American Edwin L. Drake Drills the First Oil Well (1859)

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American Edwin L. Drake Drills the First Oil Well (1859)

Overview

In 1859, Edwin L. ("Colonel") Drake (1819-1880) helped dig the world's first petroleum well. This launched the era of relatively cheap and abundant energy. In a very short time, petroleum was powering the industrial world in the form of internal combustion engines, jet turbines, and many power plants. In the twentieth century, petroleum has furnished raw materials for plastics, roadways, fertilizers, and more. Petroleum has become so important to a country's economic and military power that petroleum extraction and distilling facilities have become prime military assets and targets and, in fact, secure access to petroleum was a major factor in events leading to the Persian Gulf War of 1990 and 1991. Petroleum, however, seems to be a mixed blessing. Of primary concern to most environmentalists is the environmental risk that accompanies all aspects of petroleum extraction, processing, and use, while economists and industrialists are concerned about the leverage that petroleum-producing nations have over national economies. All of this notwithstanding, petroleum continues to be the most important resource on Earth for billions of people, a position it is likely to retain for some time to come.

Background

Petroleum was known to man from prehistoric times in the form of a sticky, black substance that appeared in the occasional seep. It was known to burn, to lubricate, and thought to possibly have some medicinal properties. Kerosene was developed in the mid-nineteenth century to help light lamps, but there was no reliable and abundant supply of petroleum from which to make kerosene, so the price remained relatively high. Europeans began actively extracting petroleum in the vicinity of natural seeps, and, in the 1840s and 1850s, Americans were beginning to do the same. However, manual digging of shafts near oil seeps was of limited utility in many cases.

In 1858, Edwin Drake was offered the job of helping to arrange for property rights to drill for oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania. Accomplishing this, he next began to make plans to drill for oil using technology already well established for water and salt extraction. Although called "Colonel" in correspondence, apparently to impress the local public, Drake was not a military man. Neither was he an engineer, a businessman, or geologist. He was simply in the right place at the right time. Drake struck oil in 1859, launching an oil boom in western Pennsylvania that quickly spread to Ohio, Texas, California, and around the world.

Petroleum was initially used primarily for kerosene, bitumen (for roads), and lubricating oil. When distilled to produce these heavier "fractions," much of the lighter products were discarded or burned as waste. These products included gasoline and natural gas. In part, the lighter fractions were discarded because they were too volatile and too flammable—simply put, they were too dangerous for the day's technologies to make use of. However, with the advent of the gasoline internal combustion engine in the 1880s, this began to change.

Another major step in the utilization of petroleum came in the pre-World War I years when Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, started the process of converting the British Navy from using coal to oil. Other nations followed suit, making access to petroleum a matter of national security for the developed nations of the world. As petroleum became ever more useful and ubiquitous, exploration increased, leading to the discovery and exploitation of major new oil fields and leading to fantastic wealth for nations, corporations, and businessmen involved in its recovery. By the end of World War II, petroleum was firmly ensconced as a resource of prime importance militarily and economically.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the rate of discovery of new petroleum reserves began to slow at the same time that awareness of the environmental impacts of widespread petroleum use began to make themselves felt. Petroleum exploration began to go to greater lengths as the continental shelves, the American far north, and other increasingly remote regions were explored and tapped. At the same time, the petroleum industry found ways to recover a higher percentage of petroleum at existing sites, helping to extend their productive lifespans. And, on the environmental front, some spectacular disasters and accidents led to increasing regulations and engineering standards designed to minimize the potential for future large-scale accidental releases to the environment.

Impact

With the exception of electrical power generation, the increasing utilization of petroleum is arguably the most important and wide-ranging development in recent human history. These impacts are in the following areas: (1) Petroleum has made possible the engines that power virtually all modes of transportation on the land, by sea, and in the skies. (2) Petroleum byproducts include plastics, asphalt, and fertilizers that have sparked revolutions in food production, ground transportation, and the industry of materials. (3) The process of discovering, extracting, processing, and using petroleum has resulted in undeniable environmental concerns.

Petroleum replaced coal and wood as the fuel of choice for vehicles in the early twentieth century. In warships, this was because its use added speed, provided more rapid acceleration, and required less manpower than coal, making ships more effective. Aircraft were unable to truly fly until engines harnessed the high power output made possible by using gasoline as a fuel. Automobiles and most other modes of ground transportation also utilize either gasoline or diesel fuel. This litany of transportation uses of petroleum fractions is intended to show the extent to which modern transportation depends on petroleum. In fact, only a relative handful of vehicles (some nuclear-powered military ships and submarines, rockets, and some experimental automobiles) do not use some sort of petroleum directly for fuel. In turn, these vehicles have opened the world to quick, efficient, and relatively inexpensive transportation. Transportation, in turn, has contributed a great deal to the "shrinking" of the world, allowing, for example, a family in Europe to eat fresh Chilean strawberries in February, to vacation in the United States in the summer, and to send holiday gifts to relatives in Australia.

In addition, petroleum has contributed to the mechanization of agriculture by fueling the tractors and combines that till fields, plant and harvest grain, and transport food around the world. In conjunction with modern fertilizers, mechanized farm equipment has made it possible to feed many more of the world's population than would otherwise be the case. This, in turn, may be contributing to possible crises as the world's population continues to grow and to use ever-increasing amounts of energy.

Fertilizers are one product made from petroleum. Plastics are another. The first plastic, bakelite, was made in 1909 by the inventor Leo Baekeland (1863-1944), and was somewhat of a novelty at first. It was not until the 1960s that plastics became more widely used, and developments in the 1980s and 1990s led to an amazingly wide range of plastics and other polymers with properties that began to match those of metals and other more traditional materials.

The preceding impacts have been largely positive in nature. In the minds of many, the negative impacts resulting from the widespread use of petroleum outweigh these benefits. However, it must be stressed that some of these negative environmental impacts may or may not come to pass; although many vocal critics make claims with a high degree of certainty, the scientific evidence is still ambiguous and is likely to remain ambiguous for years or decades to come. While it is undeniable that man has had a measurable impact on the global environment, the scientific jury is still out as to the magnitude, seriousness, and duration of this impact. That being said, it is still necessary to explore the environmental impacts of petroleum use.

The first impacts were noted soon after Drake's well first began production. Since oil underground is under high pressure from the rocks covering it, it was not uncommon for it to spray out, and many oil regions had oil saturating the ground, streams, and lakes. Even today, with modern technology and techniques, oil extraction requires transportation of large amounts of equipment to remote areas, housing for personnel, and all the facilities necessary to support and entertain tens to hundreds of people for the life of the oil field. Since no technology is perfect, there are occasional leaks and fires that can affect the local ecosystem.

Once extracted, the petroleum must be transported, and this has thus far proved to be the greatest risk. The Exxon Valdez is only the most visible oil tanker accident, and there have been occasional failures of oil pipelines, too. These have resulted in the contamination of areas ranging from a few hundred square meters to thousands of square kilometers. While longterm studies are still underway, it appears as though ecosystems are more resilient than previously thought. In addition, it must be pointed out that petroleum is a natural product that was discovered because it seeps to the Earth's surface (or into the oceans) naturally, so small-scale oil releases are not uniquely a product of industrial society. However, there is no denying that largescale petroleum spills place a stress on the environment. Finally, burning petroleum releases exhaust gases that are known to cause respiratory problems, and it may also have long-term implications for the Earth's climate. While the case for global warming is strong, it is not yet definitive because of normal changes in solar activity, and global temperature is not yet fully understood. The answer to these questions may be better known in the near future.

P. ANDREW KARAM