ASD

grease. Early Chinese history reports the first use of natural gas that seeped f
rom the ground; a
simple pipeline made of hollowed bamboo poles transported the gas a short distan
ce where it fueled
a fire used to boil water. Seventeenth century missionaries to America reported
a black flammable
fluid floating in creeks. From these creeks, Indians and colonists skimmed the c
rude oil, then called
rock oil, for medicinal and other purposes. Later, the term rock oil would be re
placed by the term
petroleum from petra (a Latin word for rock) and oleum (a Latin word for oil). E
ventually, the term
petroleum came to refer to both crude oil and natural gas. By the early 1800s, w
hale oil was widely
used as lamp fuel, but the dwindling supply was uncertain, and people began usin
g alternative
illuminating oils called kerosene or coal oil extracted from mined coal, mined a
sphalt, and crude oil
obtained from surface oil seepages. Therefore, the petroleum exploration and pro
duction industry
may be said to have begun in around mid 1800s. There was mention of an oil disco
very in Ontario,
Canada, in 1858, and Pennsylvania, in USA in 1859, with a steam-powered, cable-t
ool rig with a
wooden derrick used in drilling. Shortly thereafter, a number of refineries bega
n distilling valuable
kerosene from crude oil, including facilities that had previously extracted kero
sene from other
sources.
Transportation of crude oil was a problem faced from the earliest days of oil pr
oduction. The
coopers union constructed wooden barrels (with a capacity of 42 to 50 US gallons)
that were filled
with oil and hauled by teamsters on horse-drawn wagons to railroad spurs or rive
r barge docks. At
the railroad spurs, the oil was emptied into large wooden tanks that were placed
on flatbed railroad
cars. The quantity of oil that could be moved by this method was limited. Howeve
r, the industry's
attempts to construct pipelines were delayed by the unions whose members would f
ace
unemployment and by railroad and shipping companies who would suffer from the lo
ss of business
by the change in method of transportation. Nevertheless, pipelines did come into
existence in the
1860s; the first line was made of wood and was less than a thousand feet long.
New demands for petroleum were created in the 1920s, largely because of the grow
ing number of
automobiles, as well as, the use of petroleum products to generate electricity,
operate tractors, and
power automobiles. The oil industry was able to increase production to meet the
greater demand
without a sharp rise in price. Compared with World War I, World War II which had
its onset in
1939, used more mechanized equipment, airplanes, automotive equipment, and ships
, all of which
required huge amounts of petroleum.
The search for oil in Nigeria dates back to 1908 when a German Company, by name
the Nigerian
Bitumen Corporation, obtained a licence to explore for oil in Okitipupa area of
Ondo State.
The company s efforts were unsuccessful and with outbreak of the First World War,
its
operations were disrupted.
Two decades later, Shell D Arcy (the predecessor of Shell Petroleum Development Co
mpany of
Nigeria Ltd) started exploration of Niger Delta in 1937 having acquired explorat
ion right from the
British Colonialists over the entire Nigerian territory under an