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Oil is a Highly Refined Mineral

Oil plays one of the most important roles in our daily lives as the elements of oil as hydrocarbons are the constructing blocks for some vital products as plastics, pharmaceuticals and many more. The fossil oil has been considered as to be the appropriate source of hydrogen for the clean power generation. In fact we cannot think our lives with the presence of oil. Our world would pulverize to stop without oil. Transportations like cars, buses, ships etc would stop running. So would the factories. Airplanes would be stuck. Tractors of the various farms would stop working and rust. Oil is used to heat up various places that would freeze in the winter. Oil is as important as it is used in various products such as plastic products, farm fertilizers, cosmetics, nylon clothing, detergents, wax and many more.

Now the question is what is there in the oil that makes it such a valuable object? Actually oil is a kind of neutral, non-polar chemical substance that remains viscous liquid state in normal ambient temperature. Oils contain high carbon and hydrogen which makes it flammable and slippery. Mainly petroleum oils are used for the manufacturing of plastics, paints and other materials. Mainly crude oil which is also known as petroleum and its refined components are the vital resources for modern economical as well as industrial backbone.  The ancient fossilized organic resources like algae and zooplankton have been gone through geochemical processes that convert into the oil. Now when the oil is being excavated from the earth core, it remains as a combinational of both organic and inorganic products. Then it has to gone through several procedures to purify.

In the present time oil is called as the highly refined mineral. But it is a misnomer as the minerals are not actually the source of the oil. Its source is innumerous ancient plants as well as animals. It is organic. But the mineral is the naturally produced substance that is inorganic and solid following a particular chemical formula which is usually abiogenic. It must be naturally occurring substance and must have a periodic (crystalline) arrangement of atoms. After the purification process of crude oil, the refined oil has been produced by several specific distillates of crude oil. This oil is also considered as mineral or organic oil. However, the term mineral refers to some solid repeatable ordered crystalline structure. In this sense oil cannot be considered as mineral.

But in some aspects, the term mineral is generally used as in reference to the natural earth recourses or non-living supplies. So in the non-scientific sense, natural oil or crude oil or petroleum resources can be considered as minerals. Moreover, the deposits of the petroleum are considered as mineral deposits. In this respect, coal, gravel, sand and such can be considered as the mineral resources due to their particular usages. So after being highly processed and purified, oil can is called as the highly refined mineral as the source of oil is a mixture different of organic and inorganic resources. After the procedure of a thorough distillation of petroleum, the mineral oil has been produced. That’s why oil can be considered from the non-scientific sense as a highly refined mineral.