The dark, thick ooze we call petroleum has been known since antiquity, but it was only 170 years ago that it showed what it can do. Oil made its debut as fuel for lamps to light the operating room in a hospital in Lviv. Soon, it ignited the passions and the minds of businesspeople, driving the engines of global industries and great wealth. People’s relationship with oil is a history of dependency and euphoria. Will we recover from it?
The indications are contradictory. It’s difficult to conclude whether the era of oil is soon to end, or about to rev up. Or maybe both? One thing is certain: oil remains at the center of events.
In the spring of 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report indicating that if current trends of greenhouse gas emissions continue, the earth will soon warm not by 1.5°C—which scientists see as the threshold, after which the most terrible consequences of global warming will ensue—but by as much as 3°C. So we’re running over a cliff at the speed of a petroleum-fueled jet plane. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said of the IPCC report, “Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.”
We have known for decades that fossil energy resources such as coal, oil and natural gas are key drivers of rising greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Since the 1970s and the landmark Rome Club report, international work on reducing these emissions and shifting to renewable energy sources has been under way. Global decisionmakers know a fast reduction in oil, gas, and coal extraction is essential, as well as stopping new investments in wells and mines. Unfortunately, agreement after agreement is full of generalities. Such as the one from July, in which key participants in sea transportation (responsible for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions) announced that by around 2050 they will try to achieve carbon neutrality—i.e. they will capture as much as they emit. “Try” and “around”: these vague phrases fill climate documents. Declarations multiply, they’re repeated even in the presence of the presidents of countries (such as the Tuvalu archipelago) that will disappear as a result of the melting glaciers and rising ocean levels before the century is out. No dramatic information is enough to shut off the oil tap. On the contrary, the oil highway gets ever wider.
What Beautiful Declarations!
Even U.S. President Joe Biden, recognized as a great advocate of the transition to green energy, and his administration, this year confirmed ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion Willow project, which will drill new oil and gas wells on the North Slope of Alaska. It will be one of the biggest fossil fuel projects in the entire U.S. local residents and environmentalists are protesting. They call the project a “carbon bomb” that will explode in the Arctic. And they ask how this decision squares with the ambitious emissions-reduction goals that the president is forcing through Congress.
Meanwhile, critics from around the world have asked how it’s possible that the COP28 climate conference in December 2023 was held in the United Arab Emirates, a country fueled by petrodollars. What’s more, the summit chair, Sultan Al Jaber is managing director of the state oil company ADNOC. This is the world’s eleventh largest extraction company—and it has plans for intensive growth. Over the next five years it plans to invest $150 million despite the UN’s calls for a halt to new drilling licenses in the UAE.
A conference meant to stop climate change being chaired by one of the culprits of global warming amounts to a mockery, showing how corrupt the ties are between the worlds of business, politics and environmental protection organizations—the people who have the world’s future in their hands.
These great powers are opposed by a handful of rebels. This year’s Wimbledon was disrupted by three activists from Just Stop Oil, an organization that’s pressuring the UK government to stop new wells and extraction. The protest was a symbolic one, consisting in throwing shiny confetti on the court. The match was halted, the confetti was swept up and the perpetrators arrested. Earlier, this same organization had interrupted rugby and cricket matches. Each time the reactions were similar: the players, spectators and tournament organizers expressed distaste and displeasure that the protesters had disrupted their games. And so uninterrupted pleasure is still more important than the real specter of people dying—along with other species. Meeting needs takes precedence. An appeal to refraining from or renouncing them remains a bizarre incident. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decided to issue more than 100 new licenses for oil wells in the North Sea; while announcing the plan he said he remained in agreement with the country’s pledge of zero CO2 emissions by mid-century.
Reports of the activities of Swedish activist Greta Thunberg are also becoming commonplace. Now 20 years old, she is a consistent protester in defense of the climate. This summer she was in court for participating in a blockade of tankers in the port in Malmö. “The climate crisis is already a matter of life and death for countless people,” she wrote during a demonstration in June. Together with members of Ta Tillbaka Framtiden (Reclaim the Future), she blocked ships from leaving the port; some of her co-protesters boarded the tankers and refused to leave. Just a few weeks later, on July 3, the hottest day on Earth since records began was recorded: the average temperature reached 17.1°C. According to scientists from America’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the hottest July in the history of measurements is a result of the combination of the El Niño effect with the consequences of CO2 emissions.
