“A century ago, petroleum—what we call oil—was just an obscure commodity; today it is almost as vital to human existence as water,” James Buchan
For years now, climate change alarmists ranging from Greta (“Fridays for Future”) Thunberg to Bill (“Keep it in the Ground”) McKibben have railed against fossil fuels. When criticizing petroleum specifically, they have focused much of their attention on crude oil, particularly its ostensibly pernicious role in powering vehicles, heating and cooling buildings, and generating electricity. In their views, the world would be a much better place if we could just wean ourselves off oil and substitute alternative energy sources for the aforementioned functions.
Defenders of fossil fuels have long put paid to simplistic views about an ‘energy transition,” but much of the population even today is not totally aware of the profound role of oil in areas other than transportation, HVAC, and power production. I was recently reminded of oil’s pervasiveness while reading an article on the environmental costs of “fast fashion’—in a lefty publication, not surprisingly. In the piece, the authors pointed out in passing that synthetics comprise nearly 70 percent of textile production in the world and that nearly “342 million barrels of crude oil…go into the making of synthetic fabrics every year.”
These facts got me digging a bit deeper into the role of crude oil in our lives. For one thing, while a lot of oil is going into the production of synthetics, such is the size and scale of the oil industry—over 32 billion barrels were produced in 2024—textile production accounts for only a little over 1 percent of crude oil output.
However small that percentage figure, synthetic textiles obviously make a real difference to lots of people worldwide, as do other products made from crude oil not going directly into the production of energy. Indeed, because around 18 percent is devoted to uses other than energy, there is a lot of crude available for other uses, and these uses include the production of a vast array of goods and products that, taken together, go a long way toward making the world modern. In 2024, for example, when world output of crude oil was about 32.3 billion barrels, this means that roughly 6 billion barrels went into non-energy uses.
What uses? For starters, there are huge and hugely important product categories derived from crude oil such as plastics, petrochemicals, lubricants, synthetic rubber, fertilizers (urea, ammonia, UAN, etc.), pesticides, asphalt, waxes, pharmaceuticals, paints, and cosmetics. The resins derived from one such category alone—plastics– go into the making of a staggering array of goods and products ranging from packaging/storing materials to auto components (dashboards and bumpers, anyone?). Resins are indispensable to both the construction industry—here, think roofing materials, insulation, and piping—and the furniture industry (particle board), and are essential to the electronics industry and in the production of various and sundry medical devices. Why? Because in comparison to traditional materials, especially metals, they are lightweight, durable, water-resistant, easy to process and customize, and cheap.
In 2024, journalist-energy consultant Ron Stein pointed out that over 6000 products widely used today are based in full or in considerable part on crude oil and natural gas (another fossil fuel). The range of products he mentions merely for illustrative purposes—replicated below—is simply staggering:
“tooth brush, safety goggles, lipstick, airplane, contact lenses, smart phone, laptop computer, rubber gloves, crayons, helmet, washing machine, ski jacket, wind turbine, dentures, fitness tracker, yoga outfit, shampoo, headphones, garden hose, syringe, running shoes, carbon-fiber bicycle, toy blocks, electric piano, kayak, saran wrap, cotton towels, pills, chemical fertilizer and electric car.”
When critics of fossil fuel wax on about transitioning from fossil fuels, they are deluding themselves in two major ways. First, as the French historian of technology Jean-Baptiste Fressoz has recently pointed out, in history there has never been a true energy transition. As “new” energy sources become more prominent, that is to say, they add to rather than replace the energy sources they are intended to replace. Not for nothing is Fressoz’s 2024 book entitled More and More and More .
Secondly, critics of petroleum focus too closely—and crudely, as it were– on the complex mixture of hydrocarbon’s role in energy generation alone, in so doing paying insufficient attention to oil’s role as a key ingredient in and building block for modern life. Not for nothing do carbon critics such as Al Gore, John Kerry, Bill McKibben, and, recently, even Saint Greta, take to the sky in flying machines powered by aviation fuel and constructed largely of carbon composites.
Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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So Carbon Dioxide
“The range of products he mentions merely for illustrative purposes—replicated below—is simply staggering”
Yes. There is no reason why these uses should not continue. The issue is emitting CO2, ie burning. Use as feedstock does not turn the oil into CO2.
