Oil at Your Service​—Maybe!

WELL, there I was, relaxing, a droplet of oil, minding my own business. I had slumbered in peaceful coexistence with millions of my neighbor droplets for countless years. Then, suddenly, we were awakened by the unearthly shriek of steel grating against the walls of our home. This invader of privacy from another world turned out to be a drill bit, and it changed our life-style overnight.

How did I, an insignificant droplet of oil, become so renowned? My story goes back to the early 1960’s. At that time, oil exploration was being conducted on the North Slope of Alaska. Over the years, oil companies spent millions of dollars in search of their elusive target​—a commercial oil field. Finally, their efforts were rewarded. In 1968 the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field was discovered.

My ancestral home was invaded. Can you imagine the dread I felt as I was forced to give up my warm, comfortable home and was pushed up an alien steel pipe to a world I knew nothing about?

My Home Is Not a Pool

Perhaps I should spend a minute describing to you the home I was now leaving. First off, it was located 8,500 feet [2,600 m] below sea level. What privacy! Also, the temperature was about 200 degrees Fahrenheit [90° C.]​—just cozy for our molecular structure. Many describe my home as a pool. This might erroneously imply that I live in a large cavern filled with oil. Not so. My habitat is called an oil pool, but it is actually a sand or gravel bed that has filled up with oil and gas. If this is difficult to grasp, imagine a container filled with sand. You can still add water to it​—up to 25 percent of the container’s volume—​without its running over.

But let me get back to the time I was being whisked away to a new life. I traveled up the pipe so quickly because of the tremendous pressure in the oil reservoir. This was initially measured at over 4,000 pounds per square inch [280 kg/​sq cm] and therefore propelled me upward at high speed.

It was the beginning of a new world for me. Some said that I would be very popular as fuel. Others felt that I would be useful in a thousand other ways​—for households and industry. Where would I end up? I was apprehensive. At least I was not alone. More wells were drilled to get more of my companion droplets out of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields.

Now, this is an expensive and potentially dangerous job. Many times, drilling rigs will penetrate a highly pressurized formation, and if you don’t harness us, we can blow out and cause a tremendous explosion and much damage to the tundra and the wildlife. But I was not guilty of this. I ended up journeying along the pipeline to Valdez, en route to my destiny of serving you.

Incidentally, the pipeline carrying me there is above the tundra to prevent thawing of the permafrost. On the North Slope this permafrost averages 2,000 feet [600 m] in thickness. It is 30 percent frozen water, so if the warm oil flowed underground, the permafrost would thaw, and our pipeline would easily buckle and rupture. Can you imagine the damage? What havoc thousands of gallons of spilled crude oil would wreak on the fragile tundra!

From Valdez my itinerary called for traveling by supertanker to an oil refinery far away. There I am to begin a new life. The gas and water are to be separated to go to another destination. ‘Gas,’ you say? ‘I thought we were talking about oil.’ Well, most people do not realize that where I lived, gas is always in the neighborhood. Actually, most of my makeup is gas. As a matter of fact, if they allowed me to be set free as soon as I arrived on the surface of the earth, I would expand more than one hundred times​—what a noise I would make then!

Anyway, at the refinery I am scheduled to undergo a transformation. I am to be broken down into fractions, or parts, a process called fractional distillation. The crude oil is heated to a vapor and allowed to rise through a large tower. This causes different fractions to condense at certain levels and to be drawn off through valves. You might know that almost half of me is to become gasoline, and when that happens, I will be at your service when you drive up to a pump and say, “Fill her up.”

But I could also end up in many other things. We droplets may not look like much at first, but look around your room. That chair may be made of plastics, vinyl, synthetic rubber. That beautiful kitchen table may have an oil-based veneer. Your floor covering may well be a result of feedstock from a chemical plant that thrives on oil products​—a thousand ways to serve you!

No Longer ‘At Your Service’

But for me, none of that is to be. I start my journey from Valdez to a refinery via a supertanker named Exxon Valdez. Shortly after midnight there is a grating of metal against rock​—far more frightening than when the steel bit invaded my home on the North Slope! Soon my holding tank is ripped open on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound. I am gushed out into those waters, along with 11,000,000 gallons [42,000,000 L] of my traveling companions. I have become part of a terrible pollution, part of the biggest oil spill ever in North America!

