Petroleum . . . a Godsend or the Devil's Spawn?

Should the petroleum industry be more careful? Should our elected representatives insist on better safeguards?

Courtesy: petroleumart.com

(HARRISVILLE, N.H.) - The Gulf oil spill is not the first environmental catastrophe to have come about because of the world’s desire for fossil fuels and it probably will not be the last. Let us face it; the world has a tremendous hunger for coal, natural gas, oil and its by-products.

Other than the more obvious uses for petroleum such as gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, and kerosene, more than 6,000 products most of us will use in our life (many every day) are byproducts of the process of distilling petroleum.

It has been estimated that each American consumes petroleum products at the rate of 3 and a half gallons of oil and 250 cubic feet of natural gas per day. One 42-gallon barrel of oil creates 19.4 gallons of gasoline and byproducts of that distillation are used to make over the 6,000 + varied products mentioned above.

The demand and need for petroleum and its byproducts is so great that we (globally) have willingly turned a blind-eye toward some of the higher risk locations and methods of harvesting this resource. We have allowed some of the pristine areas of the world to be irrevocably altered forever. Thousands of miles of pipeline to carry oil and natural gas have been laid transecting previously untouched areas and oil spills have killed countless wild creatures.

The other side of the coin clearly shows that the more positive side of the petroleum industry. Some life-saving antiseptics and antibiotics would not exist today if it were not for petroleum and its byproducts. Hundreds of thousands of human lives have been saved worldwide thanks to the gasoline used to power ambulances and helicopters. All of our lives are a considerably more than just a bit easier today thanks to petroleum and the petroleum industry.

In the United States, energy consumption has increased at a far greater rate than has our ability to produce it. Roughly 50 years ago, our use of energy was the same as our ability to produce it. To give you an idea of how much our consumption has increased, we now use approximately 3 times the amount of energy we did in 1950. Regardless of whether you view this increased consumption as greedy or as the natural result of progress and improved life-styles, the fact is that fossil fuels are severely limited resources and they are not without end.

Should the petroleum industry be more careful? Should our elected representatives insist on better safeguards? Should they restrict where drilling is done to less risky locations? Should each of us be more conscious of our daily usage of this limited resource? Should each of us be supportive of alternate energy sources like hydroelectric dams, wind, geothermal, solar, and nuclear? The answers to all of these questions amount to personal opinions for each of us. I believe that the answer to each of these questions is a resounding YES; but . . . that is just my opinion!