Questions on train forums I wouldn't think of asking.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Yes, I remember the commercial on TV for that oil co. wherein a green dinosaur would get sucked into a car's gas tank.

[chuck]

Don't know about the color but "Dino" was selected by the marketing guys back in the 1930's. He was selected as a mascot because they thought the the rock layers that the oil (mostly from Pennsylvania) was being taken from was an age when they thought dinosaurs roamed the planet (they were off by about 100 million years).

The apatosaurous was eventually chosen as THE mascot but early on other dino's were featured in logo's and ads.

Animal mascots were also used by Esso, put a Tiger in your tank) and Mobil used a a red winged Pegasus. The sea shell that Shell used never did much for me.

[HONDO74]

The sea shell that Shell used never did much for me.

Did for me. When I was 20 living in California I applied to all the oil companies for a credit card. Shell was the only one that gave me one. I always used Shell gas unless there were no stations available.

[HONDO74]

The idea that petroleum is formed from dead organic matter is known as the "biogenic theory" of petroleum formation and was first proposed by a Russian scientist almost 250 years ago.

In the 1950's, however, a few Russian scientists began questioning this traditional view and proposed instead that petroleum could form naturally deep inside the Earth.

This is called "abiogenic"

[rogruth]

I remember that 50 years ago we were being told that all petroleum wpuld be gone by the year 2000.

[chuck]

The shell LOGO never impressed me. I still use their gasoline because of my Kroger rewards credits are accepted when I can't find a Kroger Fuel Station (which is true pretty much anywhere outside of SE Michigan/Northern Ohio).

It isn't so much that we would run out of oil as we would run out if ways to easily (read cheaply) extract it. New technologies have opened up access to the harder to get material and newer sensor technology has made finding pockets of oil bearing strata easier to find.

You can synthesize petroleum products, Germans were forced to do this in WW2. The issue again is cost. If it requires more energy/money to create the fuel than the stuff coming out of the ground it usually doesn't happen (aka economically not viable).

Abiogenic oil formation is based on a very small platform of actual science (aka methane can be produced without biological forces). This is then expanded on an insane house of cards extrapolation to get to "oil". Getting from methane to higher order hydrocarbons while possible in a lab is pretty much impossible outside of the lab. It requires the presence of large quantities of other materials that aren't naturally found in large quantities and/or conditions that have not been observed in nature.

[robert.]

Sinclair oil cans can net you a fortune. Some of their 5 gallon cans bring 15-20,000 @ auction.

[HONDO74]

This is my oil can collection..

All are metal cans and they are all still full of oil.

I have some 5 gallon and 30 gallons someplace. I had a 50s gas pump and an oil tank with pump like the services stations used to have but I sold them to a hot rod friend before we moved to our present location.

oil cans.jpg (119.05 KiB) Viewed 8871 times

[webenda]

This is my oil can collection.

Are they unopened (still have the oil in them?)

[webenda]

I remember that 50 years ago we were being told that all petroleum wpuld be gone by the year 2000.

Abiogenic oil formation is based on a very small platform of actual science (aka methane can be produced without biological forces). This is then expanded on an insane house of cards extrapolation to get to "oil". Getting from methane to higher order hydrocarbons while possible in a lab is pretty much impossible outside of the lab. It requires the presence of large quantities of other materials that aren't naturally found in large quantities and/or conditions that have not been observed in nature.

I like the Abiogenic oil formation theory because it explains why we did not run out of oil, i.e., it is being continuously generated by an abiogenic process.

The two principal abiogenic petroleum hypotheses, the deep gas hypothesis of Thomas Gold and the deep abiotic petroleum hypothesis, have been scientifically discredited and are obsolete. --Wikipedia

Phew, there are plenty of carbonaceous rocks and water 20,000 feet underground to source carbon and hydrogen to create oil. It is a good theory that explains not only why we have not run out of oil but also how it got so deep underground.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

........ scientifically discredited and are obsolete.

Yet will live on forever in the minds of those that want to believe otherwise.

[HONDO74]

This is my oil can collection.

Are they unopened (still have the oil in them?)

Yes they are all unopened and are still full of oil. I stayed away from the later oil cans that were made from coated paper because they will all leak oil over a period of time. When you find those they have been drained. The metal cans are kind of like collecting lithographed trains.

[Mitch]

In the 1950's, however, a few Russian scientists began questioning this traditional view and proposed instead that petroleum could form naturally deep inside the Earth.

This is called "abiogenic"

And maybe that explains why the oil industry is finding oil again in the same wells they thought were shot long ago.

[chuck]

"Underground" is a relative term, especially if you are considering planetary time scales. What was underground 500 million years ago may now be the tops of a mountain range.

Most people think/believe the planet was always something like what we see now. aka The continental plates and their associated land masses may have slid around and the climate varied from tropical to arctic conditions. This scenario covers only the last 400-800 hundred million years. Prior to that time the planet did not resemble anything most of us are familiar with. Primitive life forms go back much farther in time than 800 million years (like another ~2 billion years).

All oil bearing rock formations are found in sedimentary deposits, mostly some form of shale. You don't find it in igneous or metamorphic rocks. It can't move through these as they are not porous enough. Sedimentary rocks did not start to form until the oceans formed roughly 4 billion years ago. Primitive algae appears not long after the oceans and begins to change the atmosphere eventually making the planet hostile to themselves by changing the predominately CO2 atmosphere to an oxygen rich atmosphere. That makes for roughly 2 billion years of accumulation of primitive life forms at the sea bottom, erosion of land masses to bury it, and plate tectonic activity to squeeze/compress the sedimentary rock to "extract/infuse" the oil.

The figures about "running out of oil" from 40 years ago were citations of "known" reserves and based on best available technology at that time to extract it. The "known reserves" has been expanded by actually finding new material and major advances in extraction allow removing oil from rock that wasn't physically or economically practical 40 years ago.

[rogruth]

Those running out of oil stories from the 20th century were used as a form of scare tactics to get people to buy smaller cars and use other forms of energy. Of course this is my opinion and I think it worked.