A completely different record was also set this year. The oil company Saudi Aramco announced its highest annual profit in history: $161 million. Never before has any oil company earned so much. The Saudis, who nationalized this concern in the 1980s—thus ending the era of American dominance over the deposits on the Arabian Peninsula—were helped in the achievement of these sky-high revenues by two misfortunes: the war in Ukraine and the world’s growing energy needs. As a result, in just over a year, oil production and prices rose, and the company’s revenue leapt by 46%. The fortune of this single state-owned company grew more than the income of its fellow oil giants BT, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron combined. The Saudi company is today the second most valuable company in the world after Apple. It’s also investing in Poland.
The End is Nigh?
Wael Sawan, CEO of another oil giant, Shell, said in a recent interview with the BBC something totally at odds with the UN secretary-general: “What would be dangerous and irresponsible is actually cutting out the oil and gas production so that the cost of living, as we saw just last year, starts to shoot up again.” He says the average energy user has no alternative. If extraction declines, China remains just as energy-hungry as in recent years and if the winter is cold, many people will be left without power or will drown in debt. That’s because the transition to green energy is happening too slowly, the oil barons repeat in unison. The way the oil companies themselves are putting the brakes on this shift was clearly described back in 2015 by the Canadian journalist and researcher Naomi Klein, in her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. She shows how greenwashing works to absolve oil companies from responsibility for climate devastation and the creation of energy inequality. She demonstrates that pseudo-ecological organizations are sponsored by oil companies to pull the wool over critics’ eyes, corrupt politicians and freeze uncomfortable investigations.
Even if we deem Sawan’s statement to be the height of cynicism, its accuracy is confirmed by the International Energy Agency, which estimates that world demand for oil extraction will reach as much as 2.4 million barrels a day this year. Demand from factories and the globe’s billion residents is rising sharply—for everything from charging smartphones to fuel for cars to electricity for air conditioning and energy-intensive production of products and services. The developing world needs more and more energy.
At the same time, the agency’s experts predict that the oil fever is about to break. They forecast that global demand will top out before the end of this decade, and then will only decline. Already next year extraction should start to contract, despite being driven by the need to make up for pandemic shutdowns and the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile investments in renewable energy are accelerating, and in the next few years they will set a new tone in the global energy world. It is indicated that a definite turn away from oil extraction in 2028 will be determined by the growing popularity of electric cars, the strengthening trend of investing in renewable and atomic energy, the fashion for energy saving and storage, the establishment of private energy networks as well as a variety of energy-saving technologies. So that year may be the beginning of the end of the almost two-century oil boom. Will this prediction come true? There are rational reasons for it, such as the international investments in renewable energy, worth $2 trillion, that are already under way. But like any other addiction treatment, an oil detox will take time. And we don’t have a lot. Can this process be accelerated? We may be helped by knowledge and awareness of how and to what degree we have tied our lives to oil. Because every day we use products that are made from petroleum fractions. We use them even when we don’t know we’re doing so.
Like Blood
Petroleum fractions are used to make aviation fuel, paraffin, and gasoline, as well as lubricants, oils and asphalt. That’s obvious. But they’re also used to make many materials and substances used to produce computers, smartphones, cameras, televisions—the vast majority of electronic devices. We also dress in oil. Acrylic, polyester, nylon: cloth and clothes that are light, long-lasting, windproof and waterproof usually have oil-based components. So do basketballs and soccer balls, luggage, fishing rods, tennis rackets and surfboards. If it weren’t for oil, we wouldn’t have contact lenses or many cosmetics: shampoo, eye shadow or lipstick. The oil industry drives development of medicine and pharmaceuticals: oil products are in medical devices such as syringes, magnetic resonance equipment, artificial heart valves and artificial limbs; they’re also in disposable gloves and surgical masks. Chemical or mineral components derived from oil are also found in medicines themselves; the most widely known are aspirin and benzodiazepines, used to treat anxiety disorders. Oil products are also used to make roofs, furniture, sewer pipes and linoleum floor coverings. Curtains, pillows, dishes and cleaning products. Chewing gum, toothpaste and—to close the loop of dependency on oil—solar panels.
