Who Knew? Dinosaur Blood Makes for Crappy Gasoline

The following conversation took place as Joy drove home with her parents in a fossil fuel burning Chrysler. They were discussing Pemex, the nationalized oil company of Mexico. Mexico sells a lot of its crude oil to U.S. companies. Joy’s father is a long-time petrochemical refining consultant, so he’s seen his share of Mexican crude.

Dad: [Name of refinery redacted] processes about 50,000 barrels of Mexican crude every day.

Joy: 50,000 barrels a day? That’s a lot of gasoline. How we don’t run out, I have no idea. (Trying to sound smart)… Most Mexican oil is from offshore drilling.

Mom: I wonder why they don’t do more drilling onshore in Mexico?

Joy (speculating wildly): Probably because of all the mountains. It’s not flat like Texas.

Dad: No, that has nothing to do with it. It’s random, you find it where ever dinosaurs died….

Joy (dumbfounded): ….I thought gasoline was from, you know, old plants and stuff.

Dad: No, mostly dinosaurs. They’re huge and there used to be tons of them. That’s what most gasoline comes from.

Joy: That’s kind of creepy. And sad.

Mom: Yeah, it really is, isn’t it?

Dad: There’s even some crude that’s hard to use because it contains so much iron. Iron from the blood of dinosaurs. It’s hard to remove the iron.

Joy (a little grossed out): Uh, wow.

(Hours later, an incredulous Joy Googles the issue and discovers that one Tyrannosaurus Rex yields 460 gallons of gasoline. Moral of the story: Dinosaurs fuel this world.)

Tags: energy, gasoline