After food, fossil fuels are humanity’s most important source of energy. There are three major fuels --- coal, oil and natural gas. Coal is used primarily to produce electricity. It therefore provides us with light, motive power from electrical motors, and our many electronic devices. Oil gives our mobility, our cars, planes, trains, trucks, and boats. Natural gas is used primarily to produce heat, for our buildings, hot water, and industrial processes.

Fossil fuels are non renewable. The author makes an attempt to search the roots of fossil fuel and orient the general EP readers regarding the origin. This is for the ordinary EP readers not for the experts and specialists. As civilization has become almost absolutely dependent of fossil fuels, there has been growing concern that these nonrenewable fuels are bound to be exhausted some day. Fossil fuels were formed before and during the time of the dinosaurs when plants and animals died. Their decomposed remains gradually changed over the years to form coal, oil and natural gas. The age they were formed is called the carboniferous period. It was part of the Paleozoic Era. “Carboniferous” gets its name from carbon, the basic element in coal and other fossil fuels.

The carboniferous period was about 360 to 286 million years ago. At that time, the land was covered with swamps filled with huge trees, ferns and other leafy plants. The water and seas were filled with algae the green stuff that forms on a stagnant pool of water. Algae is actually millions of very small plants. Some deposits of coal can be found during the time of the dinosaurs. For example, the carbon layers can be found during the late cretaceous Period (65 million years ago) the time of Tyrannosaurus Rex. But the main deposits of fossil fuels are from the carboniferous Period.

As the trees and plants died, they sunk to the bottom of the swamps of oceans. They formed layers of spongy materials call peat. Over many hundreds of years, the peat was covered with sand and clay and other minerals, which turned into a type of rock called sedimentary.

More and more rock piled on top of more rock, and it weighed more and more. It began to press down on the peat. The peat was squeezed and squeezed until water came out of its and it eventually, over millions of years, turned into coal, oil or petroleum, and natural gas.

Coal
Coal is a hard, black colored rock like substance. It is made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and varying amounts of sulfur. There are three main types of coal Anthracite, Bituminous and Lignite. Anthracite coal is the hardest and has more carbon, which gives it higher energy content. Lignite is the softest and is low in carbon but high in hydrocarbon and oxygen content. Bituminous is in between. Today, the precursor to coal peat is still found in many countries and is also used as an energy source.

The earliest known use of coal was in China. Coal from the Fu-shun mine in northeastern China may have been used to smelt copper as early as 3,000 years ago. The Chinese thought coal was a stone that could burn.

Subsequently coal has been found in many different countries of the world. It is mined out of the ground using various methods. Some coalmines are dug by sinking vertical or horizontal shafts deep underground. Coal miners travel by elevators on train deep underground to dig the coal. Other coal is mined in strip mines where huge steam shovels strip away the top layers above the coal. The layers are then restored after the coal is taken away. The coal is then shipped by train and boat and even in pipelines. In pipelines, the coal is ground up and mixed with water to make what’s called a slurry. This is then pumped many miles through pipelines. At the other end, the coal is used to fuel power plants and other factories.

Oil Petroleum
Another fossil fuel oil was also formed more than 300 million years ago. Some scientists say that tiny diatoms are the source of oil. Diatoms are sea creatures the size of a pinhead. They do one thing just like plants; they can convert sunlight directly into stored energy. Diatoms were buried under sediments and other rocks. The rocks squeezed the diatoms and the energy in their bodies could not escape. The carbon eventually turned into oil under great pressure and heat. As the earth changed, moved and are folded, pockets where oil and natural gas can be found were formed.

Oil has been used for more than 500 – 600 years. The ancient Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians used crude oil and asphalt (“pitch) collected from large seeps at Tuttul (modern day Hit) on the Euphrates River. A seep is a place on the ground where the oil leaks up from below ground. The ancient Egyptians, used liquid oil as a medicine for wounds, and oil has been used in lamps to provide light.

The Dead Sea, near the modern country of Israel, used to be called Lake Asphaltites. The word asphalt was derived is from that term because of the lumps of gooey petroleum that were washed up on the lakeshores from underwater seeps.

