Wonderful Metamorphosis

Until the beginning of the twentieth century the oil business was really the kerosene business. A little oil was being turned into lubri­cants, and some asphalt was used to surface city streets; but the manufacture of kerosene for lighting lamps was the refiner's main concern. He was hampered, however, by a by-product which nobody wanted and which has a nasty habit of getting into kerosene and blowing people through the roof when they tried to light their lamps. This by-product was called gasoline. It seemed to have only one possi­ble use: druggists sold it in bottles to housewives who wanted to remove grease spots from clothing.

Gasoline's days of unimportance were nearly over. Men like Elwood Haynes and Henry Ford were tinkering with a new kind of engine. Water power and steam had been the only sources of power to run machines. Now these men developed the internal combusion engine. This ran by means of series of explosions which drove a piston down into a cylinder. And what was that was exploding inside the cylinder? Gasoline, that nuisance of the kerosene refinery!

Soo n the gasoline engine was running all kinds of machines. Auto­mobiles, buses, trucks, tractors, boats, pumps, farm machinery, all us­ing gasoline, were opening up possibilities of a whole new life. Now the hard work which men had always performed could be done better and more quickly by machines. For about 25 years after Drake's first well began producing, most of the oil in the United States came from

A turbojet commercial airliner is filled with jet fuel.

Chapter One

The History of Oil

Estimated proved world reserves of oil as of January 1, 1985.

| | OPEC

WORLD TOTAL = 698.7 BILLION BARRELS

Pennsylvania. By 1886, new fields were discovered in Colorado, Kan­sas, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. By 1920 oil fields were devel­oped as far west as California. Every year new strides are being made. While oil fields were being opened all over the United States, geologists in other countries were also busy tracking down petroleum, the black gold. European wells began producing in Germany and Ro­mania, and in Russia jiear the Caspian Sea. Vast new fields were brought in around the Arabian Gulf, in Iraq, Iran, and Kuwait. The sheiks who ruled there were made richer than the fabulous sultans in the '" Thousand and One Nights". In Indonesia lakes of oil were found. In South America, Venezuela produces millions of barrels a year. Can­ada can boast of not only the most northerly oil field but also the world's largest known oil deposit. Today more and more fields are being discovered in all parts of the globe.

Along with the enormous increase in the use of oil has come great expansion of the natural gas market. Natural gas, often found with the oil in an oil pool, is often discovered by itself. The well producing it is called a gas well. Gas pipelines bring it from the field to our great cities, where it is piped direct to industrial plants and to home gas stoves.