The Fossil Fuel Reality Check: Here's Why “Eliminate Oil Companies” Is Easier Said Than Done

We hear it constantly: oil companies are the enemy, and the fastest path to a green future is to shut them down yesterday. Yet most of the loudest voices seem unaware of how deeply fossil fuels are woven into everyday materials and processes that even “green” technologies depend on. The uncomfortable truth, laid out clearly by energy scholar Vaclav Smil in Numbers Don’t Lie, is that while solar and wind have matured and can now be added quickly to decarbonize electricity, several massive economic sectors have no realistic non-carbon alternatives that can replace fossil fuels rapidly and at the required global scale.

Consider long-distance transportation. Jetliners run on aviation kerosene; container ships, bulk carriers, and tankers burn diesel, bunker fuel, or liquefied natural gas. There are no batteries or hydrogen systems ready to power these vessels across oceans at the scale of today’s fleet. The same fossil fuels fire the massive rotating kilns that produce more than four billion tons of cement every year and provide the coke needed to smelt more than a billion tons of primary iron in blast furnaces—the very steel used to build wind-turbine towers and monopiles.

Then there’s agriculture and manufacturing. Nearly 200 million tons of ammonia (the backbone of synthetic fertilizer that feeds roughly half the world) and about 300 million tons of plastics start with compounds derived from natural gas and crude oil. Even space heating in much of the world still runs on natural gas. These are not niche uses. They are foundational.

Smil puts the scale in perspective: displacing roughly 10 billion tons of fossil carbon annually is fundamentally different from scaling up smartphones or electric cars. The latter happened in years; the former is a multi-decade challenge. Wishful thinking can't change chemistry or physics. Pretending we can simply “ban” oil companies ignores that the steel in wind turbines, the fuel in cargo ships, the fertilizer in our fields, and the plastics in our hospitals. They all trace back to the same hydrocarbons activists want to eliminate overnight.

Energy transitions are inevitable, but they must be guided by numbers, not slogans. Understanding the full scope of fossil fuels’ roles isn’t climate denial—it’s honesty. Until we acknowledge these dependencies, we’re not solving the problem; we’re just shouting at it.

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What Are the Primary Uses of Plastic?

Where Does Plastic Come From?

Where Does Plastic Come From?

A smattering of applications made possible with plastics.

Imagine a world without plastic. No water bottles, no sleek smartphone casings, no corrugated plastic lawn signs, no vinyl Beatles albums, no toothbrushes. It’s hard to picture, isn’t it? Plastics are everywhere, woven into the fabric of our daily lives. (In fact, much of the fabric we wear is plastic--polyester or nylon.) But have you ever stopped to wonder: where does this stuff come from? Its origin is fossil fuels. Even the giant banners that protesters carry to protest against the oil industry were made with synthesized oil.

The journey of plastic, from raw materials to the products we use, is an interesting blend of chemistry, industry, and innovation. 

Here's the backstory of where plastics originate and how they come to be.

The Fossil Fuel Foundation

The vast majority of plastics—over 99%—originate deep underground. That is, most plastics are born from petroleum and natural gas, the fossil fuels that have powered much of modern industry. These resources are like the raw canvas for plastic production, rich in hydrocarbons that form the building blocks used in many of our favorite materials.

The process begins with refining, where crude oil or natural gas is distilled in massive industrial facilities to separate out valuable components. From crude oil, we get naphtha, and from natural gas, we extract ethane. These hydrocarbons are the stars of the show, but they need some transformation to become plastic. 

This is where cracking comes in, a process that breaks these hydrocarbons down into smaller, more manageable molecules called monomers, like ethylene and propylene. Think of monomers as Lego bricks—small, simple units that can be snapped together to create something bigger.

Next comes polymerization, where these monomers are chemically bonded into long chains called polymers. My father was a chemist whose career revolved around polymers, primarily in the real of house paints and adhesives. Before the development of latex paints, homes were painted (inside and out) with lead-based paints. We've since learned that lead is a toxic chemical that can cause brain damage, especially in children.  

Through polymerization, those chains become the plastics we know, like polyethylene (think plastic bags and bottles) or polypropylene (used in food containers and packaging). To give plastics their unique traits—flexibility, durability, or color—manufacturers mix in additives like stabilizers, colorants, or plasticizers. It’s like seasoning a dish to get just the right flavor.

Bio-Based Plastics

Not all plastics come from fossil fuels, though. A small but growing fraction—about 1% of global production—is plant based. Plastics like polylactic acid (PLA) are made from renewable sources such as corn starch, sugarcane, or other plant materials. The process involves fermenting these plants to produce lactic acid, which is then polymerized into plastic. It’s a bit like brewing beer, but instead of a cold pint, you get a biodegradable coffee cup.

These bio-based plastics are gaining traction as the world grapples with environmental concerns, though producing them still requires energy and land.

