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Downstream: Refining and Marketing

While refining is a complex process, the goal is straightforward: to take crude oil, which is virtually unusable in its natural state, and transform it into petroleum products used for a variety of purposes such as heating homes, fueling vehicles and making petrochemical plastics.

Wolcott, Marion Post. Barnsdall oil refinery. Kansas, 1941.

A number of processes are involved in refining depending on the wanted end product. Hydrotreating is used to remove unwanted elements, such as sulphur and nitrogen from hydrocarbons; cracking breaks molecules into smaller fragments to produce gasoline and other lighter hydrocarbons. The gases produced by cracking are used to create other products like synthetic rubber and plastics. When making gasoline, refiners need high octane numbers to prevent engine knocking. Despite knowing the dangers of lead, tetraethyl lead was added to gasoline in the United States in the 1920s in order to increase the octane. Since the U.S. government banned lead in vehicle gasoline in 1996 as part of the U.S. Clean Air Act, refineries use alkylation and reforming to develop high-octane gasoline.

(From Oil and Gas Industry: A Research Guide, Library of Congress https://guides.loc.gov/oil-and-gas-industry/downstream, accessed on February 19th, 2025)  

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Texto 2

Driven by pre-salt, oil becomes Brazil's top export

Revenues

The discovery of the pre-salt was so significant for Brazil's oil production potential that it led the government to change the regime that authorized companies to explore the submerged resources.

As a result, the pre-salt areas are governed by the sharing regime. Under this model, surplus oil production—the balance after covering costs—is divided between the company and the Brazilian government. During the auction that authorizes exploration, the company offering the highest share of profits to the federal government is granted the right to explore.

This is distinct from the concession model, which applies to the post-salt period. In this system, the risk of investment and exploration lies with the concessionaire, who becomes the owner of all the oil and gas that may be discovered. In return, the company pays royalties and special participation fees, particularly for large production fields, in addition to a signature bonus upon winning the auction.

New frontiers

With the pre-salt expected to reach its peak in the 2030s, Brazil's oil industry, led by Petrobras, is shifting its focus to new oil frontiers that are believed to hold significant production potential.

One such frontier is the so-called equatorial margin, located off Brazil's northern coast, where exploration is pending a favorable decision from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), an agency under the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.

Another promising region is the Pelotas Basin, located off Brazil's southern coast. The growing interest in this area is fueled by the discovery of oil wells in Uruguay and off the coasts of Namibia and South Africa. Experts suggest that the geological conditions in these regions are similar, as the continents were once joined tens of millions of years ago.

According to Petrobras, the company plans to invest $79 billion in exploring new oil and gas frontiers by 2029. Of this amount, 40 percent will be allocated to the South and Southeast regions, 38 percent to the equatorial margin, with the remainder directed towards other countries.

From MOURA, Bruno de Freitas. Driven by pre-salt, oil becomes Brazil's top export. Rio de Janeiro, Agência Brasil, Jan 18th,2025. Accessed on February 21st, 2025

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Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land

Lakes and connecting streams in the northeastern part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, June 2014.

Four days before President Joe Biden is set to leave office, his administration recommended that about 3 million more acres in Alaska's western Arctic be protected from development and issued a guideline, effective immediately, requiring additional protections for traditional Native subsistence harvests of fish, caribou and other resources.

The new recommendations and guidance, which apply to the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, run counter to President-elect Donald Trump's expressed plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and elsewhere and to overturn Biden administration environmental policies more broadly.

The recommendations for additional land to be protected as part of what are termed "special areas" and the guidance for elevating the importance of subsistence and tribal consultation could be ignored or scrapped by the incoming Trump administration.

The northeastern part of the reserve is the area considered most likely to hold oil and where development has spread in recent years. There is already production in that area, and the most notable production expected in the future is from ConocoPhillips' Willow project. Willow won Biden administration approval in 2023. Production is expected to start by the end of the decade and peak at 180,000 barrels per day; current production from all North Slope fields amounts to less than 470,000 barrels per day.

Like the existing Teshekpuk special area, which holds important habitat for caribou, fish and migratory birds, the village of Nuiqsut is in the general area of the reserve's northeastern corner, where new oil development has occurred. Nuiqsut is so close that oilfield infrastructure can be seen from the village.

Pipelines extend across the landscape outside Nuiqsut, Alaska, May 2019.

