Ending our oil addiction

A few days ago I experienced a speech from Yossie Hollander. He said

I was walking on the beach and saw a magic lamp. I rubbed it and after the genie
came out I asked him for three things; world peace, good health and for my final wish,
can i have all the money and the power in the world? The genie started with gold. Do you
want all the gold in the world? I said but that is only about 8 trillion dollars. But how
about all the bank deposits in the world? then the genie said That is about 14 trillion
dollars. I replied but there is a lot of companies maybe I can own all the companies in
the world as well. The genie said that is about 65 trillion dollars. I said that a very
interesting thing. Maybe I want to own government debt. I really dont but then I asked
him; Is this the most we can own? 102 trillion dollars and the answer is no. Then the
genie kept talking there's one asset that is larger than all the other assets in the world
combined, and that is the value of the world oil reserve, 180 trillion dollars.

That was a huge shock, because the truth is that all the other assets in the world are
lower than oil. Oil is too expensive and is starting to bankrupt us.

The number one consumer of oil in the world is transportation. For example: in China we
have 50 million people moving to the cities. This creates more people using public
transportation, buying cars, more import and export of food and goods. All this requires of
transportation and transportation needs fuel. This high consumption of oil is the main cause of
the oils rising price. The demand for oil more than what the whole world can produce. We are in
trouble.

The U.S. is the country that has produced the most oil in 31 years. Oil demand and GDP
growth go hand in hand. This oil addiction is affecting our economy. How can we stop it?

In the past months we have seen a decrease in oil consumption. This is a result of the
USs energy independence, the production of bio-fuel, and the increasing popularity in 100%
electrics cars. Big industries have open their eyes to the dangers of feeding our oil addiction at
the rate we are. A big amount of ideas for alternate energy sources have been circulating
around for quite a while searching the answer to the question: How to replace oil? The oil
companies in a mean of lowering the price of oil have found more effective ways of extracting it.
But it still is not enough. An automobile company from California claims to have the answer.
They have taken a more drastic approach. This relatively young company has, only 10 years
old, has based their designs in creating a 100% electric cars. And the response from the public
has been surprising.

Petroleum has been used since the ancient times and it is very important in our society,
economy, politics and technology. The rice of its importance is due to the invention of the
combustion engine, advancements in aviation and transportation (boats, cars, motorcycles, etc.)
its use in chemistry, pesticides, synthetic plastics, solvents, kerosene and adhesives. We can
see how the uses for this natural resource evolved and played an important role in history. From
providing building material and lighting, to being used in military strategy and being the cause of
countless deaths thanks to the greed of the different governments.

Early history
The use of petroleum has gone from used to build the walls and towers of the Babylon
4000 years ago to being the primary source of energy and fuel. Archaeologists have found oil

wells where found the river Issus, a tributary of the Euphrates. Ancient Persian tablets indicate
that oil was used in their society, by the upper class, as medicine and lighting.

In 1795 British explorer found a group of hand dug wells owned by an oil extraction
industry based in Yenangyaung. They had hundreds of hand dug wells under production.
Yenangyaung is a city in Magway Region. British captains recorded finding around 520 hand
dug wells surrounding this are. This indigenous wells where owned by 24 families. This oil
industry was handed down from generation to generation in the families. Making it the first
monopoly in the oil business. This rich oil city was in a strategical and tactical important oil
refinery during WWII. Because of its richness in resources the allied forces were forced to blow
up the oil fields and refineries in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of the rapid
advancing Japanese forces. This was product of the Japaneses victory in the Burma campaign
and the battle of Yenangyaung.

Modern history
In 1847 the demand for oil skyrocketed when a Scottish chemist named James
Young invented the process to distill kerosene from petroleum. He discovered a natural
petroleum seepage in the Riddings Colliery at Alfreton , in which he distill a thin oil which is
perfect for oil lamps, at the same time he obtained a thicker oil suitable for lubricating
machinery. With his two discoveries in hand, James set up his own crude oil refinery business
named Young & Meldrum succeeding in the future by creating new ways of refining crude oil, in
which he obtained different types of refined oil. With each inventions he erased the limitation on
which the oil could be used. Slowly developing our addiction to oil.

