Energy

Somewhere in the past the world chose what were thought to be perpetual fossil fuels. At around the time of the Yalta Conference; our USA in particular became dedicated to liquid phase with the application of Wahhabism to Southern Arabia.

The situation is tremendously macroscopic, and, since statistician M. K. Hubbert of Royal Dutch Shell (Persia); known, although the timeline is debated, to be finite and depletable.

Organic fossil carboniferous fuels occur in sedimentary source rock in three phases; gaseous, liquid, and solid. The simple Natural Gas molecule is historically difficult to contain and transport and is often simply burned at the wellsite.

Beneath that in the substrate; liquid phase carboniferous fuels stock is found as crude oil. Liquid phase oil is comprised of various polymers which can be separated into everything from asphalt to diesel, gasoline, and aviation fuel, as well as plastics and waxes. Organic fossils are very similar to organic sugars and have the similar molecular polymer structure of sugars from Glucose to Cellulose except that they have chemically denatured into petrochemicals including the likes of methane, butane, propane, octane and what becomes liquid fuels and asphalts in the substrate …pending refinement.

Before the Kingdom of Saud… Coal was actually very common in places like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt’s Appalachia and liquefaction was the method by which liquid fuels were sourced. Coal, via liquefaction, yields coal oil. Coal oil has the same molecular malleability as crude and can be used to derive similar fuels, chemicals, and plastics. Coal is far more prevalent in seams throughout the world and yet is historically far more time consuming and difficult to access in comparison to liquid phase wells due to the quantity of overburden which must be removed in efforts to access deposits slated to be turned to liquids or burned as aggregate.