RESOURCES

Who would have thought that the great inventor Thomas Edison would cause the disappearance of oil’s primary market when he invented the light bulb? Before Edison’s invention which created the electric generation industry, Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. On the other hand, there is no need for us, in today’s modern era, in relation to petroleum’s consumption through the distribution of fuel, to hate Edison for causing the said disappearance of the market. In fact, this invention helped denote the significance of petroleum industry and fuel distribution when consumers found out that there is more to petroleum and kerosene use than lighting lamps before the rise of electric light bulbs.¹ Hence, the birth of petroleum’s correlation with the automobile industry.

In the beginning of 20th century, the major significance of oil and fuel distribution has been proved in line with the significant growth of automobile use. There were about 8,000 registered vehicles by that time and about 23 million cars by 1920. ² Even though early models were powered by steam and electricity as well as gasoline, gasoline-powered engines turned out to be the most practical design because battery-powered engines did not have sufficient range. A consistent supply of fuel was put in place with the construction of a network of gasoline filling stations.

Today, technologies available to extract petroleum from the ground are continuously being explored so as to process it into one of the hundreds of everyday needs including automobile industry’s need for fuel distribution and sustainable exchange.³

¹ Petroleum History. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2017, from https://enviroliteracy.org/energy/fossil-fuels/petroleum-history/

² History.com Staff. (2010). Oil Industry. Retrieved October 20, 2017, from http://www.history.com/topics/oil-industry

³ Petroleum Engineering Technology Timeline. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2017, from http://www.spe.org/industry/history/timeline.php