What does petroleum make?

Question

Does it practically make everything since a lots of things are produced by oil (major energy source)? such as everyday appliances, house etc etc.?

Answer 1

As far as products made directly from petroleum: gasoline, motor oil, lubricants, vaseline, mineral oil, kerosene, solvents, butane, lighter fluid (like to squirt on charcoal briquets), plastic, some kinds of clothing materials (like polyester stuff), um, tar and asphalt (though they might have some other goop mixed in them.

As far as petroleum running machines that make products, or providing electricity to make products, or fueling vehicles that move products...yeah, it's hard to get anything that's 100% petroleum-free. I mean, natural gas is still a fossil fuel, though it's technically not petroleum (I know you can get methane from cow manure, but that's not where we usually get it.) Basically, you could, um, bake a pie in a wood-burning stove, wrap it up by candlelight or solar lighting, freeze it by wind-powered freezers or hydro-electric freezers, then ship it via trucks that run on biodiesel. But the truck would probably be from a plant that ran on petroleum products. Or the freezers would be made in a plant that was run by petroleum-fired electricity.

OK, skip the freezers. Put the pies in an icehouse. Drat! You can't have an icehouse since there's global warming! Ummm...skip freezing the pie. Just put the pie in a box and have a horse deliver the pie. To a house that probably is full of products touched by petroleum.

This isn't easy to figure out! OK, just knit yourself a tent from home-grown wool and go camping. Build a fire. But don't use starter fluid to light it, and don't use a lighter, either. Just rub sticks together...oh, it's just impossible.

Answer 2

Plastics are made from petroleum. Man fibers are made from petroleum. paint, fuels, ashphalt, gasoline, natural gas is found with crude oil, dyes, medicines,