Recycling Plastics

Used plastics—like the water bottle you tossed in that bin—can be collected, cleaned, and reprocessed into new products. The idea of it sounds good, but only about 9% of plastic waste globally is actually recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, incinerators, or our oceans. I'm often surprised when I learn that there are many parts of this country that have no recycle centers. According to National Geographic, less than 10% recycle their plastic waste. And some sources say it's half that number.

Recycling plastics is tricky. The process can be costly and energy-intensive. Then again, if some folks had their way and they succeeded in bankrupting all the companies involved in oil production, we won't have to worry about how to recycle or safely discard our plastics. There won't be any. 

Things People Don't Realize About Wind Energy and Why We Can't Shut Down Oil Production

Creative Commons. © Hans Hillewaert

When the Biden administration recently approved the proposed Atlantic Shores offshore wind farm in New Jersey, the Sierra Club rejoiced. While many who long for the elimination of fossil fuels are celebrating, it might be useful to learn more about the role oil plays with regard to the ever expanding wind turbine push.

Few people realize how much fossil fuels are required to get electricity from wind. When we look at wind turbines, those towering giants you see on wind farms, we're looking into the face of green energy. But here's the twist: while they capture wind, a totally free and eco-friendly resource, the turbines themselves are actually built and maintained using fossil fuels.

Until I read Vaclav Smil's Numbers Don't Lie, I had no idea of the degree to which fossil fuels are needed to manufacture a single wind tower, even though I was involved in the wind business to a certain extent. (AMSOIL makes gear lubes for these wind-driven power plants.)

Here's an excerpt from Smil's book.

 

Large trucks bring steel, and other raw materials to the site, earth-moving equipment beats the path to otherwise inaccessible high ground, large cranes erect the structures – and all these machines burn diesel fuel. So do the freight trains and cargo ships that convey the materials needed for the production of cement, steel, and plastics. For a 5 MW turbine, the steel alone averages 150 tons for the reinforced concrete foundations, 250 tons for the rotor hubs and nacelles (which house the gearbox and generator) and 500 tons for the towers.

If wind generated electricity were to supply 25% of global demand by 2030, then even with a high average capacity factor of 35% the aggregate installed wind power of about 2.5 terawatts would require roughly 450,000,000 tons of steel. And that’s without counting the metal for towers, wires, and transformers for the new high voltage transmission lines that would be needed to connect it all to the grid.

Making steel also takes a ton of energy, Smil writes. It starts with sintered or pelletized iron ore that gets smelted in blast furnaces filled with coke made from coal. They also add powdered coal and natural gas to the mix. The pig iron produced in these blast furnaces is then decarbonized in basic oxygen furnaces. After that, the steel goes through continuous casting, which shapes the molten steel into rough forms of the final product. For turbine construction, the steel used typically contains about 35 gigajoules of energy per ton.

 

To make the steel required for the wind turbines we want by 2030, Smil writes, you need fossil fuels equivalent to more than 600 million tons of coal. 

This is before we consider the 60-meter long airfoils, each of which weighs 15 tons. Making these giant blades also requires hydrocarbons--liquefied petroleum, gas or natural gas.

That's not all. Smil adds still more including the cost of fiber-reinforced composite material, water-proofing with resins, rotors and the gearbox itself. Then you have the lubricants for those gearboxes, which must be changed from time to time like the oil change on your typical car or truck, albeit not as often but on a very large scale.

Undoubtedly, and lastly, Smil suggests that a new wind turbine will generate as much energy as it took to produce it, but it will be in the form of intermittent energy production. (i.e. the turbines turn only when the wind blows.)

Generating electricity – installation, production and maintenance -- remain critically dependent on specific fossil energies. Moreover, most of these energies -- coke for iron ore smelting; coal and petroleum coke to fuel cement kilns; naphtha and natural gas as feedstock and fuel for synthesis of plastics and the making of fiberglass; diesel fuel for ships, trucks, and construction machinery; lubricant for gearboxes – we have no non-fossil substitutes readily available on the requisite large commercial scale.

Smil sums up his chapter thus: For a long time to come – until all energy that is used to produce wind turbines and photovoltaic cells comes from renewable energy sources – modern civilization will be fundamentally dependent on fossil fuels.

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See: Made in the USA: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing Is A Humbling Warning

Are Fossil Fuels An Old-Fashioned Idea Whose Time Has Gone?

All my life I've heard people declaring that we were running out of oil. Many of these prognosticators were proclaiming that in ten years this disastrous event would occur. As recent as 2004 someone on our local radio was making this claim. The notion has been so ingrained in our heads that for the general public it has become a common assumption. To this day you can find articles fretting that because oil is in finite supply sooner or later it will come to an end, and with it civilization as we know it.

As early as the 1980s I began questioning the popular notions about where oil comes from, and maybe earlier. It just never made sense to me that oil came from decayed vegetative matter and dinosaurs. There's just too much of it. So when I read about Dr. Thomas Gold's theories as conveyed in an article in The Atlantic, I was ripe for the taking. In September 1999 I presented my thoughts on this topic in this article that appeared in National Oil & Lube News.

