The reason should be obvious: unfortunately for some, or happily for others, almost all our satisfiers do not come from mother earth, but from a barrel of crude oil. With this, I do not intend to make an apology for the oil industry, but to put the cables on the ground.
And speaking of cables, those who suppose that the vocation of hydrocarbons is electricity generation, may be because they have them crossed in the brain. In its natural state, oil is neither beautiful like the sun nor powerful like the wind. Rather, it is an unaesthetic substance and somewhat sticky to the touch. To make matters worse, as it sprouts from the subsoil it is little more than useless.
Crude oil unfolds its overwhelming versatility once it goes through industrial processes that, according to Pulitzer Prize candidate Ronald Stein, put within our reach around 6,000 products that we depend on, like breastfed babies, for our well-being. This is already a very old story.
Even the Mexica used chapopotli To elaborate tzictli, that in addition to being used for dental care and cleaning, was one of the favorite products of the Ahuianime, women of ancient Mexico whose trade was to seduce, among other things, with dazzling teeth. Although no longer suitable for seduction, today’s chewing gum also they are made from a plastic, better known as polyvinyl acetate, derived from petroleum processing.
Apart from the gum, the synthetic sole that steps on the asphalt floor where some bad walker spat on it is also made of it. Except in a very virgin world, almost everything is made of oil, including the tires and the structure of the bike of the eco-cyclist whose attacks on the multifaceted crude oil do not stop from the device that was also made with it.
So, the common question of why build a refinery when the energies of the future are renewables should become whether “our” Dos Bocas will be capable of producing enough derivatives to meet our needs. In addition, the question assails the senses because the future of oil (perhaps more than gas) is not in the generation of electricity, but in everything we consume.