Gasoline crisis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gasoline crisis - Essay Example This is regardless of whether there is a true shortage, or if it’s just panic buying that takes hold. Don’t be surprised to see gasoline rationing being put in place as soon as this occurs, whether it is imposed by the retailers, or by the government. Don’t be surprised to see long lines at the pumps, a la 1972.† (The Coming Gasoline Crisis). This paper will deal with the gasoline crisis and it will compare the cost of production of Gasoline to Ethanol in order to suggest a solution to this problem. The conclusion will sum up the major points of the paper. There is no question that oil, or petroleum or gasoline, is a precious commodity that built a lucrative industry. The entire trade revolving around oil – from exploration through extraction and processing to retail – is definitely one of the biggest businesses if not the biggest. Oil, as we know it, is a rather young industry. It is, however, all-encompassing. Not only do we use it for transportation but we use it to basically run the whole economy. Our present industries are fueled by oil and it is this function that saw the huge leap in the age of Industrial Revolution and had the world careening towards technological breakthroughs at unprecedented rates. History can tell us that much. To understand how oil came to dominate so much of our lives, it may be best to look as far back to history’s memory of it. The Earth processed for us the fossil fuels that we convert to oil, the result of photosynthesis of perhaps 300 to 350 million years ago, when plant and animal material were buried deep in the Earth’s crust. The petroleum industry kicked off when tar, distilled from petroleum, was used to pave the streets of Baghdad in the 8th century. Then in the 9th century, naphtha was produced from the oil field of Baku, Azerbaijan and Muhammad ibn ZakarÄ «ya RÄ zi produced kerosene from distilled petroleum for use on lamps (Bilkadi,