Oil in American History  •  special issue, june 2012

Environmental/Industrial Disasters Map

Supply | Downstream | Environmental/Industrial Disasters | Political-Cultural | International

Making petroleum integral to human life intensified the industry’s impact worldwide, ranging from the harvest of crude from the sea bottom to the manufacture of petrochemicals. At each of these sites, as well as along the trade routes that connected product to consumers, petroleum left its mark—sometimes subtle and others more obvious. Today, historians have begun to supplement the stories of fortunes made from oil with the realities of environmental and industrial problems that grew out of petroleum development.