What is the importance of crude oil?

Answer 1

THE OIL AGEWe live in the Oil age, which gives us a higher degree of prosperity than has ever before been achieved. Our houses, our schools, universities, hospitals and transport systems allow most of us to live better than any king in previous ages. Most of these achievements are due to the use of machines that consume oil. Present day agriculture uses oil to power tractors, enabling less than 2% of the population to be employed in farming, and frees the rest of us to take up other (often previously unheard of) occupations.

Oil allows us to travel both locally and across the world in a manner and in numbers impossible for previous generations. It brings the world's produce to our doorstep and in addition it heats us in winter and is the raw material for many plastics, medicines, pesticides, paint and clothing.

This oil age is likely to last for the very short period of about 200 years. Last year it was estimated that the world had used 820 billion barrels of oil, that the known reserves of oil (mainly in Middle East countries) were about the same. Because the number of new discoveries is falling year by year in spite of heavy drilling, the amount of oil not yet discovered would be less than 180 billion barrels, this totals a trillion barrels - about 40 years worth at present consumption rates.