Oil has entered the bloodstream of our civilization, giving us unprecedented opportunities for development and the multiplication of wealth, improving the quality and extending the length of our lives, while simultaneously having a destructive effect on them—and on the fate of the planet. We’re tied to it for better or for worse because it’s become the narcotic that makes it possible to defeat once-unimaginable distances and deadly diseases. It has allowed us to save time and mass produce; it has financed the construction of metropolises in the desert and driven travel into space. Without oil, we—the human race—would not be what we are today. It’s no surprise that even alarming reports can’t convince us to give it up.
And in fact, this story of our time in the embrace of oil is very short. Oil’s victory was caused by a set of circumstances. And the thing about circumstances is that they change.
Oil’s Lucky Star
Known as humanity’s black gold, oil has been with us for millennia. It was most likely formed from the remains of organisms as much as 400 million years ago. Half of the known deposits come from the Mesozoic and the Tertiary, but they were created during every geological era. Though researchers dispute the date of its discovery, we know oil was used already in ancient Assyria and Babylon. It’s mentioned in the Bible: Noah used a tarry substance to seal his ark; tar also appears in the descriptions of the construction of the Tower of Babel. There were attempts to use it in medicine, and around the year 1000, the Arabs were already able to distill it, using it in construction. But this knowledge was forgotten in the Middle Ages, and oil lay between the rocks for the next few centuries, almost unused.
Most researchers believe oil comes from organic material, mainly phytoplankton and zooplankton, deposited in rock structures known as sedimentary basins; fixed in place by mineral salts, temperature change turns them into bitumen, a mixture of hydrocarbons with the addition of oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur. Pressure pushes the bitumen out of the rocks, and the deposits emerge in the gaps from which the oil can’t escape, such as clay rocks or rock salts.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, Russian researchers developed a different hypothesis, that oil is of inorganic origin and is created continually as a product of chemical reactions inside the planet. This theory, rejected for many years, returned at the threshold of the twenty-first century and is now being considered by scientists.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the extraction and processing of oil was taken up almost simultaneously by Americans, Canadians and a Pole, Ignacy Łukasiewicz. Born in 1822 in a poor Galician village, in his youth he worked in a pharmacy, joined the underground and dreamed of an independence movement. In an alum factory on the Przemsza River, he started to earn good money, which allowed him to go to university. When he was thirty years old, with a pharmacist’s degree from the University of Vienna, Łukasiewicz began working in Lviv’s largest pharmacy, the Gold Star. One day, a visitor came to the pharmacy: Abraham Schreiner, the owner of a tavern and a plot of land in Boryslav, near Drohobych. Land from which a dark, oily liquid was seeping out. He was looking for someone to distill vodka from it.
Łukasiewicz and his colleague Jan Zeh took up the challenge. After heating the oil and adding sulfuric acid and a sodium solution, they noticed that the liquid divided into fractions—from the heavier asphalt that fell to the bottom, to the gasoline that rose to the top. There was no vodka, but for the first time in this part of Europe, there was kerosene. But nobody wanted to buy it; they didn’t know what to do with it. (The first scientist to distill kerosene, in 1840, was Filip Neriusz Walter, working at the time in Paris). So Łukasiewicz invented a market: he used the new fuel for lighting. An acquaintance who was a metalworker helped him build a sturdy lamp with a mirror. In 1853 it lit up first the window of the Lviv pharmacy, and later an operating room: the first operation under kerosene light was an appendectomy. In the following years, Łukasiewicz would set up a company, build a refinery, and begin to supply kerosene to the Austrian state railways, while kerosene lamps would find buyers in many countries. Later, the Polish pharmacists also perfected acid-lye refining, which meant no components of the oil went to waste.
