Oil

 Crude oil is a naturally-occurring substance found trapped in certain rocks below the earth's crust. It is a dark, sticky liquid which, scientifically speaking, is classed as a hydrocarbon. This means, it is a compound containing only hydrogen and carbon. 

Oil well

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It was also formed more than 300 million years ago. Some scientists say that tiny diatoms is the source of oil. Diatoms are sea creatures the size of a pin head. They do one thing just like plants; they can convert sunlight directly into stored energy.

Crude oil is highly flammable and can be burned to create energy. Crude oil is measured in barrels. When crude oil first came into large-scale commercial use in the United States in the 19th century, it was stored in wooden barrels. One barrel equals 42 US gallons, or 159 litres.

The U.S.'s first commercial oil well was drilled in 1859 near Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin Drake
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Today's oil industry began almost 150 years ago -- in 1859. In those days, an oily fuel for lamps and lubricants was made by melting the fact of whales. But whale oil had become expensive. A company called the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company became interested in digging for natural oil. Oily rocks had been encountered in Pennsylvania by people drilling for salt. At first, this "rock oil" had been used as a medicine, but if enough of it could be found, perhaps it might be a cheaper substitute for whale oil. The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company came up with the idea of drilling for oil. Not everyone was convinced, however. One banker who was asked to lend some of the money for the venture remarked, "Oil coming out of the ground, pumping oil out of the earth as you pump water? Nonsense!" But the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company was convinced that drilling for oil -- rather than digging for it -- was the way to go. They hired a part-time railroad conductor named Edwin L. Drake to go to Titusville, Pennsylvania and see if he couldn't drill for oil. After a year of planning and drilling Drake struck oil. A new industry was born.

Modern-day oil prospecters use sound waves to locate oil. In one technique, (1) a signal is sent into the rock by a vibrator turck, (2) the reflected waves are received by geophones, and (3) the data is transmitted to a laboratory truck.

Oil provides about 40 percent of the energy Americans consume and 97 percent of U.S. transportation fuels.

World Oil Statistics

Source:International Energy Agency

Countries with largest crude oil reserves

(Billion Barrels)

OPEC is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the stability and prosperity of the petroleum market, as enshrined in the OPEC Statute. OPEC Membership is open to any country which is a substantial net exporter of oil and which shares the ideals of the Organization. OPEC has 11 Countries as Members. The OPEC Member Countries (MCs) currently supply more than 40 per cent of the world's oil and they possess about 78 per cent of the world's total proven crude oil reserves.  more info click here

After crude oil is refined into gasoline and other petroleum products, the products must be distributed to consumers. The majority of gasoline is shipped first by pipeline to storage terminals near consuming areas and then loaded into trucks for delivery to individual gas stations. Gasoline and other products are sent through shared pipelines in “batches.” Since these batches are not physically separated in the pipeline, some mixing or “commingling” of products occurs. This is why the quality of the gasoline and other products must be tested as they enter and leave the pipeline to make sure they meet appropriate specifications. Whenever the product fails to meet local, State, or Federal product specifications, it must be removed and trucked back to a refinery for further processing.

After shipment through the pipeline, gasoline is typically held in bulk storage terminals that often service many companies. At these terminals, the gasoline is loaded into tanker trucks destined for various retail gas stations. The tanks in these trucks, which can typically hold up to 10,000 gallons, usually have several compartments, enabling them to transport different grades of gasoline or petroleum products. The truck tank is where the special additive packages of gasoline retailers get blended into the gasoline to differentiate one blend from another. In some areas, ethanol may be “splash blended” in the tanker to meet environmental requirements. When the tanker truck reaches a gas station, the truck operator unloads each grade of gasoline into the appropriate underground tanks at the station.

• 347 A.D. Oil wells are drilled in China up to 800 feet deep using bits attached to bamboo poles.
  

• 1264 Mining of seep oil in medieval Persia witnessed by Marco Polo on his travels through Baku.
  

• 1500s Seep oil collected in the Carpathian Mountains of Poland is used to light street lamps.
  

• 1594 Oil wells are hand dug at Baku, Persia up to 35 meters (115 feet) deep.
  

• 1735 Oil sands are mined and the oil extracted at Pechelbronn field in Alsace, France.
  

• 1815 Oil is produced in United States as an undesirable by-product from brine wells in Pennsylvania.
  

• 1848 First modern oil well is drilled in Asia, on the Aspheron Peninsula north-east of Baku, by Russian engineer F.N. Semyenov.
  

• 1849 Distillation of kerosene from oil by Canadian geologist Dr. Abraham Gesner. Kerosene eventually replaces whale oil as the illuminant of choice and creates a new market for crude oil.
  

• 1850 Oil from hand-dug pits in California at Los Angeles is distilled to produce lamp oil by General Andreas Pico.
  

• 1854 First oil wells in Europe are drilled 30- to 50-meters deep at Bóbrka, Poland by Ignacy Lukasiewicz.
  

• 1857 Michael Dietz invents a kerosene lamp that forces whale oil lamps off the market.
  

• 1858 First oil well in North America is drilled in Ontario, Canada.
  

• 1859 First oil well in United States is drilled 69 feet deep at Titusville, Pennsylvania by Colonel Edwin Drake.

• 1861 First oil well in California is drilled manually in Humboldt County. 

• 1866 Oil is collected from tunnels dug at Sulphur Mountain in Ventura County by the brothers of railroad baron Leland Stanford, the same year that these techniques are applied to the Pechelbronn oil mine inFrance. 

• 1866 First steam-powered rig in California drills an oil well at Ojai, not far from the Sulphur Mountain seeps. 

• 1875 First commercial oil field in California is discovered at Pico Canyon in Los Angeles County. 

• 1878 Electric light bulb invented by Thomas Edison eliminates demand for kerosene, and the oil industry enters a recession. 1885 Gas wells are drilled in Stockton, California for fuel and lighting. 

• 1885 Oil burners on steam engines in the California oil fields, and later on steam locomotives, create new crude oil markets. 

• 1886 Gasoline-powered automobiles introduced in Europe by Karl Benz and Wilhelm Daimler create additional markets for California oil. Prior to the automobile, gasoline was a cheap solvent produced as a byproduct of kerosene distillation. 

• 1888 A steel-hulled tanker sails from Ventura to San Francisco, eleven years after the 1877 sailing of a Russian tanker across the Caspian sea at Baku. 

• 1899 Discovery of Kern River oil field propels Kern County to top oil-producing region in state.