Thanks to young success in the oil refining business in 1850 he partnered with
Edward William Binney who entered the business under the title of E.W. Binney & Co. In 1851
they became the first official oil-works in the world with their new modern oil refinery. They
extracted oil from their local mine (which are in Bathgate, West Lothian) turbinate, shale, and
bituminous coal, and used it to create naphtha and lubricating oils for machineries. Naphtha is
the term used to refer to the flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture. It is also used in industries
to refer to the gross products such as crude oil and kerosene.

The demand for petroleum for lighting and as a fuel rapidly grew in North
America and in the world when Ignacy Lukasiewicz built his own refinery. This refinery provided
a much cheaper alternative to whale. This oil was used in oil lamps, to make soap and in
margarine. The use of whale oil ceased in 2015, due to most countries banning whaling.

Meanwhile refineries where surging all around the globe. Countries such as
Romania, Poland, and Canada developing refinery industries that provided their countries with
oil. The worlds first small oil refinery was built at Jaslo in Portland, then short after another one
was opened at Ploiesti, Romania. Making Romania the first country in the world to have annual
crude oil output recorded in international statistics: 275 tons of oil for 1857. The Branobel
Company in Azerbaijan (Russia) had taken the lead in oil production by the end of the 19th
century.

Access to oil is, was, and will be a major factor in some military conflicts,
including in World War II where the oil refineries where strategic location and were constantly
getting bombed. Since the German military was suffering from severe blockades during World
War two, capturing the Baku Oilfields was one of the goals of the German invasion of the Soviet

Union, since this field would provide them with a considerable amount of oil supplies. in the 20th
century oil exploration in North America led the US in becoming the leading producer of oil by
the midcentury, as the petroleum production peaked in the 19060s in the US, later on the Saudi
Arabia and the Soviet Union took their place.

Today the demand for oil has only increased. 90% of our vehicular fuel needs are
met by oil. Taking to account that in the world there are 148,000,000 cars, which means that
90% is 133,200,000 vehicles that rely on oil as resource. Petroleum also makes 40% of the
energy consumption in the US. The total energy consumption in the U.S is 98.324, 40% of that
energy consumption is 39.32. Surprisingly petroleum is responsible for only 1% of energy
generation.
This chart shows the consumption of petroleum in the transportation industry:

Petroleums worth portable, as a dense energy source the powers most of the
transportation vehicles and the main source for most industrial chemicals, which makes it one of
the worlds most important commodity. The viability of the oil commodity has a huge
dependency on three main key factors: number of vehicles in the world competing for fuel, the
amount of fuel exported to the world market, and the political stability of oil exporting nations
and ability to defend oil supply lines.i

The top oil producing countries in the world are Saudi Arabia, Russia and the US. 65.2of
the oil reserve is found in the Middle East, coming from 5 Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
UAE, Qatar and Kuwait. Most of the oil found in the world comes from unconventional sources.
Like the oil found in Canada and in Venezuela. The oil found in this countries is found in the
form of bitumen or extra heavy oil.

As I said before oil is too expensive. What makes oil expensive is not the amount that
is available is the cost of the extraction process. Look at this pyramid:

The triangle as two, the top which represents the oil that is cheap to extract and the bottom
which represents the oil that is expensive to extract. AS you can see the oil in the top is few. In
order to get more oil you have to keep drilling deeper. But the deeper you drill the more
expensive the process becomes. This show that the price of the oil does not depend in the
quantity found but in the depth that is found. I you grab one newspaper per month starting in the
2000 you will see how the oil prices slowly increase. Only decreasing during the winter as a
product of the lack of demand. Since the public does not drive during the winter because of the
weather gas station lower the prices in order to attract clients? By looking at this draft you can
see that all our hopes of the oil prices going down are only dreams. ii

Solution:
Scientists and companies around the world have been working in finding a solution to
this problem. Some want to help the economy and the environment, others just want money. But
we have all seen the need of an alternity. This is where electric cars come in. Since the main
consumer of oil is transportation a rational solution to the problem would be finding another
alternative for powering transportation and that is electric cars.

