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Fossil Fuels Essay

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Fossil Fuels

Energy, whether it was sunlight or heat from a wood fire, has always been important to society. However, with the onset of the industrial revolution over 200 years ago, wood alone could no longer support the increasing energy demand. The world quickly turned to coal to satisfy its energy needs, and it has been reliant on fossil fuels ever since. Despite the inroads renewable and nuclear energies have made in recent decades, the vast majority of energy used by society still comes from the three main fossil fuels: petroleum, natural gas, and coal. As a result, it is important to know how these fuels were formed, the rates at which they are produced and consumed, and how much is economically recoverable for future use. …show more content…

However, when temperatures exceed 160¢ªC, all of the oil in the sources rock burns off to form natural gas. So source rock that is exposed to these high temperatures accounts for the formation of natural gas wells in which there is no oil.

The source rock is often times buried beneath a layer of porous sedimentary rock. The pores in this rock are filled with water, so it is called the reservoir rock. Since oil and gas float on water, the hydrocarbons in the source rock rise through the reservoir rock. They continued to rise until they encountered an impermeable layer of rock, where they stop and form a reserve. The natural gas, since it is lighter, will always rest on top of any oil in the reserve(Marshak 433-4).

Oil has become the most widely used energy source in the world. This is because oil is both easy to transport and flexible in its uses, unlike natural gas, which is costly to transport, and coal, which currently has limited applications. The result is that thirty-eight percent of energy used in the United States comes from the burning of oil(Ristinen 17). Transportation, which gets almost ninety-eight percent of its energy from oil, accounts for most of the oil use in the US(Ristinen 20). This is due to the fact that the price of oil in the US does not reflect its true cost. With the combination of high subsidies and low taxes on oil, the US government has produced a market in which gasoline is cheap and abundant. When compared to other

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