Carbon dioxide is a real boogeyman for you isn’t it.
It’s pretty simple no co2 plants die we die
But people like Nick seem to be in a death cult
I also see that they have maybe 150 years of data on a 4.5 billion year old planet
The issue is emitting CO2
Do you exhale, Nick? I’m sure you do.
A human exhales ca. 1 kg of CO2 everyday. That is 8 billion kg of CO2 for all the humans.
No, I expect Nick only inhales.
I exhale. But I do not eat coal or hydrocarbons. Those are what add to the total C in the environment. Eating products of photosynthesis and exhaling just returns C that was taken from the air.
So you see yourself in balance. On a seasonal/yearly basis you can convince yourself that your emissions are recycled.
The Earth is not receiving any additional carbon, (of any serious tonnage), so it must also be recycling.
Why is your assessment, (based on a period of possibly 12 months), any more significant than the process that the Earth is now doing for the recycling of human emissions, which some claim to have a cycle in the order of around 30 years?
Why are you special and acceptable and the use of carbon based fuels are nasty and excluded?
Chances are much of the food you eat are dependent on fertilizers made in part from hydrocarbons. Agriculture is heavily dependent on the use of hydrocarbons for transportation, planting, fertilizing and harvesting.
Nick, as you well know CO2 is literally the gas of life. If there were no atmospheric CO2 all the trees and plants would quickly die and most of humanity would starve to death. Increased CO2 is literally greening the planet. There has been no increase in extreme weather. Compared to a hundred years ago far, far less people are killed by extreme weather. Farm productivity e.g. cereals has been steadily increasing, helped significantly by increased CO2. As we’ve seen, even the polar bears are flourishing. Extinctions peaked around 1900 and have been falling ever since. In the distant past CO2 was far higher than today – and yet life thrived, possibly more so than today.
I’m not aware of a single substantive threat posed by increased CO2. Net zero is the threat, not CO2 or global warming. So, why do you think emitting CO2 – which we all do every time we breathe out – is such a bad thing?
I look forward to Nick’s written answer and hopefully not a load of links to so called studies carried out by climate alarmist producers.
Come on Nick you know you can do it. Explain the CO2 danger to us.
Maybe Nick needs reloading?
“,,, Increased CO2 is literally greening the planet…”
The earth is never in equilibrium but always striving for it. As CO2 increases (be it man-made or other sources) CO2 sinks expand to capture it but don’t necessarily expand fast enough to avoid an atmospheric increase. In terms of control theory it is a classic underdamped response with the time constant being hundreds if not thousands of years. At some point (far in the future), one might expect CO2 production to level out or even decrease. Let’s all hope that at that time the earth does not overshoot too badly. Excess CO2 is not a problem but too little CO2 could be a catastrophe.
The concentration of CO2 in dry air is currently 427 ppmv. One cubic meter of this air has a mass of 1,290 g and contains a mere 0.84 g of CO2. Why is there so little CO2 in the air? Because most of it is absorbed by the oceans and by surface waters on land where it is fixed in the oceans mostly by plants ranging from alga to seaweeds and kelp.
I live in Canada and it is winter. Without fossil fuels we Canadians would freeze to death. Don’t worry about CO2. There is too little of it in the air to have any effect on air temperature, weather and climate. In winter CO2 hibernates.
Wow. You really are just this stupid. Does your mommy swab the spit out of your throat so you don’t choke on it?
Like coal is both a chemical starting material and energy source for manufacturing silicon, natural gas and petroleum are both the chemical starting materials and energy sources for production of the 6000+ products being mentioned. Sure one can substitute poor energy sources for good or tree leaves for toilet paper or pig intestines for condoms, but modern life requires much better.
Material and engineering balance is foundational.
Petroleum saved the whales by giving us kerosene and lubricants.
If Net Zero was achieved, drastically knocking back the ff industries, you can be sure that the price for what small part of that industry stayed in business for all those non burning products would go way up since currently the scale of the industry is so large, it keeps the price for those other products low.
Yes, the price might go up. A small price to pay for all those wonderful uses. But then again, it might not, since there would be a much lower volume to handle.
“the price might go up – but then again it might not”
Aren’t the policies to prosecute “the fight against climate change” so very well thought out!
