I’ve been working my way through Morgan Downey’s book Oil 101. Here are some of the highlights from the first chapter.
- Mankind has used oil obtained from the ground since at least 4,000BC.
- In China, crude oil was refined and used for lamp and heating oil around 1,000BC.
- The Byzantines used crude oil for flame-throwing weapons around 600AD.
- Until 1859, fuel for lighting came from beeswax candles or whale oil. In fact, it was a scarcity of whales that sparked the modern oil industry.
- Colonel Edwin Drake struck oil on August 27, 1859. His title, Colonel, did not come from the military, rather from the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company.
- In 1867 Nikolaus August Otto of Germany developed the first practical gasoline internal combustion engine.
- The price of a barrel of oil fluctuated from $18 a barrel, $375 in today’s terms, in January of 1860 to $2.60 a barrel, or 10 cents in today’s term, by the end of 1861.
- Due to the expansion and contraction of oil, caused by temperature change, large oil transactions allow for a volume operational tolerance of one to five percent.
- Spindletop, located just south of Beaumont, Texas, produced 20% of daily US production around 1901.
- Whiskey and wine barrels were only briefly used to store and transport oil but still remained the standard to measurement for oil.
- The term independents referred to oil companies not owned by John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller, and his company Standard Oil, held about 90% of the US oil market around 1890.
Of course, there is much more in Chapter 1. You can pick up a copy of this book by clicking on the image below.
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