Last Update: July 4, 2015

  1. Fossil Fuel’s gift to the world – modern society, powerful machines, 7+ billion people
  2. How many days of human labor is in a gallon of gasoline?
  3. What’s in Crude Oil? A lotta toxic stuff, Benzene, Tuolene, etc
  4. Health effects of fossil fuel consumption
    1. Health effects of burning Diesel, and the exhaust fumes
    2. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, asthma, from living near diesel exhaust concentrations
  5. Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Resources, Peak Everything
    1. What happens when the power runs out? That is, when Peak Oil really bites us in the butt?
    2. Fracking's false oil-energy boom leading the world to financial collapse?
    3. Peak Oil 101 – Chris Martenson
    4. Peak Oil Reading List
    5. DON’T WORRY, DRIVE ON: Fossil Fools & Fracking Lies
    6. 300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds
    7. U.S. Military rethinking its energy policies; speech by Adm. Mullin at the Energy Security Forum of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
    8. Fueling the Future Force: Preparing the Department of Defense for a post-Petroleum era
  6. The oil companies keep winning as long as we keep giving them money
  7. Natural Gas – the Supposedly Clean Fossil Fuel
  8. Gasoline and Diesel
    1. What is the true price of gasoline? Should it cost $10 per gallon?
    2. Types of Crude Oil sources & constraints
    3. Extracting Crude Oil from the ground
    4. Transporting crude oil to refineries
    5. Refining crude oil to oil products
    6. Delivery to consumers
    7. Oil Products Consumption – burning gasoline, etc
    8. Crude Oil Dispersants – The main tool to mitigate crude oil spill disasters
  9. Coal
    1. Types of Coal
    2. Clean coal? Misnomer?
    3. Coal as a source of electricity or conversion into synthetic crude oil
    4. History of Coal Use
  10. Fracking – Hydraulic Fracturing – Acidizing
    1. Produced Water from Fracking operations
    2. Fracking (waste water injection) probably causes induced earthquakes
    3. Hydraulic Fracturing (fracturare hidraulica) in Romania’s shale gas (gaze de sist) formations
      1. Public perception of shale gas in Romania
      2. The future of shale gas in Romania: questions and policy options
      3. Romania after Nabucco: Energy Security Options
      4. Romania’s Oil and Gas Framework: 2013 highlights
      5. Paleozoic Paleozoic Shale Gas Plays of the Eastern Europe: Romania case study
    4. United States State Department Bureau of Energy Resources – USAID
      1. Fiscal Year 2014 USAID Budget Request contains funding for fracking program
    5. Marathon Oil explains that Hydraulic Fracturing is safe and beneficial
    6. WARNING Fracking An Inconvenient Truth
    7. Truth about Fracking – Wes Wilson – Phil Doe
    8. Costs of Fracking for Oil and Gas

Once crude oil is refined to oil products (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other products), it is delivered to its end use. Typically this is gasoline delivered through a gasoline pump. The other non-liquid-fuel crude oil products are delivered through other means, such as becoming a constituent of asphalt.

The liquid fuels are delivered to refueling stations by a combination of pipelines, ships, trains, and trucks. They're dispensed to customers through pumps into on-board fuel tanks. Eventually the fuel will be combusted in an internal combustion engine to produce motion.

That's what happens when all goes well. Of course problems occur along the way from refinery to consumer.

Every step of the way, liquid fuels leak during delivery, or accidents occur causing spills. In either case gasoline, diesel, etc, are released into the environment.

While gasoline, diesel, etc, are probably not as toxic as crude oil (see What’s in Crude Oil? A lotta toxic stuff, Benzene, Tuolene, etc), they are still carcinogenic. In most jurisdictions, gasoline pumps are required to carry warning signs that cancerous chemicals are dispensed through the fueling station. Meaning any gasoline, diesel, etc spill exposes everyone to cancerous chemicals.

Oh, and lead was commonly used in the past as a gasoline additive. Lead toxicity is known to wide ranging problems, especially in the brain. [Wikipedia]

Lead toxicity from gasoline occurs through normal use, since the lead is part of the exhaust. The air in any locale still using leaded gasoline, therefore, has lead, which is easily inhaled poisoning everyone who breaths.

About the Author(s)

David Herron : David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.
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