Just fills one with confidence that such intelligence is being brought to bear to save the planet for us all.
(/sarc)
Coincidentally and entirely unintentionally the Stokes has made a point, albeit the wrong one.
CO2 is of course irrelevant. What is relevant is the cost of replacement of ever higher priced fossil fuel generated petrochemicals with organically sourced ones.
And it really isn’t a major issue.
I can buy PLA from cornstarch cheaper than I can buy ABS from oil.
“Ever higher priced fossil fuel” is indeed an issue. One of the hoped for takeaways from this article is to help us understand how imbedded they are in our ways of lives. Even if we do as we will – put up with ever more polluting extraction practices as we become more desperate – they will be practically gone much sooner than later. The human goal should be transitioning out of the relatively instantaneous human fossil fuel burning era as painlessly as possible.
“Ever higher priced fossil fuel” is indeed an issue. Fossil fuel is cheap and abundant and I think anyone would be unwise in putting much stock in your economic analysis or forecast. Discerning the long range price of FF is well beyond the capabilities of anyone currently on this planet right now. Huge international oil firms hire boatloads of people that one can assume are the most expert, but even they cannot do it.
“Long range” – in an instant, relative to human history – fossil fuels will become more expensive and less available. Then, functionally, gone, for burning. And the wishful thinking that we petroleum engineers have a bottomless bag of tricks to stave this off is just that. Who, in the real world, says otherwise?
Once Venezuela opens up her oil fields, the Saudis will have to convince the rest of OPEC to cut back some more in order to keep the price up where they need it. Oil will have significant downward pressure on price for a while. Long-term, I agree that we should transition electricity generation towards longer-term resources like thorium. However, the cost of nuclear power in the US of A is controlled mostly by government regulations rather than market economics.
V oil production is marginally economic, no matter what. Especially if they try and produce it with best API practices. Oil price is already up and down based mainly on middle east military/political events. US shale and V trends matter almost not at all.
While true, the two are not universally interchangeable. PLA may be great for 3-D printing and some lower-demand products, but it would not serve the strength, temperature, and durability demands that ABS satisfies.
Yeah Nick, the LIA was paradise, so any warming is a Bad Thing?
Tell that to your coreligionists who are trying to shut down every oil well in sight.
Have you paused to consider the cost of products if petroleum were extracted solely for the purpose of chemical feedstock, absent its application for energy production and transportation?
As for your other claim, it is false that other uses do not emit CO₂. For instance, the production of polyurethane foam involves a reaction of isocyanates with water, producing copious carbon dioxide.
Emitting CO2 is only an issue to the brain-washed and the uneducated.
There is no scientific basis to be worried about CO2 emissions.
Mr. Stokes: Assuming one could extract and refine oil without burning anything (maybe bigoilbob can help you there), you imply we should refine out the non-burn parts, then what? “Safely” dispose of the fuel oil and gas, while humans and animals freeze? Environmentalists can be so cold-blooded!
Even as a by product? lol
We can use nuclear energy to reduce our use of fossil fuels for energy, ie, for burning. That will make more fossil feedstock available for the other uses. When nuclear fusion eventually works, we can reduce our use of fossil fuels a lot. The advantage of doing that is that fossil feedstock will then last longer (bear in mind that straightforwatd arithmetic tells us that one day fossil fuels/feedstock will run out unless of course we find a cost-effective way of making them. Straightforward physics tells us that’s a major challenge).
If and as this ‘transition’ progresses, it will likely get more and more expensive and less and less effective. That’s because of the low-hanging fruit syndrome. But also, there may come a point where we dedinitely don’t want to reduce CO2 emissions any more because as atmospheric CO2 concentration declines, so plant growth declines, as does food production. When the Holocene ends the effect could be extreme.
Bottom line: Our descendants may well curse us one day for using up all the fossil fuel, but if we don’t burn enough there may be no descendants.
I would argue that burning gas to generate electricity is truly a sin, because it wastes all the valuable uses of natural gas, to make chemicals, as process heat for those chemical plants, in the production of glass, and it the production of metals. A glass flame is a wondrous tool for heating up large metal ingots and tiny glass bulbs. It should not be used to make electricity when can better be produced from nuclear or hydro. So-called Renewables are just wasting manpower, money, and materials, and all they add to society is a new form of friction.
