The digital display numbers on the gasoline pump began a frantic
scroll as fuel shot through the hose and into the tank of my Mazda
pickup.
Like many other Americans, I stop at a gasoline station at least
once a week. And like most Americans, I hardly think about it
whenever I pull the nozzle lever to start the fill-up flow of that
precious fuel.
The digital display numbers on the gasoline pump began a frantic scroll as fuel shot through the hose and into the tank of my Mazda pickup.
Like many other Americans, I stop at a gasoline station at least once a week. And like most Americans, I hardly think about it whenever I pull the nozzle lever to start the fill-up flow of that precious fuel.
It’s just an ordinary chore that hardly means anything for most people. Except, in reality, it means the world.
Standing there idly at the Gas and Shop station in Morgan Hill as the fuel continued streaming into my truck, I watched the cars streaming along East Dunne Avenue and Highway 101. My mind wandered down philosophical byways of its own. What’s the story behind this precious crude our modern society craves so much? What journey did this odorous, flammable liquid follow to find its way into my Mazda?
Hypnotized by the numbers tumbling on the pump display, I imagined myself standing on a sea shore on a humid afternoon 300 million years in Earth’s past. Ferns, club mosses and horsetails spread across a swamp around me as the orange ball of Sun descends far along the western horizon.
I sniff the stench of marine bacteria in their bed of muck along the coast. One-celled plants and animals die and drop to the sea floor. Silt and sand cover the organic remains before decomposition can occur.
Epochs pass. The cycle continues.
The sediment grows thick and, driven by its own weight, sinks deep into the sea floor in a kind of achingly slow elevator ride.
High pressure and blistering heat at the lower levels start to work a chemical magic. Slowly over the ages, Mother Nature cooks the hydrocarbons of fossil bacteria and one-celled plants into a crude oil concoction.
Petroleum has a lower density than hard rock, so it naturally flows upward through the porous cracks in the Earth’s crust. Sometimes, it bubbles to the surface, forming a pool on the ground. Most of the time, it rises to a point where it is trapped under a lid of impermeable shale or a dense rock layer.
Humans have been using crude oil for thousands of years. The civilizations of the Babylonians, Persians and Assyrians used petroleum in the form of “pitch” to pave their city streets – kind of a forerunner of our modern asphalt. Sumerians used pitch to seal cracks in their reed-woven boats. Noah, the story in Genesis claims, even used pitch to make his famous Ark seaworthy before the biblical flood.
Throughout the ages, in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America humans have used crude oil for fuel, waterproofing clothes, lubrication and medicinal purposes.
In the mid-19th century, as the Industrial Revolution started, demand for the stinky fossil fuel exploded. People wanted a good-quality but cheap oil for lamps so that they could work and read at night. Whale oil was expensive, and tallow candles produced a bad smell.
A Canadian physician named Abraham Gessner in 1852 invented a distillation process to turn crude oil into a clean-burning, affordable lamp fuel. He called it kerosene. Within three years, chemists found ways to derive other products from the distillation and refining of crude oil.
The rush was on. In 1859 near Oil Creek, Pa., entrepreneur Edwin Drake drilled an oil well 69.5 feet into the ground and discovered a reservoir of petroleum. Others followed his example. Some like John D. Rockefeller and J. Paul Getty made massive fortunes from this “black gold.”
Oil deposits were found all over the world – even on the continent of Antarctica. California sits on pools of oil stretching from Eureka in the north to Los Angeles and San Diego. Even Santa Clara County had oil-producing wells.
In 1872, a Los Gatos settler named D.B. Moody discovered a field of oil in a small canyon – which was named Moody Gulch in his honor. Drilling was done for many years and the oil was sold in San Jose until 1922.
Other local exploration for commercially viable oil deposits have taken place in the Sargent oil field just south of Gilroy as well as the Griswold Canyon area on the road to Panoche in southern San Benito County.
The United States was the world’s major oil producer until the 1960s. That’s when Arab nations, sitting on vast seas of oil, began to gain global power as the world’s hunger for fossil fuels grew insatiable. The Persian Gulf region produces almost 30 percent of all U.S. oil imports. And even with the price of oil reaching record heights lately at over $40 a barrel, Americans still pull their SUVs and other guzzlers into gas stations.
Our modern world is like an addict hooked on a drug. And the craving keeps spreading as burgeoning nations such as China now start to demand fuel for consumer items such as automobiles.
The problem is, as vital an ingredient as oil has become in our modern world, there is a finite supply. No one knows how long the party will last before the lights go out. Some say 50 to 100 years.
So that’s why, in the 21st century, world politics will center on who controls the crude. O-I-L will increasingly spell W-A-R. We saw it with the Gulf War. And we’re seeing it with the conflict with Iraq today. (You don’t think the U.S. government is spending billions of taxpayer dollars simply to get rid of a two-bit dictator?)
The gas nozzle snapped off, bringing my mind’s attention back to the Gas and Shop.
As I squeezed out the last pennies from the pump, I couldn’t help but ponder: Our modern planes, trains, ships and automobiles – not to mention our advanced technology and manufacturing systems – could simply not exist without this liquid energy called oil created by tiny plants and animals long ago in ancient seas.
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’
