Q 01/05

Petroleum formed mainly from the buried remains of which organisms, cooked by heat and pressure?

A) Zooplankton and algae

B) Dinosaurs and reptiles

C) Ferns and giant trees

D) Corals and shellfish

Answer · why

A) Zooplankton and algae

Zooplankton and algae, not dinosaurs, are the raw material of oil. Their remains settled on ancient seabeds and were buried under sediment before heat...

Q 02/05

An oil barrel, a standard firmly established by 1872, holds exactly how many US gallons?

A) 42

B) 48

C) 55

D) 60

Answer · why

A) 42

42 US gallons, about 159 litres, is the oil barrel, though no physical barrel of that size is used to ship crude today. The 55-gallon steel drum peopl...

Q 03/05

Which smelly additive was put in natural gas after the 1937 New London school explosion in Texas?

A) Ammonia

B) Chlorine

C) Mercaptan

D) Carbon monoxide

Answer · why

C) Mercaptan

Mercaptan, an odorous compound also called thiol, was added to natural gas within weeks of the blast. Odourless gas had leaked under the school unnoti...

Q 04/05

What happened to the price of WTI crude for May delivery on 20 April 2020, for the first time ever?

A) It turned negative

B) It doubled in a day

C) It hit $200 a barrel

D) Trading was suspended

Answer · why

A) It turned negative

It turned negative, settling near minus $37 a barrel, because the main US storage hub was nearly full and nobody wanted to take delivery. Demand had c...

Q 05/05

Seawise Giant, at 458 metres the longest self-propelled ship ever built, was what kind of vessel?

A) A container ship

B) An oil supertanker

C) An aircraft carrier

D) A cruise liner

Answer · why

B) An oil supertanker

An oil supertanker, Seawise Giant was longer than the Petronas Towers are tall and too deep-laden to use the Suez or Panama canals or the English Chan...