Petroleum Conservation

The amount of petroleum being sucked out of earth is getting bigger because we are demanding for it. It’s getting bigger because, I buy my son a bike to ride to school on, because my wife needs a car to go to the neighborhood grocery store and because I need a 3000 cc SUV to go to my office which happens to be 3 km from my home. And also because I won’t turn off my SUV’s engine at crossings as I am rich enough to find it ‘uncool’.


And so as ‘I’, who can easily afford to buy fuel have taken it for granted and am using it in the most inefficient manner, am demanding for more of it. This ‘I’ isn’t just me or us. ‘I’ stands for every person around the globe who has got used to living with fuel and burning it to get energy. But its high time that ‘I’ must realize that the water in my bottle will not last long enough, if its not valued with the seriousness that it deserves. And ‘I’ who has learnt to live with fuel must learn to live with its conservation too. 


But this doesn’t mean that we stop using petroleum products all together. Our economy is dependent on it so much, that it is impossible to do that. And thus comes to light the importance of ways of using this fuel ‘Efficiently’. This word efficiently means that we do the maximum amount of work, using the least amount of energy. Leading organization around the world have put their best brains to the task of bring efficiency into all phases of their work. Manufacturers of automobiles, computers, kitchen appliances, industrial equipment and every other product that uses fuel or power, are looking at making their products more energy efficient. And so as citizens of the world, even we must contribute.

Industries are major users of petroleum, using approximately 40% of the total commercial energy used in the country. Thus conservation initiatives by the industries aided and enforced by the government save energy on a large scale. Especially small and medium scale industries, which use out dated machinery, have high energy consumption as compared to their production.

Renewable sources like wind power and solar, which are still not used up to their potential must not be ignored.