History of Fuel Oil and Home Heating Oil?

History of Oil
When we look back in time the earliest oil well drilling was done in 4th century China. Maybe even earlier. The Chinese burned oil to evaporate brine and produce salt. They no doubt used this extracted oil for lamps and probably, to a certain extent, to heat themselves and their dwellings. By the 10th century, extensive bamboo pipelines connected oil wells with salt springs.

In the Western world, the petroleum industry began near Titusville, Pennsylvania, with Edwin Drake's discovery of oil in 1859. The new oil industry, the fuel oil and home heating oil industry we know today, grew slowly in the 1800s and did not become a real national concern until the early part of the 20th century. The internal combustion engine created a whole new scenario for the oil industry which has provided a demand the refined fuel oil that exists today. Early "local" finds like those in Pennsylvania were quickly exhausted, leading to "oil booms" in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. Other countries had sizable oil reserves and started to develop them at an industrial level.

As late as 1955 coal was still the world's foremost fuel. Oil was taking over the scene and soon arose as the predominant fuel oil to heat homes. Following the 1973 energy crisis and the 1979 energy crisis there was significant media coverage of oil supply levels. This brought to light the concern that oil, and home heating oil which is of particular concern to us here, is a limited resource that we will eventually run out of, at least as an economically viable energy source. At the time, the most common and popular predictions were always quite dire, and when they did not come true, many dismissed all such discussion. The future of petroleum as a fuel remains somewhat controversial.

USA Today news (2004) reports that there is 40 years of petroleum left in the ground. Some would argue that because the total amount of petroleum is finite, the dire predictions of the 1970s have merely been postponed. Others argue that technology will continue to allow for the production of cheap hydrocarbons and that the earth has vast sources of unconventional petroleum reserves in the form of tar sands, bitumen fields, oil shale, and methyl hydrate that will allow for petroleum use to continue for an extremely long period in the future.

Today about 90% of fuel needs are met by oil. Petroleum's worth as a portable, dense energy source powering the vast majority of vehicles and as the base of many industrial chemicals makes it one of the world's most important commodities. Access to it was a major factor in several military conflicts, including World War II and the Gulf War. About 80% of the world's readily accessible reserves are located in the Middle East. The US has less than 3%.