Refer to the distillation column before asserting this.
There’s a few barrels in the new Sea Lion field off the Falklands. If only we had someone in power with a modicum of common sense.
Those who constantly carp on about fossil fuels, need to try living for just one week without use of products made from oil gas or coal.
They would quickly realise it is not possible.
The world without fossil fuels was limited by natural growth and its consumption. That included timber which was under constant demand from the needs of humanity, housing and heating being prime consumers.
Industrial use of timber in the form of charcoal saw vast tracts of populated lands stripped of forests. That loss of woodlands only came to an end once coal took over the industrial needs along with heating demands.
There is a strange irony or dichotomy present in the habits of the so called Greens. They are happy to fell entire forests in Germany to accommodate wind turbines and access roads needed to support them. They destroy wildlife habitat without a second thought. The ongoing destruction of rare birds and flying creatures on the turbine blades is not a concern to them either?
Open lands are being carpeted with Solar Panels in the UK robbing wildlife of much needed habitat and robbing farmers of valuable farm land needed for growing food.
These eco zealots determined to stop the use of fossil fuels are simply hypocrites at best, anarchists at worst.
They know, or should know, a world without fossil fuel means a total population decrease of over seven billion people.
Maybe that is what they actually want? If it is, then we invite those so determined to lead the way to their personal ambition? We won’t be following you.
Maybe? There is no maybe about it – the cultists have stated it many times as far back as the soviet Club of Rome ‘thing called Maurice Strong.
Sand is a poor substitute for Vaseline.
So use goose grease instead.
It works well if you want to down also.
That might attract hungry dogs. I shudder at the images that thought inspires!
Actually it is: you just have to shop around. And remember those products are not made from oil or gas because it is better it is because it is cheaper.
Back in the 1700s people did not die. They wore cotton, wool, linen, leather. They used wood for smelting, wood tars like creosote and turpentine for solvents. Grain alcohol was (and still is) a great chemical feedstock. Modern petrochemistry can adapt to anything that has hydrocarbons in it. It’s merely a matter of cost.
Don’t get caught up supporting a straw man.
Just because we don’t use other feedstocks doesn’t mean we can’t
Relax, I am aware of the opportunity to eke out a living using natures provisions only.
I spent the first six years of my life living in a wooden cabin with no sanitation no water no electricity and no gas.
Wood was everything as we were living on a wooded small holding. Yes existing is possible without the aid of fossil fuel but the labour intensity and life quality is bad, I know because I have been there.
And they had a life expectancy of 40 instead of 80.
Yes, the good ole days of primitive medicine and short lifespans and shorter food freshness windows.
I can assure you, creosote and tar will not provide the waterproofing that modern urethanes do. Just because a thing can be done, it does not follow that it makes sense to do it.
Sure, kill off a few billion people, and something approaching a reasonable standard of living might be accomplished for more than a few of the remaining ones with inferior materials and energy sources, but the trade-offs are unlikely to be any more attractive.
Modern chemistry can replace some of Ma Nature’s laboratory, but it would require an energy input dwarfing our current supply.
For once, Nick is right: the issue for the Climate Liars is the 100% beneficial, planet-greening CO2.
Oil. Is there truly anything it can’t do? No, no there isn’t.
It can’t put a smile on a doomer’s face.
Oil! is there anything it can do that cant be done by something else?
Apart from providing cheap energy, no·. And it isn’t as cheap as it used to be.
I hate to say it, but your article actually proves the opposite of what you think it does.
First of all, you got one thing right. Petrochemicals absorb only 1% of oil. And they are all pervasive in our lives.
But you drew entirely the wrong conclusion.
They are all pervasive because, compared to the value of the product, synthetic oil based materials are dirt cheap.
Oil could be $500 a barrel – completely uneconomic as fuel – and still be cost effective for e.g. injection moulded plastics.
Likewise biologically generated hydrocarbons, or ones synthesised using nuclear power would simply replace them.
For example:
The point being that whilst we cant generate enough biofuels to replace fossil, we certainly can generate enough bioplastics and other polymers, albeit at a slightly increased cost.
