oil

As motorized machines proliferated during the 19th century, vegetable oils, whale oil, and animal tallow
were typically used for machine lubrication, and whale oil as fuel for lamps.

But within a few years, electric street lighting and home lighting appeared as commercially viable options.

Fortunes were quickly made and lost by dozens of drillers and refiners, as
a rapidly expanding supply of petroleum fed the nascent demand.

Rather than buying up the other refiners and producers outright,
Rockefeller set up a trust by which stockholders in Standard Oil controlled the
stock in dozens of other oil companies as well, Rockefeller’s business strategy
was simple and consistent; to be the low—cost producer, to offer a reliable
product, and to ruthlessly undercut and assimilate any competitor.

As had been the case with coal, few people at
first had any inkling of the consequences of the increasing exploitation of this
new energy resource.

As gas lights were gradually replaced
with electric lights, local gas works were sold and consolidated, their infra-
structure of pipes converted to the distribution of natural gas for cooking and
heating.

Rockefeller used Standards domestic business tactics of predatory pricing,
secrecy, and industrial espionage to absorb foreign oil companies — especially those in Europe, where industrialization and urbanization were
stimulating an ever—increasing demand for kerosene and lubricating oil.

With the development of electric lighting in the 1880s, demand for kerosene peaked and began to
recede.

Petroleum had been known for centuries, perhaps millennia, and had
been used in warfare as early as 670 AD, when Emperor Constantine IV attached flame—throwing siphon devices to the prows of his ships, which spewed
burning petroleum on enemy vessels.

Rockefeller used Standards domestic business tactics of predatory pricing,
secrecy, and industrial espionage to absorb foreign oil companies — especially those in Europe, where industrialization and urbanization were
stimulating an ever—increasing demand for kerosene and lubricating oil.

However, as prices for manufactured gas for street lighting rose and as environmental hazards from its production became more apparent, natural gas
was seen as a cheap and environmentally more benign substitute.

Kerosene quickly became the foremost US—manufactured export; and Standard with its European subsidiaries became the first modern trans-national corporation.

Kerosene quickly became the foremost US—manufactured export; and Standard with its European subsidiaries became the first modern trans-national corporation.

Even though petroleum production, refining, and distribution had become
huge and quickly growing commercial enterprises, the 19th century was the
century of coal to its very end: only after the turn of the 20th would the world
witness the true dawning of the petroleum era.