So I will never help fill your tank at a service station. I will not become those plastic plates on your table, or part of your television set, or your favorite cosmetic cream, or the clothes you wear, or the perfume you use for that tantalizing fragrance. I will never get to present myself to you to be at your service, as I set out to do. No maybe about any of that now!

Instead, I end up polluting Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska. I shared in marring the beauty of hundreds of miles of coastline. I share in the death of thousands of birds and animals. I jeopardize the livelihood of scores of fishermen. Far better for me to have remained a droplet of oil on the North Slope at Prudhoe Bay, relaxing and minding my own business in the cozy warmth of my home 8,500 feet [2,600 m] below sea level.

Oil​—Do We Have Any Alternatives?

OIL. When it is spilled, it coats the sea with a slick black film that smothers and kills much of what it touches. When it is burned, it unleashes fumes that sicken lungs, wither trees, and even help to give our planet a “fever” called the greenhouse effect. Yet, today’s world is deeply dependent on it. We use so much oil, in fact, that some people think we may run out of it before we finish poisoning ourselves with it.

In view of all the problems oil causes, it is no wonder that more people today are asking if we have any choice in fuels besides oil. The automobile is an appropriate focus for this question. The fastest-growing guzzler of the world’s limited oil supply, it is also a champion polluter. Cars belch some 400 million tons of carbon into our beleaguered atmosphere every year. But is oil-based gasoline the only way to run a car?

No. There are other fuels. Scientists are still experimenting with solar-powered cars and electric cars. But unless there is some unforeseen breakthrough, we will not see such vehicles replacing gasoline-powered ones in the near future.

Hydrogen may be a promising auto fuel. Not only would hydrogen pollute less than gasoline but it would not run out soon. It is the most abundant element in the universe. But for now, a practical hydrogen-burning car is only a possibility for the distant future, when technology may catch up with the idea.

Alcohol Fuels

What about the more immediate future? Two types of fuel that are not based on oil are already widely used in cars and trucks: alcohol and natural gas. A pure alcohol called ethanol is distilled from sugarcane. In 1987 ethanol powered over 90 percent of the new cars sold in Brazil, although in recent months that figure has slumped to 69 percent as oil prices have fallen. Ethanol is cleaner than gasoline, and it comes from a replenishable source. We can always grow more sugarcane, or sugar beets, or cassava, or corn, to produce more ethanol.

One problem, though, is the amount of land required to grow ethanol-producing crops. The United States would have to set aside nearly 40 percent of its annual corn harvest to produce enough ethanol to fill just 10 percent of its auto-fuel needs.

Expense is another problem. By one estimate, ethanol-producing crops lose some 30 to 40 percent of their potential energy content while being converted to fuel. With the added expense of the farming and processing, some experts have concluded that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than the ethanol itself provides!

Methanol, an alcohol made from natural gas or coal, is less expensive. While some fuels give only sluggish performance, methanol gives a car more pep. In fact, racing cars often run on methanol because it is less explosive than gasoline. In June 1989, U.S. president George Bush unveiled an alternate fuels proposal calling for 500,000 U.S. cars to be fueled by methanol by 1995. The government claims that its proposal would greatly reduce auto emissions.

But methanol has its own problems. While it gives off less carbon in combustion than petroleum does, it emits another pollutant: formaldehyde, a suspected cancer-causing agent. Also, methanol cars would be harder to start in cold weather.

Natural Gas

Commonly used in domestic heating and cooking, natural gas has marked advantages as an automotive fuel. It is a simple compound​—mostly methane—​and it burns cleanly. It gives off little of the carbon that gasoline does and none of the sooty, particle-laden smoke of diesel fuel. Engines burning such clean fuel need less maintenance. Natural gas is relatively inexpensive, and it is still abundant.

Gas-powered cars are already used in Italy, the Soviet Union, New Zealand, and Canada. But gas is not problem free. To convert a gasoline-burning car into a gas-burning one is expensive. Further, gas (even though compressed) takes up a lot of volume. Several large storage tanks must be installed in the trunk of the car. Even then, the car has a relatively short range and must refuel more frequently.

