stated that, by 2010, 95 percent of all New York bridges would be deficient
if maintenance remained at the same level as it was in 1981.
Rehabilitation of such bridges has become an important engineering
practice.10 But the problems of corroding reinforced concrete extend
much beyond the transportation infrastructure. A survey of collapsed
buildings during the 1974 to 1978 period in England showed that the
immediate cause of failure of at least eight structures, which were 12
to 40 years old, was corrosion of reinforcing or prestressing steel.
Deterioration of parking garages has become a major concern in
Canada. Of the 215 garages surveyed recently, almost all suffered varying
degrees of deterioration due to reinforcement corrosion, which was
a result of design and construction practices that fell short of those
required by the environment. It is also stated that almost all garages
in Canada built until very recently by conventional methods will
require rehabilitation at a cost to exceed $3 billion. The problem surely
extends to the northern United States. In New York, for example, the
seriousness of the corrosion problem of parking garages was revealed
dramatically during the investigation that followed the bomb attack on
the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center.

Opportunities in Petroleum (3)

Discovering New Uses for Petroleum
By 1929, oil production in the United States had tripled from 1918
levels. It was during that year that American companies produced

one billion barrels of oil for the first time in the short history of the
petroleum industry.
By the spring of 2007, the United States was producing 5.2 million
barrels per day of crude oil—one million barrels fewer than
the decade before. Instead, we now import about 60 percent of our
crude oil.
This oil is moved through more than two hundred thousand
miles of pipelines that crisscross the continental United States, providing
America with a stable and reliable source of fuel. This massive
infrastructure, as critical to our way of life as highways, electric
power lines, and cellular telephone towers, has been built underground
not only for aesthetic considerations but also for environmental,
cost, and security reasons, according to the American
Petroleum Institute.
Another 180,000 miles of pipelines carry natural gas quietly,
reliably, and efficiently throughout North America for heating,
cooking, and other uses, according to the Interstate Natural Gas
Association of America (www.ingaa.org).
Drake and Lucas had paved the way for the wholesale extraction
of petroleum from the ground. Now inventors began to develop
products that opened up a whole new market for crude oil and its
products.
One of the first uses was in the internal combustion engine built
in 1885–1886 by Karl Benz. The concept was improved on by Gottlieb
Daimler, who developed an engine that used a lighter gasoline
vapor. By 1894 Rudolf Diesel had designed the engine that bears
his name today, an internal combustion engine ignited by the heat
of compression rather than by a spark.
However, probably the most significant invention that changed
the way Americans lived came in 1893 with the development of the
first American car by Charles and Frank Duryea in Springfield,
Massachusetts. In 1908 Henry Ford introduced his Model T. He
subsequently perfected the mass production of automobiles, and
America’s love affair with the car had begun. This meant a completely
new market for crude oil. Until the development and widespread
use of the automobile, gasoline was considered a waste
product. But as the number of automobiles grew, so did the number
of gasoline stations across the country.
API’s historical files note that the first “filling” station was
opened in Seattle in 1907 by Standard Oil of California, which is
now Chevron Company USA. The filling station included a hose
that dispensed gasoline directly into the vehicle from an elevated
tank. The first “drive-in” service station opened on December 1,
1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are now
about 169,000 gasoline stations in the United States. Petroleum and
its products, however, are used in many more ways. These include
heating and cooling homes and factories, manufacturing goods, and
fueling commercial and military aircraft, tractors, and railroads.
New refining processes have led to the creation of thousands of new
products, including bicycles, propane grills, crayons, plastic bottles,
and laundry detergents. One can only imagine how different our
lives would be today without these products, which have made
many things so much easier.

