This is the third time this week that we will have to fill up the gas tank and it won’t be the last time in the days that follow. That’s pretty annoying considering the miles per gallon that we now get and the cost of the gas it takes to fill up the tank just once. Just like the current price of groceries and other necessities, this situation isn’t going to get better. More and more, suburban American life is looking a whole lot less attractive. Maybe it’s for the best if we start doing a whole lot more walking.
Meanwhile, in thinking about how oil has become one of the most valuable things known to us and the inevitable outcome of diminishing supplies world wide — I think a review of petroleum — the mineral oil of all oils is worthy of discussing.
Oil exists in many forms. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and carbon, and for short, therefore, it’s actually called a form of hydrocarbon.
The term “oil” is applied to a number of substances having the same oily characteristics. Oils, for example, occur in plants and in animals as well as in the earth. Oils from all three sources are important in our lives today.
All of our domestic animals which we use for food produce oil, or fat, which is oil in solid form. Animal fats were the first oils known. It’s important to understand the difference between fat and oil.
What Is The Difference Between Fat And Oil?
Oil is a misleading word, for it is used in two senses. We describe as oil the substances that give plants their smell, such as turpentine, but they are quite different from other oils.
We should always call such oils as turpentine volatile oils, which means flying oils, because they readily fly into the air in the form of a gas.
If we put a drop of such oil on a piece of paper, it soon disappears and leaves no mark. But if we put a drop of any other kind of oil, such as melted butter or salad oil, on a piece of paper, it makes a mark that stays.
These oils are called fixed oils. Fixed oils and fats are really the same thing. When they are solid we call them fats. When they are liquid, we call them oil.
A fixed oil is melted fat, and fat is a fixed oil that has turned solid. Every fat has a melting point, when it becomes so warm that it melts and turns into oil. Every fixed oil also has a freezing point, when it becomes so cool that it solidifies and turns to fat.
It is a very interesting thing about the fat of our bodies in that its melting point is just the temperature of our blood. So the fat of our bodies is always just at a point where it is neither quite solid, nor quite liquid. This is the state of it that suits us best.
If the fat were quite solid, the blood could not easily help itself to the fat as is needed. If it were quite liquid, it would not stay in one place. Certainly, something to contemplate.
Other Oils
For just over one hundred years, the supply of vegetable oils has been greatly increased. The olive, the coconut, and even the humble cottonseed are the chief sources, though we get oil from many other plants and trees. There are hundreds of uses for these oils.
Oil That Is Petroleum
Here, however, I’m not talking about the many vegetable and animals oils, but about the strange oil which in many places of the world, simply oozes out of the ground. It would surprise many of us to know that technically, this is mineral oil.
Enormous quantities of this kind are oil are now obtained by drilling deep holes in the earth and seabed. This oil from the earth is called petroleum, a word made up of the Latin words for rock (petra) and oil (oleum).
Shockingly, it’s only since the nineteenth century that it’s importance grew and everywhere on earth a frenzied search is constantly made for fresh supplies as mankind foolishly became dependent upon it.
Since the very beginning, there has been eager competition among the world’s nations seeking to control the great oil fields of the earth. Few understand that even World War II was to some extent a struggle for some of the rich oil reserves. At the beginning of the war, the great oil-owning nations were the United States, Great Britain, Russia and the Netherlands. Germany was poor in oil; therefore Germany planned to capture the oil of Romania and of Russia, as well as the new fields in Iran and Iraq.
In the same way, Japan went after the rich oil fields of what was the Netherlands East Indies and British controlled Burma. Nations go to extreme ends, even to war, to control oil supplies, because oil is so important both in peace and in war as a fuel and lubricant for our cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and tanks, trains, and countless other uses.
Petroleum has been known to mankind since ancient days all around the globe. The first mention of it was in the Old Testament, back when it was simply called “slime.” In the book of Genesis, the Vale of Siddim was called the “slime pits.”
Later, Herodotus talked about the oil pits near Babylon and then again talking about there being an oil spring on the island of Zante (Adriatic Sea). Even Pliny told of oil in Sicily. And long before them it was recorded by ancient Chinese and Japanese writers that such oil was valued.
Of course, I’d like to have been able to ask Marco Polo about the oil of Baku (Caspian Sea), where later there would be great oil wells. He wrote:
“A fountain from which oil springs in great abundance, inasmuch as a hundred shiploads might be taken from it at one time,” and added that “this oil is not good to use with food, but it is good to burn.” OK. Does that mean he sampled it? I only ask that because he went a step further in his description and added that petroleum is a good remedy for mange and noted it was used for camels.
Then there is the fact that oil goes hand in hand with natural gas and how that frequently means spontaneous bursting into flames. The Fire Worshipers in Baku had erected temples and people traveled great distances to visit these “everlasting fires.” So it was also an object of worship, in addition to lighting and cooking. Did Marco Polo also know this?
The Color Of Oil
We’re heard so much in this country about “black gold” when refering to oil and petroleum products, so many people would be surprised to know that such mineral oils are many colors.
Mineral oil is rather thick fluid which varies a good deal in color and in composition. Sometimes it is yellow, green, red, blue, gold, and of course, black. One thing is certain, though regardless of the color — it always has an unpleasant smell.
Early Oil Exploration
Here in the U.S. the early exploration of petroleum oozing out of the ground or floating on the surface of water was something that occurred naturally in many parts of the country. Native Americans sometimes rubbed their bodies with it and said that it made them active, quick, and protected them from enemies.
Early settlers also began to use it. Sometimes they laid blankets on the ground where the oil appeared and then wrung the oil out of the cloth. Sometimes they skimmed it off the surface of water.
The quantity they gained by such methods was small. Then, some enterprising individuals started gathering it at a high price, selling it as:
Seneca Oil
Indian Oil
Redman Oil
These were folk remedies for cures for a number of illnesses, but mostly to cure rheumatism. Soon on average, Americans used a pint a year of such cures.
Discoveries
In 1806, a discovery was made by some men boring wells in Western Virginia, because they were also getting petroleum along with the brine water. This caused a great deal of trouble there and at other places, with no one seeing anything but this being a nuisance, and not a good thing — as no one had given a thought to the fact that petroleum was good for much of anything but a medicinal ointment.
Forty years later, Dr. Abraham Gesner in Nova Scotia figured out how to obtain oil from coal, and with his discovery of the value of kerosene, the value of such “mineral oils” which change the world we all live in.
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