Oil. How it affects us

Have you ever stopped to think what life for many would be like without petro­leum and its products?* Oil made from petroleum is used to lubricate¹ motor vehicles, bicycles, strollers,² and other things with moving parts. Oil lessens friction³, thus slowing the breakdown⁴ of machine components. But that is not all. Oil is used to make fuel⁵ for planes, automobiles, and heat­ing systems. A multitude of cosmetics, paints, inks, drugs⁶, fertilizers,⁷ and plastics as well as а myriad⁸ of other items contain petro­leum products. Daily life for many would be drastically⁹ different without oil. Little wonder that according to one source, petroleum and its de­rivatives¹⁰ have “a greater vari­ety of uses than perhaps any other substance in the world.” How do we get oil? Where does it come from? How long has mankind¹¹ used it? Petroleum substances were used by the Babylonians for their kiln-dried¹² bricks, by the Egyptians in the mummifica­tion process, and by other ancient peoples for medicinal purposes.

Who would have imagined that this product would come to be of such importance in today's world? No one can deny that modern industrial civilization depends on petroleum.

The use of oil from petroleum for artificial¹³ lighting was oil's springboard¹⁴ to fame. As early as the 15th century, oil from surface¹⁵ wells was used in lamps in Baku, today's capital of Azerbaijan. In 1650, shallow oil reservoirs were dug in Ro­mania, where oil, in the form of kerosene, was used for lighting. By the mid-19th century, that country and others in Eastern Europe already had a prosperous oil industry.

In the United States, it was mainly the search for a high-quality illuminant¹⁶ in the 1800's that made a group of men direct their efforts toward oil. These men rightly concluded that in order to produce enough kerosene to supply the market, they would have to drill for oil. So in 1859 an oil well was success­fully drilled¹⁷ in Pennsylvania. The oil fever had begun: What hap­pened next?

¹ lubricate - смазывать

² stroller - детская коляска

³ friction – трение

⁴ breakdown - поломка

⁵ fuel – топливо

⁶ drug – лекарство

⁷ fertilizer - удобрение

⁸ myriad - несметное число, мириад

⁹ drastically – коренным образом

¹⁰ derivative - дериват, производное

¹¹ mankind - человечество, человеческий род

¹² kiln-dry - обжигать в печи

¹³ artificial - искусственный

¹⁴ springboard - трамплин

¹⁵ surface - поверхность

¹⁶ illuminant - осветитель­ное средство

¹⁷ to drill – бурить

Найдите в тексте ответы на вопросы:

1. What would life be like without petroleum and its products?

2. Do we use oil in everyday life?

3. Does modern industrial civilization depend on oil?

4. How long has mankind used oil?

5. What are oil and oil products used for?

HOW DO WE GET IT?

In 1859, Edwin L. Drake, a retired railroad conductor, us­ing an old steam engine, drilled a well 22 meters deep to the first crude oil¹ discov­ered near Titusville, Pennsyl­vania, U.S.A. That marked the beginning of the oil era. As oil was discovered in many parts of the world, it caused great economic and political reper­cussions.² It proved to be the high-quality source of arti­ficial light that the world ea­gerly awaited.

Soon, frantic buying of land and drilling of wells was a ma­jor activity in the so-called oil regions of the United States. In those years it was common to hear of people who sud­denly became wealthy and of others who later lost their fortunes. Ironically, Edwin Drake, the man who drilled the first well in Pennsylvania, was one of the latter.

Despite its extraordinary boom, or perhaps because of it, the oil industry in Pennsylvania soon experienced its first drop. Oil fell from $20 a barrel to 10 cents! Overproduction and speculation made prices collapse,³ and some wells rapidly be­came exhausted.⁴ A special reminder of those times is Pithole City, Pennsylvania, which to­day is a ghost town.⁵ It was established, it flour­ished, and it was desert­ed – all within the span of little more than one and a half years. Those ups and downs would become an integral part of oil history.

In 1870, John D. Rockefeller and a few associates incorpo­rated the Standard Oil Compa­ny. This company dominated the kerosene market until competitors appeared, espe­cially in the Russian oil industry. One rival was Marcus Samuel, a founder of what is today known as the Royal Dutch/Shell Group. In addition, as a result of the ingenuity of the Nobel brothers,* a powerful oil enterprise was established in Russia with the oil extracted from fields⁶ in Baku. Those were the beginnings of the history of a series of oil en­terprises. Since then, alliances and organizations have been created to avoid the price and production instability of the early times. One of them is the Organization of Petroleum Ex­porting Countries (OPEC), whose 11 members collectively possess most of the world's proven crude oil reserves.⁷

BARRELS OR TONS? The first Pennsylvania oil companies shipped1 oil in 180-litre wine barrels.2 Eventually only 159 litres of oil was in to allow for spillage3 during shipment. A barrel (159 litres) is still used today for oil commerce. From the beginning, oil for Europe was transported by sea was usually measured by in tons, as is the practice today. ship1 - транспортировать; barrel2 - бочка; spillage3 - утечка

PETROLEUM AND OIL – WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE? Although usually coming from what are called oil wells, oil is in fact petroleum, or crude oil, that issues from below the ground. Petroleum is defined as "a thick, flammable yellow-to-black mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the earth's surface." It "can be separated into fractions including natural gas, gasoline, naphtha,2 kerosene, fuel and lubricating oils, paraffin wax, and asphalt and is used as raw material for a wide variety of deriva­tive products." –The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Lan­guage. _______________________________________________________________ 1flammable – легковоспламеняющийся; 2naphtha - (хим.) - лигроин

¹ crude oil - нефть сырец

² repercussions - по­следствия

³ collapse - обвал

⁴ exhausted - иссякший

⁵ ghost town - город-при­зрак; город, покинутый жителями

⁶ field - (геол.) месторождение

⁷ proven reserves – разведанные запасы

Прочтите текст еще раз и скажите несколько слов на английском языке:

1. the first oil well

2. the oil fever in the USA

3. early oil enterprises in the world