Seven Sisters: Now There Are Four
U.S. entrepreneurs of the twentieth century realized the importance
of petroleum and began to create companies to support this
new form of energy. A study of the petroleum industry parallels

the history and development of the United States and its emergence
as a world leader in industry and technology.
From the industry’s humble beginning grew seven oil companies
that became known as the “seven sisters.” Today, because of mergers
and acquisitions, only four of the original seven remain.
No other name is as associated with those early years as that of
John D. Rockefeller, who founded the Standard Oil Company of
Ohio in 1870. This wealthy young man turned his few years of
experience in the oil field into $1 million in cash and organized
what was to be the first major oil company in the United States.
Rockefeller quickly realized the importance of petroleum and, as
the industry spread to other oil-producing states, so did his expansion
into refineries and pipelines, as well as into overseas markets.
However, public and government outcry over his monopoly of
the petroleum industry led, in part, to the passage of the Sherman
Antitrust Act in 1890. A lawsuit was filed against the company
under the new antitrust laws, but it was not until May 1911 that
the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil must
totally divest itself of its thirty-eight subsidiaries.
The largest of the subsidiaries was Standard Oil Company of
New Jersey, which Rockefeller formed as a holding company to
escape the tentacles of the antitrust laws. It later became known as
Exxon, the largest oil company in the world. A second Rockefeller
company was the Standard Oil Company of New York, which
bought a Texas producing company called Magnolia. It merged
with another firm called Vacuum and later became Mobil Oil. In
November 1999 the two companies merged and are now known
as ExxonMobil.
Eleven years before Rockefeller was ordered to dissolve his vast
oil empire, he purchased a company and called it Standard Oil of

California, the forerunner of today’s Chevron, USA. Another member
of the early oil family was Gulf Oil Corporation, which was
incorporated in New Jersey through the acquisition of the J. M.
Guffey Petroleum Company and the Gulf Refining Company of
Texas. These two companies were instrumental in the development
of the prolific Spindletop field in Texas. Gulf Oil was acquired by
Chevron in 1984.
The Texas Company—which later became Texaco—was another
one of the sisters that had roots in the Texas oil patch but was
founded by a Pennsylvania merchant. In 2001 Chevron and Texaco
merged and became ChevronTexaco. In 2005 the name was
changed to Chevron.
The last two sisters in the family were Shell Oil and British
Petroleum, and both of these companies were founded in England.
Even today they remain significant players in the worldwide energy
business.
These seven companies, with the ability and finances to get
petroleum out of the ground and get it to market, were to dominate
the petroleum industry for decades to come. They, including
other companies like ConocoPhillips (created in 2002 with the
merger of Conoco and Phillips Petroleum Company) as well as
many other smaller independent companies, are still active in the
day-to-day search for petroleum.
By the mid-1970s, however, it was evident that the destinies of
these large oil concerns were beginning to be inevitably shaped by
a series of uncontrollable occurrences throughout the world, particularly
in Middle Eastern countries—a scenario that hasn’t
changed much even well into the first decade of the twenty-first
century.

Opportunities in Petroleum (2)

Petroleum: A Chemical “Black Gold”
So, what is petroleum and where does it come from? By definition,
petroleum, in the strictest sense of the word, is crude oil as it comes
out of the ground. It is a mixture of several chemical compounds,
primarily hydrogen and carbon. In a broader sense, and for the purposes
of this book, petroleum also is defined as all hydrocarbons,
including oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids, and all related products.
Petroleum also can exist as a solid, such as the tar sands found
in some parts of Canada and the oil shale beds located in some
western states.
Even after two hundred years, the origin of black gold, as it is
sometimes called, remains the subject of debate. Since the midnineteenth
century, scientists have variously believed that petroleum
comes from coal, decayed animals and vegetables, and even
volcanic matter. Today, the debate still continues in some scientific
circles as to whether oil is organic (plant or vegetable matter) or
inorganic (not living).
The general consensus among the majority of the earth’s scientists,
however, is that the petroleum produced today was formed

