When humanity first began to get acquainted with oil, it took this unpleasantly smelling substance, oily and tar-black, for the blood of the earth. Paradoxically, the first guesses of people were justified later. Only the blood of the planet can be called oil - black gold, as this viscous-liquid substance, formed over millions of years in the bowels of the earth, is now called. Especially considering its organic origin.
According to modern science, oil and hydrocarbon gases are of sedimentary-migration origin. This theory is based on the fact that scientists have discovered hydrocarbons in relatively recent marine and freshwater bottom sediments. They were formed from organic remains of plant and animal origin.
Yes, the now precious black gold, along with natural gas, has become a decomposition product of the most ancient terrestrial organisms. I once wondered how the places where the richest oil fields are now located could once look like. When and why did the transformation of organic matter take place? Apparently millions of yearsago, when the current outlines of the continents and seas were just being formed.
Still, no matter how oil fields are formed, a person should be grateful to the planet for such a valuable gift. What kind of applications have they come up with for oil and its derivatives! I sincerely believe that the production of fuel from it is an irrational and wasteful use of an irreplaceable natural resource. After all, it is impossible to name industries where oil derivatives would not be used.
Pharmacology and medicine synthesize more and more new drugs based on hydrocarbons. The chemical industry has made tremendous strides in the past couple of centuries, producing materials and substances from petroleum products that people had not even dared to think of before. The heavy, light, food industry would not be able to meet the needs of an ever-growing humanity without such a resource as black gold.
So much has been done in the modern world from this substance, so much is tied to it, that it becomes scary. After all, it is an exhaustible resource, irreplaceable. And, according to scientists, it will be exhausted pretty soon. For our lifetime, our children, maximum - grandchildren. I don't want to think about what awaits a person when the black gold runs out.
What will countries that build their entire economy on the export of hydrocarbons come to? If oil runs out in Russia, the Arab Emirates, Norway and both Americas… There are forecasts that humanity will be thrown back in its development to the level of the past "pre-oil" centuries. We can close our eyes and believe thatproblems will pass by, but the future will force us to act to survive.
They say that engines capable of using other fuels, up to hydrogen or water, have long been created. But global corporations buy patents from inventors without releasing their ideas to the world in order to further enrich themselves by selling black gold and gasoline produced from it, scooping up deposits that once seemed bottomless.
Very soon, all of humanity will have to suffer because a few families have become rich beyond all bounds. Everyone knows that our world is unfair. Will running out of oil be the beginning of a universal end? Nobody knows.
