Comment on They even got their own island

• GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  As in, at the surface and readily used? Yes and no. Sure, there was some amount of oil at the surface, but it’s very low grade and mixed into the soil. This presentation has an image on the first page to give you an idea of what they’re starting with. It looks more like asphalt than oil (and is very similar). In fact, this stuff is so difficult to extract that, even though it was known about in the 18th century (by Western civilization), it wasn’t mined until 1960.

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