US petroleum dependency factor of history

When the Drake Oil Well in Titusville, Pennsylvania began seeping crude oil 150 years ago, humanity allowed itself to become engulfed in the ecology of oil, according to a Penn State environmental historian. Now in the midst of an energy transition, the U.S. and the world need to keep moving forward toward alternative methods of power generation.

In the late 1800s, oil was not a commodity. In fact, crude oil was a product looking for a purpose. While people did distill a little kerosene and use it in place of whale oil in lamps, one of the first commercial products produced was petroleum jelly — Vaseline — patented in 1872 and discovered when it accumulated in the equipment and workers found it softened their hands. It took Henry Ford and the mass production of automobiles to push the industry into complex processes like cracking, fractionation and distillation that now produce the gasoline, kerosene, Jet A, benzene and the myriad other products that derive from crude oil. This also opened up industry to other petroleum-based products including plastics, fabrics, coatings, medications, cosmetics and the entire world of petrochemicals that permeate modern life.


“Together, these uses composed a dependence so pervasive that it remade the ecology of human life,” said Black. “This slow growth of petroleum products over the 20th century led to a centrality in American life that no resource had possessed for humans before. This occurred to the point that in the 21st century petroleum dictates decisions of national security and human security,” he told attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today (Jan. 14) in Chicago.

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