ARE FOSSIL FUELS AN OLD-FASHIONED IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS GONE?

IN 1964 MY FAMILY MOVED from Cleveland to New Jersey. I was twelve years old and we never had so much company in our lives. All our relatives from the Midwest came east to see us that year. I supposed it was the new house they wanted to see, but later I understood that it was really, among other things, the1964-1965 New York World's Fair that attracted all these kin. If you add in all the class trips and scouting outings, I must have gone two dozen times, which is just about what it takes to really grasp the magnitude and scope of all that it contained.

The World's Fair produced many memorable images, including the Unisphere, itself the featured symbol of the Fair. Another memorable image was a large green brontosaur at the Sinclair Pavilion. There's no way to adequately describe the effect those Mustangs had on us at the Ford Pavilion. In retrospect it seems only natural that the world's largest industry, the auto industry, should be so prominently featured.

There's no question Sinclair's dinosaur was a powerful symbol. Dinosaurs had great power in the imaginations of young people. Whatever became of the dinosaurs? That big green brontosaurus graphically planted the answer in our minds. Yesterday's dinosaurs are today's fuel. It is all part of the circle of life, you might say. Yesterday's dead critters and ancient vegetation are producing today's energy, hence our familiarity with the term "Fossil Fuels" when speaking of gas and petroleum.

The only problem with the dino image is this: What if it's not true?

A 1986 cover story in The Atlantic Monthly, "The Origin of Petroleum" by David Osbourne, shot some rather large holes in the fossil fuels theory. Osbourne is a journalist who brought to a wider audience the ideas of a certain maverick astrophysicist named Thomas Gold.

The occasion for Osbourne's article was a gigantic drilling operation which was about to commence in the Siljan Ring, a site in northern Sweden where a giant meteorite crashed into the earth 360 million years ago. The drilling would take more than a year in an attempt to penetrate deeper than three miles beneath the surface.

What Gold was attempting to prove was that petroleum is not a scarce resource in danger of being soon depleted. This is because oil and gas are not, according to Gold, byproducts of ancient animal life. Gold was attempting to prove his theory that oil and gas come from the earth itself.

Six arguments for drawing this conclusion are as follows:

1. The geographical distribution of oil seems derived from features much larger in scale than individual sedimentary features.

2. The quantities of oil and gas available are hundreds of times those estimated on the basis of biological origins.

3. The so-called "molecular fossils" found in oil and claimed as proof of a biogenic origin are simply biological contaminants, particularly bacteria that feed upon the petroleum.

4. Petroleum is largely saturated with hydrogen, whereas buried biological matter should exhibit a deficiency of hydrogen.

5. Oil and gas are often rich in helium, an inert gas which biological processes cannot concentrate.

6. The great oil reservoirs of the Middle East are in diverse geological provinces. There is no unifying feature for the region as a whole and, especially, no sediments rich in biological debris that could have produced these immense concentrations of oil and gas.

At the time I found the notions fascinating but not much more. Last month, while reading an article titled "Why We'll Never Run Out of Oil" (Discover, June 1999) I began wondering whatever became of the Siljan Ring drilling program. Especially since the Discover article, contrary to my expectations based on the title, made no mention of these radical ideas whatsoever. In fact, the article went into great detail explaining the organic origins of oil.

I suddenly became keenly interested in the results of that study in Sweden. What did they find? Was it a bust? Utilizing the power of the internet I did some of my own digging and came up with what I was looking for. A simple search on Thomas Gold yielded plenty.

I learned that the one year Siljan Ring drilling program actually took six years. The results have been interpreted and Gold has published plenty to support his views, including a new book called "The Deep Hot Biosphere". Gold's theories may be Copernican in importance. (It was Copernicus, you may recall, who postulated the radical notion that the earth goes round the sun and not vice versa. We tend to forget that more than a century passed before this became "common knowledge.")

I also found an excellent article explaining why it is not possible for two separate notions of the origins of oil to co-exist. Gold's article, "Can There Be Two Independent Sources of Commercial Hydrocarbon Deposits, One Derived from Biological Materials, the Other from Primordial Carbon and Hydrogen, Incorporated into the Earth at its Formation?" is explicit and emphatic. There can only be one origin of oil, Gold asserts.

If Gold is right, then the early scientists who called it "rock oil" were much closer to the truth than the ad men who invented the Sinclair mascot. But popular ideas die hard, and so it is that while much has been written, to date the average person seems aware of only the prevailing, somewhat discredited, view.

The point of all this confabulation? Two observations come immediately to mind. First, there appears to be no reason today to be concerned about oil supply. The alarm over an oil shortage in the seventies was an event, not a trend. Oil is an abundant resource and the future of our industry is not going to be jeopardized by oil shortages other than those caused by political maneuverings.*

Second, ideas that initially seem off the wall may have more merit than first thought. When you open your minds, you'll discover that extended drain intervals and synthetic lubricants offer more profit potential than you originally imagined.

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*EdNote: Oil shortages can also be the result of market forces, which I did not consider at the time this was originally written.