Electric cars have existed for a long time. Car companies have been experimenting with
them for years. This experiments have created amongst the public certain skepticism in the
public. People fill that electric cars are slow, ugly and only driven by nerds and grandmothers.
Which was true until company developed 10 years ago in California called Tesla destroyed this
skepticism. This relatively new company, has been working on a 100% electric car. Their focus
of a company is not to help the environment but to create high end cars powered by electricity. I
asked one of the employees of Tesla, on an interview Why electric cars? Are you going green?
Why electricity? she responded Is not that Tesla does not care about the environment. That is
not our focus. Tesla just sees electricity as a change that is going to happen in the future
because the world needs alternate energy sources and we decided to be the first to make that
change.

Tesla has focused in creating top performing cars, that look and feel like any other car
but is 100% electric. In the beginning they struggled a lot with the skepticism the general public
had about electric cars thanks to the hybrids. As the years passed Teslas models became more
popular and the demand increased. I asked Teslas employee about their marketing strategy
and she said As you can see we have no commercials in the TV or signs in the highway. We
rely on the power of mouth to mouth recommendation. We know that our customers will be

satisfied with our product and satisfaction is contagious. They will talk to their friends about our
cars and slowly the word will spread.

As we can see on this chart Teslas marketing technique has worked:

Their sales have increased during the years. Proving that what better way to destroy skepticism
than letting your product speak by itself and that the public realizes the need for alternate
energy sources.iii

In conclusion almost of Americas oil consumption is for motor vehicles. By switching to

electric cars we will reduce the oil consumption drastically. If we stop looking at alternate energy
sources as a luxury and we start seeing them as a necessity, as a solution for a problem that
has been slowly rising as the years pass, the population of electric cars is going to start growing
at a constant rate. This is something that has been and will be hard to achieve because all the
oil companies have used their money and power to gain connections in the government and

media. This huge advantage that this companies have is what is making it so hard to change
the point of the view people have but only about electric cars but alternate energy sources in
general. Oil is not only very expensive but also is not a renewable source.

There are a lot of issue that need to be addressed concerning oil consumption. Issues
that should have been addressed a long time ago but thanks to our consumptions era we have
let the oil companies grow bigger and stronger through years. Their influence and control is too
strong. The oil industry can be compared to a big tree planted in the middle of a public park in
the center of a small rural town. When the tree was first planted everybody liked the idea of
having something that provided shade and a nice view. Throughout the years all the members
of the small town watered the tree and took good care of it. As the years passed that small rural
town was slowly becoming more urbanized. With construction becoming more common, slowly
those beautiful prairies started to get filled with houses and the area around the park, the center
of the town, slowly got filled with office buildings and companies. As the city center grows and
becomes more technological, the tree falls more out of place. The government decides to cut it
down but the roots are too deep. In order to do it in a safe way, without creating too much
damage to the infrastructure of the city they have to do it slowly and gradually. The same
approach has to be taken when it comes to taking down such a giant as the oil industries. We all
know the world is advancing at such a rate that eventually our own obsessive consumption is
going to bring make them collapse. We should prevent that huge economical breakdown by
having more people make the decision of switch to electric cars, a more healthier and stable
way of transportation.

Bibliography:
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Bob Bruninga The EV won't replace long-ranging gas vehicles but is an ideal solution
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Mary Forgione Quietest road race ever? Croatia hosts electric vehicle rally in May Los
Angeles Times March 24, 2014.
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SATURDAY, SEP 6, 2014 07:00 AM PDT
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scrutiny Los Angeles Times October 13, 2013.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS New Jersey to Allow Sale of Tesla Electric Cars New
York Times MARCH 18, 2015.
Yossie Hollander Ending Our Oil Addiction Ted talks Jul 5, 2012

i THE ASSOCIATED PRESS New Jersey to Allow Sale of Tesla Electric Cars New York Times
MARCH 18, 2015.
ii Bill Vlasic, Tesla Motors Met Its Output Goal, but Showed a 4th-Quarter Loss The New York Times
Feb. 11, 2015. Electronic
iii Lynn Doan and Dan Murtaugh. U.S. Getting Rid of Oil Addiction as Price Plummets in Glut
BLOOMBERG BUSINESS December 10, 2014, 4:00 PM PST.