how has the refining of petroleum impacted the economy of many nations ?
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Answer:
Petroleum is one of the main sources of energy in the World. Petroleum and its by-products are used to fuel various forms of transportation, industry and domestic electricity use. Petroleum is also used to manufacture plastics which provides products essential for daily life. Also, petroleum has helped create many products like cosmetics, tyres (rubber) pesticides etc. Over the years there have been increased concerns over the environmental effects of the petroleum industry. The environmental impacts of petroleum are mainly negative. This is due to the toxicity of petroleum which contributes to air pollution, acid rain, and various illnesses in humans. Petroleum also fuels climate change, due to the increased greenhouse gas emissions in its extraction, refinement, transport and consumption phases.
Petroleum is the "essential commodity" of at least two sectors of what I will call the global "common economy". They are 1) energy and 2) transportation. Countries above and below the tropics and subtropics need petroleum for energy and heat. Everyone else needs it to transport goods to consumers. Goods imported by cargo container by sea from China, then loaded onto rail, then trucked to local stores, all require desisel fuel or gasoline. A truckload of piullows has a higher unit cost to deliver than does a truck full of breakfast cereal. But a truck load of lead, limited by weight that can be carried on a drive axle, can have a high cost per unit because a small amount constitutes a truckload.
The energy costs are tied to manufacturing prices and employee cost of living wage increases. If it cost more for an employee to heat their home, the wage must increase to sustain the employee or they will change jobs. The energy that a manufacturing process uses will cost more and increase unit price of production. Unit cost of production from cost of living increase to wage earners, manufacturing energy cost, and transportation to market are the main fluctuators in unit item costing. But everything is manufactued and delivered using "supply chains", so the final assembly manufacturer or processors of raw goods or partially sub-assembled goods, it is certain that their supplies of compenents have suffered a cost increase as well to produce and deliver goods to the final manufacturer of goods. So, layer by layer, these costs stack up and add to consumer costs and the increase cost of goods, over along period, can create a need for an economy to print and inflate currency to help absorb these petroleum price spikes. Petroleum is basically a universal currency in itself because oil has to be purchased fom OPEC with US dollars only. Oil is tied to the USD currency alone. This relationship makes it even closer to a currency in an of itself.