The Oil Industry

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28984, 27 August 1959, Page 12

The Oil Industry

The oil industry celebrates its centenary today. When the first oil well came into production at Titusville, Pennsylvania, on August 27, 1859, no-one could know that the world had gained a great new source of energy. Indeed, the drillers of the first well were looking not for energy but for illumination, hoping io find oil for their lamps of the day, with a side thought, perhaps, for axle grease. But they took what was the first significant step towards an industry that supplies the world now with more than half its energy. Neither the motor-car nor the aeroplane would have been practicable without oil as a fuel and a lubricant The partnership of oil and the internal combustion engine has been the most important event of the last hundred years. To think of a society without motor transport is to appreciate how profoundly oil has influenced the development of our civilisation.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about oil is the way it is taken for granted. Everyone expects it to be available, except when there is some clearly-seen reason (such as wars or the Suez episode) why it should not be. This confidence is probably the best compliment the public could pay to the oil industry on its centenary. The oil industry has, very largely from its own financial resources, responded successfully to the everincreasing demands society has

put upon it. The industry’s task can be measured by the rate • production has been increased to meet the demand. After taking 90 years from the drilling of Drake’s well to reach 500,000,000 tons a year, world production took huge yearly leaps after 1949, until in 1958 it exceeded 900.000,000 tons. The industry is required not only to search for and produce oil but to refine, transport and market it To get each ton of daily production to the markets involves a capital expenditure of about £35,000. This is an occasion when the public should reflect for a moment on the magnificent planning and management that enable the oil industry to meet the community’s needs.

It is a mature oil industry that enters upon its second hundred years; yet it is an industry always ready for innovations, as its comparatively recent interest in petrochemicals

shows. The future may bring changes as far-reaching as the past Chemists may yet do even more dramatic things with off. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that before another 100 years pass, chemists will have found some means to hasten the leisurely processes of nature, which has taken hundreds of millions of years to transform marine deposits into the oil we are using today. It is hard to believe that even the first 100 years of the nuclear age will bring about a greater transformation than civilisation has seen in the century since the Titusville pioneers.