Łukasiewicz attained the status of an oil monopolist in Galicia, becoming the president of the National Oil Association. But because he wasn’t so much a businessman as an activist and idealist, he invested his earnings in social action; he created an early form of social and pension insurance for his employees and gave away a large portion of his earnings, earning the sobriquet Father Ignacy. Łukasiewicz died in 1882 of a sudden pneumonia infection. Before he died he managed to pay off his last debts, leaving behind only a small estate.
Barely a year after Łukasiewicz, an oil refining process was developed by two Americans, Benjamin Stillman and his son, Benjamin Jr. They began producing lamp oil in Pittsburgh under the brand name Rock Oil. In the town of Titusville, oil seeped from the ground, but no one knew how to dig a well, extract the liquid and store it. Edwin Drake, a retired railway conductor, brought in a steam engine—the kind used in train locomotives—and used it to drill into the ground. In 1859 the first ever oil well began operating. While eventually there were many important names in the oil business, it’s Łukasiewicz’s and Drake’s refining and drilling technologies that, with small modifications, are still applied today. Barely three years after the first well was drilled in Pennsylvania, so much oil was being extracted in the U.S. that it cost less than mineral water. It was possible to start exporting to Europe and to begin making big money. And here John D. Rockefeller appears on the scene, the richest American in history.
The Fuel of War and Power
Things moved fast. Through striking secret agreements and underhandedly eliminating its competitors, the Standard Oil company, which Rockefeller set up in 1870, had become a monopolist in extraction (86%) and the sale of oil products (95%) in the United States by 1904. It offered extraction, refining, transport and fuel sales. In 1911, on the basis of the Sherman Antitrust Act, a federal court ordered the behemoth to be broken up into smaller companies. The result? Rockefeller kept his shares in all of the ensuing companies and got even richer, fueling a bull market on Wall Street. During most of his time in business, Rockefeller engaged in unfair practices and blocked out competitors, including in Europe and Russia. Other secret oil alliances typical of cartels were also established later, and on a global scale. The most famous was the so-called Red Line Agreement from 1928, in which—putting nothing in writing—the largest American, British and French companies divided up the oil deposits spread across the Middle East. Long decades would pass before countries like Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia would break free of these invisible bonds and regain control over the wells on their territory.
The proceedings initiated by the American government against Rockefeller compared the structures of his companies to a disease that threatened the entire national economy. And Rockefeller, an oil monopolist who was entering other sectors of the economy, (including founding banks) was quickly defined as the founder of the first international concern capable of operating above government regulations, to the detriment of the whole world. That’s how the story of the new commodity got connected with the lust for money. And since then they have been locked in an unbreakable embrace.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the significance of oil was still growing. The internal combustion engine appeared: a device that would soon change the fate of Planet Earth. At the turn of the century, German, French, and American engineers were working on various models, competing with each other and peeking at their rivals’ solutions for fuel types, number of cylinders and ignition methods. In the end, an engine was developed (thanks primarily to Maybach, Daimler and Bosch) that was effective and reliable enough that the steam and electrical engines being tested and developed in parallel dropped out of the race. (We’ll come back to the electric ones).
Although internal combustion engines met with great resistance at the start (they were criticized for emitting stinking exhaust and terrible noise), they turned out to be the most convenient solution. Convenience has driven many decisions throughout history; it remains the leitmotif of the development of products and services in capitalist economies driven by the refining of petroleum. We look for convenience, we choose the things that make life easier—and most of them are driven by oil. At the beginning of the twentieth century, cars, as well as most other machines that accelerated production and transport, were at the center of the global economy. And for them, fuel became the most precious resource on the planet.
The engines were put into cars, and cars became more and more popular thanks to the mass production initiated by Henry Ford. In 1908 the inexpensive Model T, rapidly assembled on a line, became the first universally available luxury good. Thanks to the regulation of working time in the factory, higher salaries and growing prosperity, workers aspired to the middle class. As a result of oil-driven mechanization, they had more time and money. That’s how a new economic model was born, as well as a new lifestyle. The more money, the more intensive the production and services it could buy became. The world got a fuel that allowed unlimited acceleration—or so it seemed.
