For thousands of years, oil was used for lighting purposes. The oil resides in a different type of areas, some of which could be shallow reservoirs, seeps of oil or gas may develop through natural processes and some could be simply found in tar ponds. We have all heard historical stories of eternal flames where oil and gas seeps ignited and burned. Scripts from 500 B.C describe how the Chinese used natural gas to boil water. In 1859 Edwin Drake has drilled the first oil well. This well was located in northwestern Pennsylvania and this event acted as a trigger for the international use of petroleum.
The wells back then were very shallow if compared to today’s wells (less than 50 meters deep), but large quantities of oil were produced. In the image below you can see the Tarr Farm, Oil Creek Valley, the Phillips well on the right produced 4,000 barrels per day in 1861 and the Woodford well on the left produced 1,500 barrels per day in 1862. The wooden tank you can see in the foreground acted as an oil collector and you can also see many different-sized barrels in the background. There was no standard size barrel at that time. Today a barrel is 159 litres. Back then barrels would be sold with statements like “oil is selling at $5 per barrel”.
The “Empire well” was producing 3,000 barrels per day upon its completion in September 1861, flooding the market thus leading to the decrease of oil price to 10 cents. Oil has replaced most other fuels for motorized transport and the automobile industry adopted oil as fuel by the end of the 19th century. Successful aircraft were designed thanks to gasoline engines and ships driven by oil would be 2x faster than coal-powered ships. Gas transportation was a problem and only after World War II, certain welding techniques, pipe rolling, along with other advances allowed the construction of long-distance pipelines which created a gas industry boom.
The petrochemical industry increased its production with new plastic materials at about the same time. Gas production is gaining market share as long as liquefied natural gas is used as an economical way of transporting gas from remote sites. Refining, the process where crude is divided in fractions that could then be blended to precise specs, became necessary in order to improve and standardize products. A century ago a refinery would get 10-40% gasoline; now we can get up to 70% gasoline. Oil and gas are used all over the world and are needed by humans to maintain a comfortable life and probably even survival.
With oil prices at 100$ a barrel or more, more difficult-to-access sources have become economically viable. Such sources are tar sands in Venezuela and Canada, shale oil and gas in the US, coal bed methane and synthetic diesel from natural gas along with biodiesel and bioethanol from biosources have seen a dramatic increase over last ten years. As the consumption of conventional and unconventional resources increases it is essential to use fossil fuels in a sustainable manner due to rising environmental impacts such as global climate changes.