Fuels are solid, liquid or gaseous materials that release energy through combustion and release light energy and heat energy. Among them we can find:

■ Gaseous Fuels: Hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, butane)

■ Liquid fuels: Petroleum derivatives (diesel, gasoline, kerosene) and alcohols (methanol, ethanol)

■ Solid fuels: coal (mineral and vegetable)

Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239 are also considered fuels. They are nuclear reaction fuels.

There is another classification of fuels:

■ Fossil fuels: materials formed in very ancient times. They are non-renewable energy sources. They are coal, oil and natural gas.

■ Biofuels: Materials obtained from living beings.

The first “modern” oil well was drilled in 1859 by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania, in the United States. Drake drilled in the Oil Creek valley for the Seneca Oil company and after months of effort oil spontaneously gushed from a 70-foot-deep well.

Oil is a fossil fuel formed millions of years ago by the accumulation of ocean plankton that was covered with sediments at great depth and subjected to high temperatures and pressures.

Petroleum is a dark liquid made up of a mixture of chemicals called hydrocarbons. It is stored in oil fields, buried at great depths. The crude oil is extracted using drilling rigs and once extracted, the different chemical compounds that form it are separated through a refining process. To separate these fractions it is necessary to use a distillation tower.

The crude oil enters the tower in the form of gas and is made to rise up to about 50 meters. As it rises, it cools and condenses the different components and the petroleum derivatives (oils, diesel, kerosene, etc.) are collected. ) until reaching the gasses (propane, butane, methane, etc.).

Crude oil is classified depending on the API (American Petroleum Institute) degrees, considering values less than 30 as heavy and values above 30 being defined as light. In Mexico it is divided into three types depending on its density: Olmec, Isthmus and Maya.

When relating it to its API gravity, it classifies oil into the following categories: light, with gravities greater than 31.1°; medium, with gravities between 22.3 and 31.1°; heavy, between 10° and 22.3°, and extra heavy, with API gravities less than 10°.

Brent

Its name comes from the Brent deposit, discovered in 1971 in the North Sea, which in turn received its name from the Shell company, which uses the names of water birds (Brent goose, black-faced barnacle in Spanish) to name the deposits.

Brent oil is of high quality, because it is, in oil jargon, light and sweet (reduced sulfur content).

Heavy oil is defined as oil with 22.3°API or lower density. 1 Oils of 10°API or lower density are known as extra-heavy, ultra-heavy or super-heavy because they are denser than water.

The chemical composition of petroleum is very variable, to the point that the four fundamental types of hydrocarbons: paraffins (saturated hydrocarbons), olefins (unsaturated hydrocarbons), naphthenes (saturated cyclic hydrocarbons or cycloalkanes), and aromatic hydrocarbons, are not only different from...

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil or US crude oil is a blend of several light and sweet domestic US crude oils. It is mined and processed in the United States, and is refined primarily in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast.

WTI oil is recognized for having a higher quality than Brent, however, its price does not have to be higher. In fact, the price of a barrel of Brent is usually higher than that of Texas.

As noted above, Brent crude oil is the benchmark used for the global light oil market, i.e. Europe, Africa and the Middle East, while WTI is the benchmark for the US light oil market. USA.