Oil was a significant enabler of the madness of World War I and World War II, bringing armored vehicles, airplanes, and submarines onto the battlefield: all of these war machines ran on petroleum-based fuels. Fascinated by the technical developments, Winston Churchill—long before he became prime minister of the UK—believed that the fate of the world would be determined by a contest involving airplanes, and power would be taken by whoever took control of the oil. He cultivated the British oil monopoly in Persia, and history proved him right: fuel shortages were one of the main reasons for the failures and defeats of the German military in World War II.
The war made the power of oil visible, and it also strained the colonial division of the world. Soon Churchill would see the gradual collapse of his empire, and control over oil deposits, including in the Arab countries, was a specific subject of the dispute; it wasn’t just about national independence, but also about the commodities they had long been deprived of, which would finance their futures.
Cadillacs in the Desert
The most striking example of emancipation from economic inequality is the story of the United Arab Emirates, including the one with the most oil, Abu Dhabi, and the best-known one—financed by oil wealth—Dubai. And also the history of Saudi Arabia, today a synonym for sudden and extreme wealth leading to pathological state structures, and even perverse abuses of power, which is based on ancient clan structures, and supports the death penalty.
The states that today are members of the Emirates and the kingdom of the Sauds were inhabited by Bedouins, people who were exceptionally honorable and exceptionally poor: their traditional dress didn’t even have pockets, because they didn’t have anything to carry in them. Traveling through the desert, their food was dates and camel meat; their possessions were the camels and their hides and, over time, a few pearls gathered from the Persian Gulf. Their culture was an oral one, not a material one. Before the twentieth century only a few brick buildings had been erected on the peninsula. Simple shepherds lived in temporary settlements, and most often were on the move. The appearance of oil and sudden unlimited wealth set their world on its head. Before they built ports and roads, they imported Cadillacs from America, which sank into the sands and broke down after they had traveled less than 100 km. The princes handed out revenues from the nationalized oil resources in cash (packed in cardboard boxes), because there were no banks yet—nor hospitals, schools, or other public services. But despite their lack of education, the Arabs soon learned, and enlightened leaders such as Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi laid out a path of development for the entire society: foreign experts brought knowledge. That allowed the economy to develop fast; they’re now the wealthiest on the planet, drawing in investors from many parts of the globe. They are young, ambitious, and brash economies, because here the money was literally flowing out of the ground, with no effort required. The sudden wealth brought with it no work ethic, or sense of boundaries in investments or spending. For instance, while it’s known that you need to save water even when brushing your teeth, many wealthy Saudis and Emiratis still go on vacation without switching off the air conditioning in any of their homes. While thousands of migrants on the peninsula are building new infrastructure at a breakneck pace, for low pay and in degrading conditions, the descendants of the local families still have guaranteed wealth.
The oil will run out someday; that’s clear to the sheiks. Since the beginning of the century the region’s economies, fueled by petrodollars, have been gradually shifting to other sectors, such as financial services, real estate, tourism and renewable energy. The Saudis want to be leaders in technological innovation, and the new Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the most important person after the king and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, wanted to build Neom, a futuristic megalopolis, a calling card for the state as the source of all innovation. Neom was to hold nine million people who wouldn’t need cars, as all services would be available within a few minutes on foot, and data on the residents would be gathered by the city and used to improve their lives (though critics immediately added that the data would also be useful for total surveillance).
Dreams of cities of the future in the desert should be treated with caution: the loud proclamations of a CO2-free city have already failed to materialize (Abu Dhabi’s Masdar never got out of the experimental phase); nor has the Vertical City near Basra arisen—a metropolis planned by the Iraqis, who were going to finance it with oil earnings. But Dubai did happen: a synonym for a 24/7 economy, luxury services and a tax haven beloved of global investors. There’s no end in sight to the game of multiplying profits, because it has pulled away from its petroleum foundation like a whirlwind rising high above mundane rationality.