"But at the same time, I think we and our partners have also made it abundantly clear that we're going to keep fighting, and keep fighting for protections in the Western Arctic," she said.

(From ROSEN, Yereth. Biden administration, in its last days, proposes new protections for Arctic Alaska land, Alaska Beacon, January 17, 2025. In alaskabeacon.com/2025/01/17/biden-administration-in-its-last-days-pro poses-new-protections-for-arctic-alaska-land/, accessed on February 19th, 2025)

TEXT:

Building Rapport

Establishing strong foundations for teaching and learning

By Stephanie Hirchman

September 2, 2025

How do teachers build rapport with students? I can’t think of a more important question; after all, learning is all about relationships. In fact, I hope the word “rapport” runs through all the blogs I’ve written, like the letters in a stick of rock. However, as the summer holidays draw to a close and with new beginnings in sight, I’m going to focus exclusively on building rapport.

Fostering rapport

Let’s get out the metaphors! If learning is a house, then rapport is the foundation, but because it needs constant maintenance, rapport is also a garden, tended with care on a daily basis. When there is a good rapport, students feel:

• seen – each student is greeted individually, and the teacher makes an eff ort to interact with each one during the lesson.

• confident in the teacher, the course, and themselves - the teacher knows what each student needs and how to deliver it so students make progress. Classroom routines are predictable, fair, and make sense.

• safe – they know the teacher will not embarrass them or expose their sensitivities or weaknesses. Mistakes are dealt with sensitively and treated as learning opportunities.

• accepted – the teacher meets each individual student exactly where they are, without judgment, academically and personally. If someone is called out on their behaviour, this is done in private, and an explanation is given about why this behaviour is unproductive or unacceptable.

Student profiles – the basis for rapport

Whatever your teaching context, you’ve got to get to know each student as an individual. This can be considered as an initial information gathering phase, with several possible pathways.

A good starting point is to test students either before they start the course or in the first few days, making it clear that this is a process that produces information that will help you to plan and them to learn. Try to generate as full a picture as possible, so you have an idea about their abilities in all four skills.

Secondly, you need to conduct a needs analysis, either privately or publicly. You can read more about this process, but bear in mind that a public needs analysis can also serve to make everyone in the class aware of each other’s interests and thus of the rationale for including certain topics, language points, or skills work in the course syllabus.

Finally, use whatever resources you have to identify students with specific learning differences or traumas/triggers. This information may be disclosed at registration, self-disclosed (perhaps at interview) or in a private needs analysis, or tentatively identified through your own observations. Obviously, this information is private, between you and the student (and their parents, if they are under 18).

Classroom activities to build rapport at the start of a course

These rapport-building activities aim to generate information in such a way that students feel well-supported.

In a first lesson, the top priority is to make sure you know everybody’s preferred names and how to pronounce them. I’ve always found it helpful to have small desktop cards with this information on display – at least for a couple of sessions. Why not ask the students to make these themselves, or at least to personalize them? The back of the card could have some classroom language phrases to help prompt students, and there’s also the option of including this useful functional language as an introductory lesson – note that this generates a lot of information about student performance in areas like listening (including following instructions), speaking (including pronunciation) and studentship (including note-taking), facility with vocabulary, grammar and functional language. It can also serve as an introduction to pair and group work and to questioning and correction techniques, and, of course, builds confidence for students to take an active part in lessons.

Rapport thrives on praise

Teachers must remember that students are putting themselves on the line every time they come to class. Every effort carries a risk of failure, and not everyone is robust enough to bounce back easily when this occurs. Praise is the magic ingredient here – individualized, sincere and specific. Even when things have gone a bit wrong, find something that went well. It may be that you’re praising eff ort (“Good try, Haruka, I like that idea, but it isn’t what I’m looking for right now.”) or scaffolding achievement (“That’s a pretty good sentence, Juan, the verb tense is correct. But think again about the subject – should it be singular or plural?”). It may be delivered in written form (“This essay makes some relevant points. You used a lot of new vocabulary and improved your accuracy with punctuation. Next time, put the information into paragraphs.”). And when you make a mistake, as you inevitably will, model a positive reaction – check the information, put it right and thank the person who pointed it out.

Finally, make plenty of space for laughter and smiles, as they not only reduce stress, but have a positive effect on engagement, learning and recall. Rapport really does serve learning.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/blog/post/building-rapport Acesso em 18/10/2025