00:00 Petroleum, a black yellowish liquid that humans discovered thousands of years ago, is responsible for much of our modern world, and this episode explores how it becomes a usable fuel and how it is extracted from rocks.

02:21 Petroleum, derived from the Latin words for rock and oil, has been used for thousands of years and is a naturally occurring organic fluid that is a blackish color with yellow tints.

04:06 Petroleum is a complex mixture of different hydrocarbons and organic compounds, and there are different types of petroleum based on sulfur content, density, and location.

05:50 Different types of petroleum, such as West Texas Intermediate, Brent Blend, Western Canadian Select, and Dubai Crude, have different markets and are bought and sold in barrels, which is a unit of measurement that dates back to the 19th century.

07:43 Crude oil production varies between countries, with the United States needing a million separate oil wells that produce between 1 to 10 barrels per day, while Saudi Arabia has fewer wells but each is highly productive, producing over 10,000 barrels per day, and the economic viability of tapping into petroleum reserves depends on the price of oil.

09:34 Crude oil is processed through fractional distillation to extract various hydrocarbon fuels, including gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and other products, with approximately 46% of a barrel of crude oil converted into gasoline.

11:23 Gasoline is one of the lightest liquids that can be extracted from crude oil and is usually refined and sold within a few weeks or months after leaving the refinery, with the United States being the largest producer of crude oil in the world followed by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Canada, and as of 2021, there were 88 million barrels of oil produced globally every single day, with prices listed globally and purchased in US dollars through the Petrodollar system established in 1974, making petroleum the world's most important commodity for over 100 years.