In short, this is a straw man. The game hinges on energy and fuel, not current petrochemicals
No, it is not a straw man. The issue is that all of these products are made from petroleum. Could they be made from something else instead? Maybe, but so what?
There’s a reason why those products are made from petroleum instead of these other things.
That reason is either petroleum is cheaper, or better, or both.
Nobody is forcing manufacturers to use petroleum.
Not entirely. The energy supplied for fermentation, separation and transport are undoubtedly mostly fossil derived as are polymerization processing and catalysts.
I think you are missing the boat on this one. Think $5000 or more per barrel. How many oil wells will be shut down? How many offshore wells will close? The cost of production will sky rocket because the suppliers will all disappear except for a few. Limited supply will naturally result in skyrocketing prices. That plastic you buy today was made using cheap energy and cheap feedstock. Its price won’t remain the same.
And all of those things were processed using solar power and transported by draft animals. Epoxy is certainly not the determining factor in circuit board costs.
If land use is a consideration regarding energy density, we must also consider how much land can be dedicated to growing less concentrated feedstocks now supplied by lower-impact petrochemical extraction. Indded nuclear power could help fill some of the gaps, but as we have witnessed, that is far from simple in practice.
I think more critical is food packaging. The biodegradable ones don’t preserve food nearly as well. Glass, tin etc do but they take a lot of energy to produce, probably a lot more than plastic wrap
The main reason why the small amount of the fossil fuels used to make stuff is so cheap, is that the production of the vast majority of the fuels that are used for things like transportation has created an enormous infrastructure for drilling and transporting the raw material. And although it might be technically possible to use ALL of the crude oil to make transport fuel, it is economically more efficient to use the different fractions for different purposes, as those uses are developed.
Gasoline used to be thrown away as a waste product when John Rockefeller created Standard Oil, because there were no automobiles to use it. He made his fortune selling kerosene to replace whale oil. Asphalt as paving material is a much better use of the bottom of the refining process than creating cracking equipment to turn it into lighter fractions. And now we have jet airplanes that use kerosene instead of gasoline – I suppose we might be able to go back to the whales to provide fuel for jet engines, but I doubt that many people would consider this to be a good iead.
As a petroleum engineer friend of mine once said: Oil is too valuable to be burned up.
Agree! Much better to convert coal into liquid fuel than burn oil. But with much lower demand and the lower price, only low cost oil (extraction) will be economical. Back to the Middle East?!
Well Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar oil field is 175miles long north to south and 19 miles wide and new oil and gas reserves are still being found. It still contains about half of the world’s oil reserves and 40% of gas reserves. And Saudi Arabia has other oilfields too.
A one of a kind field, but maturing like all of the others. Massive water injection to support the production, and even with a beautiful oil cut v oil cum curve, water encroachment started quite awhile ago. The deep gas development is a good idea, because they have the $’s, the geology, the Ben Dover attitude to environmental, safety, health, and the low wage serfs to pull it off. They’ll figure out a way to get the needed fresh water to frac with, and the don’t care about aqueous haz waste disposal. They can use the gas for domestic AC and sell more oil.
But NOT typical of world oil development, which is why we’re on the down side of Hubbert’s curve, even with decreasing world wide responsible drilling and production practices.
To learn more:
https://en.clickpetroleoegas.com.br/the-largest-onshore-oil-field-in-the-world-a-giant-reserve-that-single-handedly-sustained-the-world-economy-for-70-years-btl96/
Ghawar can conceptually supply the world for about 18 years, then it is empty. So it’s big, but it’s not THAT big.
No one in their right minds disputes either that fossil fuels have transformed human society or that they are a fundamental part of our current lives. The problem is, they will be functionally gone within the blink of an eye, relative to human history. Did the referenced book explain how we will continue to be able to economically produce them, ad infinitum?
Everything is relative. Petroleum is the safe bet at the moment, especially over the likes of fusion, etc. As some have mentioned above, coal is a widely viable substitute with greater supply.
Generally, markets are better at figuring out what is economic than government central planning.
Generally the ” fasco” system is the most effective
for the same reason Armys are superior
China is kicking ass with this method.
Same with command capitalist pseudo- democracies in Japan and South Korea that lifted
A centrally planned system with certain freedoms, that can direct future intellectuals to meet expected demand.
