CPR: The oil and gas industry was born in Pennsylvania on Aug. 27, 1859, when Edwin L. Drake drilled the world’s first commercial oil well. A critic said Drake should leave the oil underground because it was needed to fuel the fires of hell, and to pump it out would protect the wicked from their eternal punishment.
That’s how long some people have believed oil companies are in league with the devil.
Today’s anti-petroleum alarmists warn of the hellish climate that someday will result from civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels. Fortunately they’ve hit on a solution: cash payments. more
Whenever you read the word ‘expert’, think ‘shithead’.
The oil industry might have started in PA, but it was the Spindletop Gusher in Beaumont, Texas that made the oil industry what it is today. Over 100,000 barrels of oil per day gushed from the ground for nine days until they could cap the well. It alone produced more oil than the combined production of the rest of the world combined, many times over. It was truly the beginning of the modern era and the reason internal combustion engines burst onto the scene. I grew up just a short walk from the site of the Spindletop Gusher.
Calling them ‘fossil’ fuels is not even wrong.
They are created in the same mineral sorting fashion all minerals are, except that coal is the only one that meets the strict classification of a mineral. Oil, natural gas, coal gas, etc… fall into the oddball classification along with mercury.
The earth manufactures the stuff at a prodigious rate, exactly how much produced is unknown, but it is being made a lot faster than we are currently using it.
As such, it is a renewable resource (unlike uranium), and belongs in the same position as solar, wind and hydroelectric.
However, all the left cares about is power and money. Nothing else is important.
Damn, and all this time I thought it was Jeb Clampett and his mussleloader.
JohnS,
Yep, it’s amazing the fairy tale of oil being decayed animals is till being pushed. Of course, without it the “Peak oil” BS would have been discarded long ago.
My little liberal sister in law fervently believes flooding is worse because the land sank after we pumped the oil out from under it.
Oil and gas are condensed forms of sunlight.
Johns and I agree for the first time. Decay of more complex, atomically unstable elements creates the carbon and hydrogen that combine in the extreme temps and pressures deep in the earth to form hydrocarbon molecules which perk up to the surface gradually. They are found much deeper than any fossils ever discovered.
The story of how oil, coal, and natural gas ‘changed’ from being abiotic to biotic in the US gives good insight into how government gets used to adjust public perception in order to protect special interests, and that it is far from a new concept.
The oil companies did it to convince the public that it was a scarce commodity. The intent was not evil, they just wanted to protect profits and inhibit competition. Until the Russians spilled the beans as to the type of rock and mineral formations that yielded oil our oil companies profited from the belief in the fiction that finding oil was all about drilling lots holes and hoping to get lucky.
It allowed the US oil companies to dominate worldwide oil exploration as we seemed almost magical in out ability to point at a spot, say drill here, and oil come up.
By the way, the Spindletop Gusher blew in on January 10, 1901 and the Spindletop Oilfield is still producing, today.