AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) – Oil is a global commodity. It also has different chemistries throughout the world, depending on how it is matured, sourced, originated, and stored in the reservoirs below the surface. According to members of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association, oil in the Panhandle is light because it’s low on sulfur which is used for making transportation fuels. “We use that heavy oil to make asphalt,” Carson Buckles, PPROA board member and Carson Buckles Exploration LLC proprietor, said. “A lot of our heavier-end products are in the petrochemical world. The lighter fuels we produce in the U.S. go elsewhere for transportation fuels because they are easier to process and refine.” The Panhandle transports oil and natural gas to the rest of Texas and the United States. Fracking makes the Texas oil and gas industry possible; it may also be harming the state “People have forgotten how much oil and gas has brought wealth to this world, in this particular area of the Texas Panhandle,” Buckles said. “The Texas Hugoton field that extends from Shamrock to Dumas and all the way up to Hugoton, Kansas is 300 miles long and about 30 miles wide. It’s enormous. It’s the largest gas field in the world.” According to PPROA members, natural gas is transported through pipelines from the wellhead. “All the natural gas is piped into gathering pipelines, and then they go to local compression or processing to help take out any of the bad stuff,” Buckles said. “Natural gas lines don’t like oxygen and water because it rusts the pipe, so they take out some of the initial things and send it off to another plant to get turned into either refined products, which is the natural gas that comes to our houses and products, or they take the liquid condensates that come out of the natural gas liquids and they get turned into feedstocks for other chemicals and most go downstate.” PPROA members also said oil is generally picked up by the truck at the wellhead or the lease from the tanks. Texas workers face mounting dangers in the heart of America’s greatest oil boom “The oil is trucked to another location where it’s put in the pipeline and then sent to wherever the pipelines crisscross,” Buckles said. “We have a couple of refineries here in the Panhandle. A lot of the oil goes into the pipeline and it may go to Cushing, Oklahoma to be traded along the pipeline or in the tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma and some of that oil may come back here to the Panhandle to get refined. It’s a very complex deal, but every barrel is treated differently.” According to PPROA members, natural gas stays locally, whereas a lot gets pushed out of the state through the pipeline to other markets. Natural gas usually goes to Oklahoma or toward the Midwest. To learn more about transporting energy and fracking in the Texas Panhandle, click here. ...read more read less