Petroleum conservation essay in 100 words
Answers
Petroleum, the mineral in the greatest demand in modern industry, supplies half the world’s energy requirements. It provides fuel for heat and lighting, lubricants for machinery and raw materials for a number of manufacturing industries.
In comparison with other fuels, such as coal, it has several advantages: it occurs in great abundance; it is easily obtained; it can be cheaply distributed; and above all, it has the widest range of domestic as well as industrial uses. It is often, therefore, referred to as ‘black gold’.
Despite repeated predictions of its rapid exhaustion, world petroleum production increases every year. Scientists and geo- physicists, using modern prospecting equipment such as the gravimeter, magnetometer and seismograph are discovering more and more new oilfields and are greatly widening the world’s known reserves of oil. Many of the most recently discovered fields are deep beneath the sea-floor.
The word petroleum is derived from the Latin words petra, meaning rock, and oleum, meaning oil. It is so called because it is derived from the rocks, where it flows freely in either liquid or gaseous state. It was first used where seepages occurred at the surface. In ancient times the Chinese, who encountered oil in drilling for salt in brine wells, used it as fuel to evaporate the brine.