a stubborn railroad man in Pennsylvania
spent years digging a hole as learing
crowds yelled and ridiculed him he
eventually dug deep enough to silence
his haters and changed the course of
history around the world 168 years later
I'm at the gas station filling up my
tank and something occurs to me why do
we still use gasoline why is no other
fuel source as widely used the nozzle
latch clicked and my tank was full but I
was full of nothing but questions why is
gasoline the fuel of our society I think
this is a question a lot deeper than it
seems
let's get something clear up top
gasoline isn't the be-all end-all there
are other fuel types commonly used like
diesel biodiesel natural gas and Red
Bull
but while the margins are growing gas is
still King on any given day the world
uses around a hundred million barrels of
gasoline that's over four billion
gallons nowadays we turn crude oil into
many different products like gasoline
polyester and polyurethane but many
years ago it was mainly processed to
make kerosene for oil lamps and it's
time before electric lights
manufacturing the lamp fuel was big
business everybody had kerosene lamps
gasoline was just a byproduct of
kerosene production and was used as a
cleaning agent or just simply thrown
away after its first patent in 1853
became the first material to be
chemically extracted on a commercial
scale it isn't exactly easy to get that
black stuff out of the earth it's not
like there's just a hose coming out of a
rock an entire industry had to evolve to
develop oil drilling and purification
techniques process of extracting oil
from the earth we know nowadays was
pioneered by a railroad man hired by a
kerosene company a little more than 150
years ago
Pennsylvania 1858 a conductor an
all-round railroad guy named Edwin Drake
was hired by the Seneca oil company to
investigate suspected oil reserve the
potential oil represented millions of
dollars in kerosene if it
proved fruitful his mission was to
extract oil from any reserves he found
but the problem was nothing like that
had ever been done before he bought a
drill and a steam engine to power the
drill and headed out to oil creek to
start drilling they drilled through
loose gravel and at around 16 feet down
the hole started collapsing other
workers despaired but Drake was like
keep going use some iron pipes and drive
him down there like they were trained
jeez I think this guy is obsessed with
trains and thus conductor pipes were
born used in 10-foot segments the pipes
prevented the hole she was collapsing
and allowed workers to drill deeper than
ever before at 32 feet down they hit
bedrock after that drilling slowed down
significantly
the project started seeming more and
more futile it got so stupid that at one
point people would show up to heckle
Drake and his crew he didn't let it get
to him and nevertheless he persisted and
on August 27th 1859 Drake and his crew
reached a depth of 69 feet he was like
nice and so they all went home and ate
pretzels wise pretzels I mentioned the
next day the drill operator was the
first one to show up on site he looked
down all 69 feet of the crevasse and sod
that sweet crude oil bubbling up in the
hole bingo
despite how long it took Drake to
accomplish his drill his innovative
conductor pipe revolutionized oil
drilling the segmented pipes allow the
steam drill to reach levels that were
previously unimaginable Drake's well
produced 25 barrels of oil a day and by
1872 the whole oil Creek area was
producing fifteen point nine thousand
barrels a day
kerosene production was the priority
until automobile manufacturers started
producing gasoline engines nowadays we
use gas because it's still one of the
cheapest fuel sources to produce a
gallon of gas cost less than a gallon of
milk in the US I use milk as my
universal cost standard Europeans pay a
pretty penny their gas with the
exception of Western Russia who pays
around 273 a gallon the countries that
pay the least for gas are the countries
that have the most access to it might be
cheap but that doesn't mean that gas is
a four
in the US the average daily income is
$170 so a gallon of gas is one point
eight five percent of the daily income
even though Nigerians pay 157 gallon
that's 30 percent of their daily income
people in India get hit the hardest they
pay an average of 477 a gallon which is
77 percent of their daily average income
the cost of producing a barrel of
gasoline around the world is just a
diverse and differs because of different
factors like the availability of crude
oil taxes subsidies ease of transport
and production later so gas is cheap and
makes the zoom zoom and a poom-poom
but it's hard to deny that's changing
our climate at what point do we take
responsibility and faze gasoline out
alternative fuels have been researched
and utilized for as long as engines have
been around diesel is a viable
alternative gas although it is derived
from crude oil of gases it has more
potential energy which requires less of
it to go a greater distance biodiesel is
even better because it doesn't require
crude oils to produce it's made by
chemically reacting lipids or fats with
alcohol which means that anything from
coffee grounds to human flesh can be
used to produce biofuels there are a
couple of downsides to diesel though it
pollutes more than gasoline and because
diesel engines require high amounts of
pressure to perform engines are costly
to produce ethanol has been praised as a
field that will free us from our
gasoline addition pure ethanol engines
don't exist outside of the racetrack so
ethanol is used as an additive to
gasoline cutting gas with ethanol has
advantages over pure gasoline such as
being biodegradable polluting less and
having a better energy balance ethanol
isn't perfect though for what it
corrodes steel making it harder the ship
and it's not super cost-effective and
land that is used to grow corn or
sugarcane for ethanol could be used to
grow food which some people say is more
important than gas the biggest problem
though is that ethanol is a temporary
solution to a much bigger problem if we
want to keep living in the world we
enjoy we're gonna have to find a way to
stop polluting so much alternative fuels
are great but even the best ones still
pollute the only true solutions of free
our selves from our gasoline addictions
to use 100% renewable energy we look at
the issues in the car world that affect
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