Refueling brings us to an obstacle common to all alternate fuels. Who would want to buy an alternate-fuel car when it is difficult to find a service station that sells the fuel? On the other hand, why would service stations provide alternate fuels when they have no assurance that people will buy them? So which will come first, the buyers of the fuel or the sellers?

One solution to this dilemma proposes that cars be made to run on two different types of fuel. Already there are cars that run on both natural gas and gasoline, natural gas and diesel, alcohol and gasoline, or varying mixtures of two fuels in one tank. While such dual-fuel cars would be easier to refuel, they might not be as clean-running or as efficient as cars designed to run on a single clean fuel.

A Hidden Oil Reserve

The most immediate way to alleviate our troubles with oil is to use it more efficiently. This would not undo the pollution that oil causes, but it might stave off drastic oil shortages while alternative fuels are developed. One U.S. senator claims that just getting American cars to average 35 miles per gallon [15 km/​L] “would save 660,000 barrels of oil a day by the year 2000. In 30 years, the same time as the expected life of an oil field, that would amount to about 7.8 thousand million barrels. That is far more than the oil industry is likely to find in Alaska.”​—The New York Times, April 15, 1989.

Yet, in the United States, where efficiency could make the biggest difference, it is most undervalued. U.S. cars travel almost as much as all the other cars of the world combined. Thus, Americans in particular have a vast, untapped oil reserve right under their very noses​—or, rather, under the hoods of cars and trucks—​in the inefficient gas-guzzling engines lurking there.

Is it possible to improve the mileage of cars? Yes. In fact, 35 miles per gallon [15 km/​L] is already fairly common. Cars were made more efficient out of necessity when oil prices rose drastically in the 1970’s. Since then, auto manufacturers have developed cars that get vastly better mileage by using new engine designs and auto bodies made of lighter and stronger materials, and in more aerodynamic shapes. Volvo has developed a car that gets 71 miles per gallon [30 km/​L]. Volkswagen has built a car that gets 85 miles per gallon [36 km/​L]. Renault has a prototype that gets 124 miles per gallon [52 km/​L]!

There is a catch, though. You cannot buy any of these cars; they are not being manufactured. Automakers feel that since the price of oil dropped in 1986, car buyers now are less concerned about fuel efficiency. Peugeot is holding its high-mileage car​—73 miles per gallon [31 km/​L]—​in reserve until oil prices rise, calling it a crisis car.

World Watch magazine notes that most U.S. auto manufacturers don’t even have “crisis cars” waiting in the wings and are not investing in new fuel-saving technologies. Why? World Watch answers: “The consensus seems to be that part of the problem is a preoccupation with quarterly profits and stock prices at the expense of new product development.” Making money now, in other words, matters more than averting a crisis later.

But self-interest is not unique to large corporations. Auto manufacturers make it a point to know what their customers want. They know full well that at present there are no easy answers to mankind’s overdependence on oil. All the alternatives involve trade-offs. A car that does not pollute the air or deplete oil reserves may not have the power, pep, or luxury of the old gas-guzzler, and the fuel may not be as convenient to buy.

What do you think? Are people willing to make this kind of sacrifice in order to stave off a crisis that might not break in its full fury until their children or their children’s children are driving cars? Man’s treatment of this earth, his progeny’s inheritance, seems to trumpet the implicit answer: “Who cares?”

In the final analysis, the problem of meeting our needs for fuel without ruining the planet involves more than finding alternatives to oil. We need alternative attitudes, alternatives to greed and shortsightedness. Man’s inept mismanagement of the planet’s resources, including its fuels, adds to the pile of evidence proving what the Bible long ago said​—that man has neither the right nor the ability to govern himself.​—Jeremiah 10:23.

But for students of the Bible, the story does not end there. The Bible assures us that in the near future, our Creator will take a more active hand in the management of human society. No doubt he will teach us how to use the planet’s wealth of resources without fouling our own nest. For a future with hope, that is more than the best alternative. It is the only alternative.​—Isaiah 11:6-9.

[Blurb on page 15]

We need alternatives to greed and shortsightedness