In North America, Native Americans used blankets to skim oil off the surface of streams and lakes. They used oil as medicine and to make canoes water proof. During the Revolutionary war, Native Americans taught George Washington’s troops how to treat frostbite with oil.

Petroleum oil began to replace whale oil in lamps because the price for whale oil was very high. During this time most petroleum oil came from distilling coal into a liquid on by skimming it off of lakes just as the Native Americans did.

Then on August 27, 1859, Edwin L Drake struck liquid oil at his well near Titusville, Pennsylvania. He found oil underground and a way that could pump it to the surface. The well pumped well into barrels made out wood. This method of drilling for oil is still being used today all over the world in areas where oil can be found below the surface.

Oil and natural gas are found under ground between folds of rock and in areas of rock that are porous and contain the oils within the rock itself. The folds of rock were formed as the earth shifts and mores. It’s similar to how a small throw carpet will bunch up in places on the floor.

To find oil and natural gas, companies drill through the earth to the deposits deep below the surface. The oil and natural gas are then pumped from below the ground by oilrigs they then usually travel through pipelines or by ship. Petroleum is a mixture of liquid hydrocarbon (chemical compounds containing only hydrogen and carbon) plus various impurities such as sulfur. Unprocessed petroleum is usually called crude oil, although it has been called mineral oil and Seneca oil, named for the Seneca Indians of Western Pennsylvania. The name petroleum is from a combination of Latin words meaning “rock oil”.

Oil may have a variety of properties, some forms are black, others’ dark green, and some light like kerosene the Liquid ranges from very viscous to easy flowing. Crude oil usually consists of a mixture of hydrocarbons having varying molecular weights and differing from one another in structure and properties.

Oil is stored in large tanks until it is sent to various places to be used At oil refineries crude oil is split into various types of products by heating the thick black oil.

Oil made into many different products fertilizers for farms, the clothes wear, the toothbrush we use, the plastic bottle that holds the milk, the plastic pen that we write with. They all come from oil. There are thousands of other products that come from Oil. Al most all plastic comes originally from oil.

The products include gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation or jet fuel, home heating oil, species are separated into groups, or fractions, by a process of distillation called refining. Oil fuel, in all of its usable forms, is a refined product, unlike coal and natural gas which can often be burned in their natural condition.

Natural Gas
Sometimes between 6000 to 2,000 years BCE (Before the Common Era), the first discoveries of natural gas seeps were made in Iran. Many early writers described the natural petroleum seeps in the Middle East, especially in the Baku region of what is now Azerbaijan. The gas seeps probably first ignited by lightning, provided the fuel for the “eternal fires” of the fire worshipping religion of the ancient Persians.

Natural gas is a highly flammable hydrocarbon gas consisting chiefly methane (CH4). Although methane is always the chief component it may also include other gases such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, ethane, ethylene, propane, and even some helium.

The gas is found entrapped in the earth’s crust at varying depths beneath impervious strata, such as limestone, and may or may not be in association with oil. If oil is present it is called wet gas, else dry gas. The gas is drawn from wells, treated to disassociate with undesirable constituents and higher hydrocarbons and is usually transported by pipelines, sometimes a thousand of miles or more.

As a fuel, natural gas is convenient and efficient. It is used primarily for heat in industrial commercial and residential settings. Water is heated by gas, the food is cooked with it and clothes dried. It is also used to produce electricity, in many cases using gas-fired turbines that are similar to jet engines. Gas has the great advantage of producing no smoke or ash on burning, although it is usually much more expensive than coal as a fuel.

Fossil fuels have finite reserve. These are nonrenewable and getting progressively exhausted. Higher demand causes higher price. Developing and underdeveloped countries are having serious problems in keeping their economy and commercial activities smoothly functional. Humanity must be wise in optimum utilization of fossil fuels and aggressive development of renewable like hydro, solar, wind, waves and biomass so as make these easily available at affordable cost .Days of easy oil and gas are progressively getting diminished. US-led so-called war on terror is also not helping the cause. Energy market is getting volatile causing immense miseries to underdeveloped and developing economy. If only 10 percent of the money the developed countries spend on research and development of nonrenewable energy that will ensure long term energy security.