Four Wheels, a New Drive
What hasn’t lost its importance, despite the radical international and economic changes, is the car. For the wealthiest residents of the Arabian Peninsula, it’s still a key status symbol. On the Corniche, the seaside promenade in Abu Dhabi, the newest models glide along at sunset, bearing the most expensive license plates in the world; sometimes they cost more than the cars themselves (like phone numbers, they’re sold at charity auctions; in 2023 the number P7 went for $15 million). Interestingly, among this parade of vanities, electric vehicles are quickly making their mark. History, as they say, repeats itself. And actually it’s returning to a track it had long abandoned.
When Henry Ford achieved his great commercial success, mass-producing cars with internal-combustion engines, electric cars were losing the support of investors. But earlier, production had been developing well. In the 1880s, France went mad for races of the new mechanized vehicles: internal-combustion, steam, and electric cars raced each other along ideal roads. The electrics were the favorites; one that gained fame was a car designed by Charles Jeantaud, achieving an unbeatable speed of 100 km per hour. But the weakness of electric cars was their dependence for power on lead batteries weighing as much as a ton, which quickly ran out. For the same reason, an electric railbus developed in New York didn’t take off either. For long distances, even steam-powered cars were better than electric ones; they were fired by coal that the driver threw into a furnace.
As late as 1919, there were still more than forty-thousand electric cars on America’s roads. Elon Musk had a predecessor: at the end of the nineteenth century, Walter C. Baker started to produce exclusive electric cars for the millionaires of the day. President Theodore Roosevelt rode in one of them, and his Torpedo model could reach 120 km per hour. Even Henry Ford’s wife drove an easy-to-use EV produced by Detroit Electric. Its nickel-iron battery was developed by Thomas Edison, and it had a range of 320 km. Despite these engineering successes, the company ceased production in 1939, because once the internal combustion engine powered by cheap oil was perfected, the fate of the EV was sealed for a century.
Automotive fashions remain a barometer of elite trends and moods. What can we read from them today? That EVs are changing from an impractical fantasy and a luxury fad into something that’s worth having, necessary. The best-known car brands are making them, and legislation in many countries is putting an end to the use of internal combustion engines and permitted emissions. The hot fashion for EVs means that in the Persian Gulf, even used cars are sold for more than the price of new models.
That indicates that getting out of our dependency on oil can be done not through a radical change of our system of values or giving up the sumptuous lifestyle driven by this harmful fuel, but by marrying pragmatism with cynicism. By creating the kinds of fascination and snobbery whose side effect will be the use of renewable energy, or devices that are less harmful for the climate.
The revolution in consciousness is happening in parallel with a calculation of profit and loss. We entered our relationship with oil without knowing the consequences, guided by the search for comfort. So it can’t be ruled out that soon the end of oil’s dominance over the world will be determined not so much by a new ethic, but by our well-known desire for convenience and the ability to continue our pleasant life without interruption. Without the mood-ruining specter of burning Australia and drowning Tuvalu. What will finally push the world onto a somewhat healthier path may be a rich sheik, not a Swedish climate activist.
In this scenario we’ll need to ask whether just giving up oil, without limiting our extravagant material needs, will be enough. And how much a change is worth if it’s not accompanied by deep reflection on the role of humankind? In the end, detox itself is only the beginning of addiction treatment. But the history of humanity and nature, as we know from contemporary researchers, has more often been a matter of chance and an uncontrolled series of events than “enlightened” decisions.
The birth of the internal combustion engine was helped by a confluence of ambition and technological achievements. A similar climate is forming today around electric engines, which may prove to be the first domino. If the brief history of oil teaches us anything, it’s that no path of development is laid out once and for all. And so, we have a chance.
Sources for this text include Andrzej Krajewski’s Krew cywilizacji. Biografia ropy naftowej (Blood of civilization: a biography of oil, 2018); Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck’s Blood and Oil (Polish translation by Grzegorz Gajek, 2021); The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904, Wikimedia audio version); Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands (1959); Mohammed Al Fahima’s From Rags to Riches: A story of Abu Dhabi (1963).
