Forty percent of a barrel of crude oil becomes gasoline upon distillation. David Rockefeller in his autobiography “bragged” how his grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, ingeniously turned this “waste product” that nobody knew how to dispose of, into a “profit center.” There have been reports of high mileage carburetors (such as the Pogue carburetor used in Sherman tanks during WWII) that got as much as 200 miles per gallon. When the war was over, these were all rounded up and destroyed. Is the reason why because of the need to burn off HUGE quantities of unwanted gasoline, and high mileage vehicles would work against that agenda?

This insight is a good one because there are risks and potential downside in everything. There are dangers in depleting oil stocks too greatly. This is now known and has been perceived a number of times. It will continue as people still can fill your spot using a variety of combustible materials. The bottom line always is, what is cheapest to make in the largest quantities? By nature of crude oil and its chemistry, extracting useful fractions as fuel, such as fuel oil, leaves the more volatile components that can be siphoned off through distillation. One of the most useful and largest is that of gasoline. Originally there were no uses for this material and that is accurately described. It was the ingenuity of the titans of that era in following the recommendations of their scientists to find a way to capitalize on this potential energy source despite its risks and hazards, and this gave rise to the current combustion engine and the widespread infrastructure for providing gasoline supplies across the globe for vehicle use. This was done as a self-interest strategy but has been a win-win in the sense of proving useful. Gasoline is energy intensive and more efficient a fuel than alcohol, for example, so it was not a bad choice. One can certainly question the circumstances in which it was promoted and imposed on Henry Ford and that, in fact, is true.