Look at the ” free markets” of the 90ies created by the USA ( by Larry Epstein Summers).
They turned the country into a total shithole back then,
Of course it is pointless to talk to Americans about free markets , as markets are only supposed to be free for US corporations.
As soon as it is about stealing other countries ressources, your free markets are instantly being replaced by free looting.
China kicks ass because Americans have the prosperity to buy their stuff, including the glut of solar panels and windmills that cannot be made using solar panels and windmills.
There has been no free market since the Federal Reserve was created, and corporations owe their largesse to complicity with the governments they finance, the same governments that ensure no truly free market can exist.
As for stealing other countries’ resources, I give you the British Empire, the Spanish Conquistadors, the Portuguese and French adventurists, et cetera, et cetera, etc…
Central planning gave us the all that joy and freedom from USSR to the Cambodian killing fields, and the newly forming European and British Caliphate.
Forgive me if I find your analysis endlessly amusing, like a Monty Python skit.
True enough, but until something else can properly replace it, it makes sense to use it now. The future is a sucker’s bet. Introducing poverty now, in the interest of that future, will certainly not improve the outcome. Prosperity now is the only hope for later.
Humans have existed for tens of thousands of years. At the current rate, we have enough fossil fuels for a couple of hundred years. Yes, it indeed is the blink of an eye.
I read Nick Stokes reactions and wonder three things: 1) could Stokes please provide an article to WUWT explaining his beliefs about the documented science and impact of CO2 over the last 50 years, including the probability he has of being correct? 2) if Stokes didn’t have WUWT to read and complain about, what would he do with his life? and 3) if all of us simply didn’t respond to his information lacking comments, would he go away?
We are hoping he will have a St. Paul experience.
I think Nick Stokes often offers cogent comments, and interesting analysis. I don’t have to agree with him to welcome opposing viewpoints that sharpen all of our thinking.
Most plastics, fertilizer, petrochemicals age made from gas or natural gas liquids although a small fraction does come from cracked naphtha (typical European feedstock) or the very light ends of crude oil.
Before we rid the planet’s usage of fossil fuels, we need to identify the REPLACEMENT to support the supply chain of products and transportation fuels now demanded by all the infrastructures that did not exist 200 years ago. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries CANNOT make anything. This reality does not deny the importance of environmental responsibility. Rather, it highlights the need for pragmatic frameworks that recognize material dependency, energy security, and global equity simultaneously. Sustainable progress must be grounded not in ideology, but in realistic transitions that preserve the foundations of modern civilization while improving environmental performance.
Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries can ONLY generate electricity but CANNOT make any of the products or transportation fuels MADE from fossil fuels that are supporting humanity.
story tip
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2167767/uk-airline-plunges-into-liquidation
The electric flying company didn’t really take off.
“As “new” energy sources become more prominent, that is to say, they add to rather than replace the energy sources they are intended to replace.”
Whale oil?
When it is no longer ‘fossil’ hydrocarbon fuel, we shall need to make it.
The substitutes are ALL far worse.
What would WUWT do without Stokes?
If you never had herpes would you miss it?
Use nuclear whenever possible to insure more petroleum for our hot rods.
One problem is, almost universally, the alternative, renewables, is incapable of doing the job of generating electricity. A large misconception exists that because wind and solar can generate electricity then it can replace fossil fuel generation for grid supply, which it can’t.
The obvious alternative is nuclear, which can replace fossil fuels. Not easily as it generally is not a flexible generator nor is it without negatives, but what is? (I know others may well say hydro, but few countries have any suitable sites with the requisite rainfall.)
Instead we have squandered untold amounts of money on a far less effective replacement for the alleged problem of burning fossil fuels.
Politicians have a lot to answer for.
Insulation for wiring. Without those plastics, all the electrical equipment that makes life civilized, would cease to exist. All of the medical equipment that is used, uses wiring that is insulated with plastics. Yes, it might be possible to use vegetable feedstocks, but that would require an enormous amount of additional agriculture to grow that veggie material, or to collect it “from the wild”, neither of which is acceptable to the green blob.
And to make those plastics, you need process heat, which comes from the same feedstock. So, no fossil fuels, no plastics (the latest demon du jour), no medicine, nothing electric at all.