Oil of many kinds plays a very important part in our lives. If your skin is sunburn, you rub some oil into it. Is your hair too dry? Oil it. You oil the parts of your bicycle to make it go smoothly. Unless you maintain a sufficient quantity of oil in your motor-car engine you will spoil it. Yes, oil is important in many ways, but the kinds of oil which we use for different things may have different origins. No one would like a dinner cooked in engine –oil, and no one should put vegetable oil into a motor –car.

There are three main groups of oils- animal, vegetable, and mineral. Great quantities of animal oil come from whales, those enormous creatures of the sea which are the largest remaining animals in the world. To protect the whale from the cold of the Arctic seas, nature has provided it with a thick covering of fat called blubber. When the whale is killed, the blubber is stripped off and boiled down, either on board ship on shore. It produces a great quantity of oil which can be made into food. A few other creatures yield oil, but none so much as the whale. Oil from the livers of the cod and halibut are given to sick children and other invalids who need certain vitamins.

Vegetable oil has been in use from very ancient times. No household can get on without it, for it is used in cooking. Perfumes may be made from the oils of certain flowers. Soaps are made from vegetable and animal oils. To the ordinary man, one kind of oil may be as important as another, but when the engineer refers to oil, he almost always means mineral oil, the oil that drives tanks, aero planes and warships, motor –cars and diesel locomotives. This is the oil that has changed the life of the common man. It has changed the methods of warfare on land and sea. This kind of oil comes out of the earth. Because it burns well, it is used as fuel, and in some ways it is superior to coal. Most big ships now oil instead of coal. It is used for illumination because it burns brightly. Many homes are still illuminated with oil-lamps.

What was the origin of the oil which now drives out motor-cars and aircraft?

Scientists are in no doubt about the formation of coal, but they do not seem so sure about the original of oil. They think that the oil under the surface of the earth originated from living things in the seas. For the carcasses of such creatures to become oil, it was necessary for them to be imprisoned between layers of rock for an enormous length of time. This explanation of the origin of oil is confirmed by a glance at a map which would show that most of the chief oil fields of the world are close to the oceans of today. The rocks in which oil is found are of marine origin too.

All most always the remains of shells other forms of sea life are found close to deposits of oil.

There are four main areas of the world where deposits of oil appear. The first is in the Middle East and includes the regions near the Caspian Sea, the black sea, the red sea and the Persian Gulf. Another is the area between North and South America, and the third, between Asia and Australia, includes the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java.

The fourth area is near the North Pole. When all the present oil fields are exhausted, it is possible that this cold region may become the principal sources of mineral oil. Yet the difficulties will be great, and costs may be so high that no company will undertake the work. If progress in using atomic power to drive machines is fast enough, it is possible that the oil-driven engine will give place to a new kind of engine. In that case the demand for oil will fall, the oil fields will gradually disappear, and the deposits at the North Pole may rest where they are forever.