What was petroleum first used for

When the war ended, the United States faced the problem of stabilizing the peace. Over the next forty-five years numerous major crises occurred, in many of which oil played a key role. Europe underwent a coal shortage, the first energy crisis, immediately after the war.

The Marshall Plan , created to solve that and other problems, was hampered by the first Iranian crisis of The United States sought to balance support for the new state of Israel against the pressures of the oil producers, mostly Arab, united in as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries opec. This proved increasingly difficult as the United States became steadily more dependent on imported oil. In the United States the standard of living based on cheap oil continuously rose and the public, accustomed to this way of life, resisted all conservation measures.

Oil should be considered the keystone of the standard of living in the United States and to a large degree its rank as a world power. Part of the energy problem after resulted from the depletion of domestic oil reserves during World War II—around 6 billion barrels. In the Vietnam struggle experts contend the United States supplied about 5 billion barrels of oil, although great quantities of that came from Middle Eastern properties owned by American companies.

After the s, as domestic production declined and demand soared, the oil industry had to import vast quantities from the Middle East and Venezuela. While the United States was blessed with plentiful supplies of oil its growth to the rank of a great power accelerated. Paul H. Wall et al. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the latter half of the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones.

Goods that had once been painstakingly crafted by hand started to be It was the worst oil spill in U. In his farewell address, U. President Dwight D. John D. Born into modest circumstances in upstate New York, he entered the then-fledgling oil business in by investing in a Cleveland, Ohio A secret war-time meeting.

Fear of an oil shortage. An exchange of gifts including a wheelchair and a budding friendship. When Franklin D. Navy destroyer in the Suez Canal, it was the first time a U. On January 10, , an enormous geyser of oil exploded from a drilling site at Spindletop Hill, a mound created by an underground salt deposit located near Beaumont in Jefferson County, southeastern Texas.

Reaching a height of more than feet and producing close to , At p. Edwards stopped his rig suddenly in the middle of Interstate I near Blakeslee, Pennsylvania and picked up his CB radio microphone.

The insurrection he was about to start, using his Child labor, or the use of children as servants and apprentices, has been practiced throughout most of human history, but reached a zenith during the Industrial Revolution. Miserable working conditions including crowded and unclean factories, a lack of safety codes or Socialism describes any political or economic theory that says the community, rather than individuals, should own and manage property and natural resources.

Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution. Obama on the BP Oil Spill. Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the latter half of the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones.

Rockefeller John D. Access to Oil A secret war-time meeting. Spindletop On January 10, , an enormous geyser of oil exploded from a drilling site at Spindletop Hill, a mound created by an underground salt deposit located near Beaumont in Jefferson County, southeastern Texas. Child Labor Child labor, or the use of children as servants and apprentices, has been practiced throughout most of human history, but reached a zenith during the Industrial Revolution.

With the rise of the automobile in the early s and its use of gasoline--a mix of hydrocarbon refined from crude oil--production of petroleum increased dramatically. World oil production today totals 31 billion barrels per year--almost exactly 1, barrels per second! In the U. Next week I'll take a look at current reserves of petroleum as well as the outlook for this fossil fuel in the years and decades ahead.

In addition to this Energy Solutions blog, Alex contributes to the weekly blog BuildingGreen's Product of the Week , which profiles an interesting new green building product each week. You can sign up to receive notices of these blogs by e-mail--enter your e-mail address in the upper right corner of any blog page.

Alex is founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. To keep up with his latest articles and musings, you can sign up for his Twitter feed. Published December 28, Permalink Citation. Our History of Petroleum Use.

To post a comment, you need to register for a BuildingGreen Basic membership free or login to your existing profile. Skip to main content. Log in. E-mail new password. Even as oil prospectors extended the range of productive wells from Pennsylvania through Indiana and into the vast oil fields of Oklahoma and Texas, the inherent inefficiency of the existing refining process was almost threatening to hold back the automotive industry with gasoline shortages.

The problem was solved by a pair of chemical engineers at Standard Oil of Indiana—company vice president William Burton and Robert Humphreys, head of the lab at the Whiting refinery, the world's largest at the time. Burton and Humphreys had tried and failed to extract more gasoline from crude by adding chemical catalysts, but then Burton had an idea and directed Humphreys to add pressure to the standard heating process used in distillation. Under both heat and pressure, it turned out that heavier molecules of kerosene, with up to 16 carbon atoms per molecule, "cracked" into lighter molecules such as those of gasoline, with 4 to 12 carbons per molecule, Thermal cracking, as the process came to be called, doubled the efficiency of refining, yielding 40 percent gasoline.

Burton was issued a patent for the process in , and soon the pumps were keeping pace with the ever-increasing automobile demand. In the next decades other chemical engineers improved the refining process even further. In the s Charles Kettering and Thomas Midgley, who would later develop Freon see Air Conditioning and Refrigeration , discovered that adding a form of lead to gasoline made it burn smoothly, preventing the unwanted detonations that caused engine knocking.

Tetraethyl lead was a standard ingredient of almost all gasolines until the s, when environmental concerns led to the development of efficiently burning gasolines that didn't require lead.

Another major breakthrough was catalytic cracking, the challenge that had escaped Burton and Humphreys. In the s a Frenchman named Eugene Houdry perfected a process using certain silica and alumina-based catalysts that produced even more gasoline through cracking and didn't require high pressure.