Grade 7 Unit 2: Petroleum Resources, History, and Impact

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the formation, chemical composition, historical excavation, environmental impacts, and geopolitics of petroleum based on Unit 2 course materials.

Petroleum

A hydrocarbon, fossil fuel, and crude oil formed deep within the Earth from ancient organic remains.

Methane

A hydrocarbon compound associated with petroleum and natural gas, represented by the chemical formula $CH_4$.

Ethane

A hydrocarbon compound associated with petroleum, represented by the chemical formula $C_2H_6$.

Propane

A hydrocarbon compound associated with petroleum, represented by the chemical formula $C_3H_8$.

Marine Plankton

Microscopic sea organisms whose organic remains were deposited in shallow oceans around 90–150 million years ago, transforming under heat and pressure into modern oil reserves.

Oil Seeps

Natural surface locations where crude oil and bitumen escape from subterranean geological traps to the surface of the Earth.

Bitumen

A gooey counterpart to crude oil found naturally in surface seeps, historically utilized by ancient civilizations for waterproofing and mortar.

Seneca Oil

A cure-all tonic named after a Native American tribe that was advertised to New World settlers in newspapers in 1792.

Abraham Gesner

A Canadian geologist known as the 'Father of the Petroleum Industry' who distilled kerosene in 1849 as a cleaner-burning lamp fuel to replace whale oil.

Benjamin Silliman

A Yale chemist whose 1855 report on rock oil from Venango County, Pennsylvania supported the commercial profitability of petroleum.

Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company

George Bissel's company, which drilled the first commercial oil well in the United States in 1859 to a depth of 70 feet.

Standard Oil

An oil company founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller of Ohio that grew into the largest corporation in the United States with $1 million in capital.

Zoroaster

The world's first oil tanker, built by the Noel brothers in 1877 to transport kerosene through the Caspian Sea.

Spindletop

An oil well drilled near Beaumont, Texas in 1901 that produced 100,000 barrels of oil per day, establishing Beaumont as one of the country's first oil boomtowns.

Wallace Carothers

A Du Pont chemist who invented nylon in 1935 as the world's first purely synthetic fiber derived from petroleum-based hydrocarbons.

Marlex

The commercial brand name for crystalline polypropylene and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastics discovered in 1951 by Robert Banks at Phillips Petroleum.

OPEC

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, founded in 1960 by Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran to defend oil price points against Western influence.

Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975

A United States law prompted by the 1973 oil shortage that established automobile fuel efficiency standards and federal highway speed limits.

Exxon Valdez

An oil tanker that collided with a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989, spilling 39,000 tons of crude oil.

Rumaila Oil Field

The oil field disputed between Iraq and Kuwait that triggered Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent ignition of approximately 700 production wells.

Kyoto Protocol

A 1997 global treaty intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate climate change, which the United States declined to ratify.

Oil Sands

Non-conventional petroleum deposits heavily mined by Canada, allowing Canada to surpass Saudi Arabia by 2004 as the top single oil exporter to the U.S.

Energy Policy Act of 2005

A U.S. federal statute supporting alternative energy research and mandating that 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels be blended into gasoline by 2012.

CAFE Standards

Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards set by federal law, mandated in 2007 to increase from 27.5 mpg to 35 mpg by 2020, and raised in 2009 to 39 mpg for standard vehicles.

Deepwater Horizon Disaster

The 2010 explosion and sinking of a BP drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the largest marine oil spill in history with over 4.9 million barrels spilled.

Tight Oil

Petroleum reserves trapped in dense shale rock formations, unlocked through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.

Keystone XL Pipeline

A proposed TransCanada pipeline project rejected by President Barack Obama in 2015 due to risks of oil spills and greenhouse gas emissions.

Ancient Shallow Oceans

Geologic marine environments present around 100 Ma with average global temperatures of about $35^\circ\text{C}$ (compared to $15^\circ\text{C}$ today) that explain the uneven modern distribution of oil reserves.

Culminating Transportation PSA

A student project designed to create a short film educating people on reducing their transportation carbon footprint and petroleum usage.