Petroleum, like all fossil fuels, primarily consists of a complex mixture of molecules referred to as hydrocarbons (molecules containing each both and carbon). once it comes out of the ground, it's called crude oil, and it may have numerous gases, solids, and trace minerals mixed in with it. Through refinement processes, a variety of consumer products is made of petroleum. Most of these are fuels: gasoline, jet fuel, diesel oil, kerosene, and propane are common examples. it's additionally used to make asphalt and lubricant grease, and it's a raw material for synthetic chemicals. Chemicals and materials derived from petroleum products include plastics, pesticides, fertilizers, paints, solvents, refrigerants, cleansing fluids, detergents, antifreeze, and artificial fibers.
The modern petroleum industry began in 1859 in Pennsylvania, when a person named Edwin L. Drake created the first oil well, a facility for extracting petroleum from natural deposits. Since then, petroleum has become a valuable commodity in industrialized parts of the globe, and oil companies actively explore for crude oil deposits and build large oil extraction facilities. Many deposits exist within the u. s.. However, around 1960 oil production within the country began to decline as oil within the deposits was being used up and fewer new deposits were being discovered. Demand for crude oil products continued to increase, and as a result the u. s. came to rely more and more on oil imported from different countries. In 2001 the number of crude oil extracted from deposits within the u. s. was estimated to be only one-third of the amount demanded by U.S. consumers. a similar pattern exists in different industrial countries, and some, like Japan and germany, import almost all of the oil they use.
Last date updated on March, 2024