What Is Oil?
If your home uses heating oil, you are tied to millions of years of history. 

Oil is really the remains of ancient plants and animals, compressed deep in the earth into liquid strings of hydrogen and carbon. People have known about oil since the ancient Greeks gave it its name, petroleum, from the Greek “petra” for rock and “oleum” for oil. If you have children interested in dinosaurs, you might mention they have parts of dinosaurs in their oil tank!

The modern history of oil began in the 1840s, when a Canadian geologist discovered that crude oil could be distilled into kerosene to light lanterns. The heating oil industry may have begun with Petro, when M.A. Fessler invented the oil burner to take advantage of the crude oil discoveries in California. The company he founded, Fess System Co., eventually became Petro.