The Oil Crisis

The Oil Crisis – By Anton Muir

Oil questions in general:

1. What it oil?
2. How is oil created?
3. How is oil converted into a power source?
4. When and what was the birth of the oil industry?
5. How has oil helped the growth of economy and the modern life style?

Oil is a black watery substance that is used in most aspects of a modern day life. Oil is used to provide energy such as light, heat, transport and also to operate machinery. In oil there are key gases and other variables that allow oil to be converted into power sources.  Over a period of millions of years, the remains of marine animals and plants fell to the sea floor. They stored in thick layers and eventually were covered by layers of sand and silt. Over time, the high amount of weight of all of these layers compressed the lower layers into sedimentary rock. Bacterial actions, heat, and pressure converted the remains of the animals and plants into oil. After the oil has been taken from oil reserves it is taken to places in which the oil is refined into petrol and other grades of power. This process is done by immense heat and Lessing the purity of the oil so it can be used more.

Here is a diagram showing where oil is found:

In the diagram you can see a large pipe which travels down to the deep equator this pipe then sucks the fossil fuel into the reserve where the large pipe starts. Then the crude oil from the ground goes through a process called thermo chemical conversion. It is then transported to consumers to buy.                                             

The birth of oil industry started in 1859 by a man named Edwin L Drake who was a rail way conductor, Edwin one day a dug a well to help the community due to a drought. But as Edwin got quite deep he struck a black liquid now known as oil. At first Edwin thought the oil to be polluted water but he discovered that is was a thick black liquid that was very warm. This confused people and eventually scientists came and inspected the oil, the scientists discovered that it was a more plentiful alternative to creating power then the mainly used power source coal. The oil ran through many tests one of the main tests created petroleum. The oil industry really started to kick off in the 20th century and wouldn’t be as such a big industry if WW2 hadn’t of occurred. The reason for this is because over $750 million U.S dollars where used for the import and export of oil as a fuel for the WW2 transportation and army vehicles.