over a period of millions of years when plant and animal matter was
compressed as it settled at the bottom of prehistoric seabeds. This
matter, covered with layers and layers of sediment, was changed
into hydrocarbons through a combination of factors, including bacteria,
heat, and pressure.
Oil was first believed to flow under the earth much like an
underground stream of water. Further study throughout the years
led scientists to learn that oil actually exists between geological
structures in areas called reservoirs. The Society of Petroleum Engineers
(SPE), one of the industry’s largest professional organizations,
compares a reservoir rock to a tray of marbles, with oil occupying
the open spaces between the grains of rock.
Oil reservoirs may be a few thousand or many thousands of feet
below the surface. How permeable—or how easily the oil or gas
flows through connecting pore spaces—determines how easy it is
to remove the petroleum from the ground. How petroleum is
found and removed from these reservoirs will be discussed later.
Petroleum First Used to Light Fires
Scientists believe that the earliest use of petroleum occurred when
natural seepages of both crude oil and natural gas were used by
primitive tribes to light their fires. According to several versions of
the story of the Great Flood, Noah used pitch—a form of natural
asphaltic petroleum—as a caulking material to waterproof his ark.
Indian tribes are said to have used asphalt from the seeps at Santa
Barbara, California, as a sealant for their canoes, as well as for war
paints and medicines. And archaeologists believe the ancient Egyptians
used the same substance as a lubricant on chariot wheels. The
Greeks are said to have used petroleum to set the sea on fire to
destroy a fleet of ships belonging to an enemy that was threatening
invasion.
It is thought that by the Middle Ages, Sicilians were gathering
oil off their coast to use as fuel for lamps. Europeans, in the meantime,
skimmed the natural springs for oil that they used for medicinal
purposes, as well as for fuel.
It was the Chinese, however, who first drilled for petroleum.
Using primitive drilling tools, they bored eight hundred feet into
the earth in 347 A.D.—fifteen centuries before the birth of the
modern-day petroleum industry!

Opportunities in Petroleum (1)

How We Use Petroleum
Products Every Day

The petroleum extracted from the earth touches our lives in
ways most of us can only imagine. This natural resource keeps our
economic engine running, provides the foundation for products
that make our lives easier, and allows us to live longer, quality lives.
In addition to fueling our cars, heating our homes, and cooking
our foods, did you know that petroleum products are the basis for
the heart valve replacements that may someday save our lives, the
DVDs we watch our favorite movies on, and even the shampoos
we use to wash our hair?
These petroleum products—primarily oil and natural gas—supply
65 percent of our nation’s energy as well as help generate the
electricity that powers our daily lives.

The United States is the third-largest oil producing country in
the world, with more than five hundred thousand producing wells
and approximately four thousand oil and natural gas platforms
operating in U.S. waters. Canada is the world’s third-largest producer
of natural gas and seventh-largest producer of crude oil.
Combined, the two countries produce about seven million barrels
of crude oil a day.
The United States also is one of the largest consumers of petroleum
products, though there is growing demand coming from
emerging economies such as China and India. In the United States
alone, about twenty million barrels are used each day—about three
gallons per person—according to the American Petroleum Institute
(API). The API is a national trade association that represents
all aspects of America’s oil and natural gas industry, and there is a
wealth of information on its website at www.api.org and related
sites at www.energytomorrow.org, www.adventuresinenergy.org,
and www.classroom-energy.org.
Oil provides about 40 percent of the energy Americans consume
and 97 percent of our transportation fuels. Natural gas provides 25
percent of our energy needs. Oil and natural gas are found all over
the world in varying concentrations. The United States imports
approximately 60 percent of its oil, with the majority coming from
Canada and Mexico, while 84 percent of our natural gas is domestically
produced.
The Energy Information Agency, the U.S. government’s independent
statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department
of Energy (www.eia.doe.gov), projects that the demand for
energy will grow at an average annual rate of 1.1 percent. Natural
gas demand is expected to continue to increase to thirty trillion
cubic feet (Tcf ) by the year 2020.

With the demand for petroleum increasing, the good news is
that there is an abundance of domestic oil and gas resources in the
United States. The latest estimates reveal that there are more than
131 billion barrels of oil and more than a thousand Tcf of natural
gas remaining to be discovered in the United States.
The amount here is enough oil to power 55 million cars for 30
years and heat 24 million homes for 30 years. And there is enough
natural gas to heat 60 million homes that use natural gas for 120
years.