Article Writing Homework Help

Create a 8 pages page paper that discusses the primary purposes of transport and delivery. The network for petroleum begins with a separation of the process into two streams i.e. upstream and downstream. Upstream is the first division and deals with the exploration, discovery, and production of oil from untapped resources. Once the oil has been found in a locality, upstream producers start the installation processes for their rigs and install extraction equipment that lets them get to the petroleum wherever it may be (Wikipedia, 2006).

The downstream network is what actually transports the oil as raw material or petroleum as a finished good to the actual consumers of the commodity. This is the network than involves seafaring oil tankers, refineries, petrochemical plants, pipelines, large oil companies, and the end-user. The total size of this global system is massive, to say the least, and the amount of money involved in the operation runs in the trillions of Euros (Wikipedia 2006). Not only does the network generate huge profits, but it also generates huge controversies concerning its operations.

By the 1890s, the automobile had been invented and it required petrol to run. The popularity of the ‘horseless carriage’ meant that there were nine million American cars that needed fuel in 1920 and petrol stations could be seen across all American cities. Continued exploration and the development of the first transport network came into effect and oil was soon being sent from America to across the world. By the 1940s, other countries and companies made their own discoveries of oil and the present network started to emerge from the shadows (NOIA 2006).

The first step in the downstream infrastructure is the movement of oil from the well to the refinery. Quite often, refineries are located in geographically close regions so a pipeline is often laid down to transport the oil. The U.K is one example of a country that has a tremendous pipeline system for the transportation of petroleum products across the land and a representation of that is given in Figure 1.

Every year, more than seventy-five million tonnes of petroleum products are&nbsp.transported over British soil. The main pathways of this transport are pipelines followed by rail lines, ship transport, and road.&nbsp.