Petroleum or crude oil, also referred to as simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name petroleum covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil and petroleum products that consist of refined crude oil.
A filling station is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. The most common fuels sold in the 2010s were gasoline and diesel fuel.
A drop in oil production in the wake of the Iranian Revolution led to an energy crisis in 1979. Although the global oil supply only decreased by approximately four percent, the oil markets' reaction raised the price of crude oil drastically over the next 12 months, more than doubling it to $39.50 per barrel ($248/m3). The sudden increase in price was connected with fuel shortages and long lines at gas stations similar to the 1973 oil crisis.
Oil Storm is a 2005 television simulation portraying a future oil-shortage crisis in the United States, precipitated by a hurricane destroying key parts of the United States' oil infrastructure. The program was an attempt to depict what would happen if the highly oil-dependent country was suddenly faced with gasoline costing upwards of $7 to $8 per gallon. Directed by James Erskine and written by Erskine and Caroline Levy, it originally aired on FX Networks on 5 June 2005, at 8 p.m. ET.
Edu-Ware Services, Inc. was an educational and entertainment software publisher established in 1979 by Sherwin Steffin and Steven Pederson. It was known for its adventure games, role-playing video games, and flight simulators for the Apple II series of computers.
The Oil Shockwave event was a policy wargaming scenario created by the joint effort of several energy policy think tanks, the National Commission on Energy Policy and Securing America's Future Energy. It outlined a series of hypothetical international events taking place in December 2005, all related to world supply and demand of petroleum. Participants in the scenario role-played Presidential Cabinet officials, who were asked to discuss and respond to the events. The hypothetical events included civil unrest in OPEC country Nigeria, and coordinated terrorist attacks on ports in Saudi Arabia and Alaska. In the original simulation, the participants had all previously held jobs closely related to their roles in the exercise.
David Mullich is an American game producer and designer. He created the 1980 adventure game The Prisoner, produced the 1995 adaptation I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and developed Heroes of Might and Magic III and Heroes of Might and Magic IV.
The price of oil, or the oil price, generally refers to the spot price of a barrel of benchmark crude oil—a reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Brent Crude, Dubai Crude, OPEC Reference Basket, Tapis crude, Bonny Light, Urals oil, Isthmus, and Western Canadian Select (WCS). Oil prices are determined by global supply and demand, rather than any country's domestic production level.
For further details see the "Energy crisis" series by Facts on File.
The Prisoner is an adventure game for the Apple II published by Edu-Ware in 1980. It is loosely based on the 1960s television series The Prisoner and incorporates that show's themes about the loss of individuality in a technological, controlling society. The player's role is that of an intelligence agent who has resigned from his job for reasons known only to himself, and who has been abducted to an isolated island community that seems designed to be his own personal prison. The island's authorities will use any means—including coercion, disorientation, deception, and frustration—to learn why their prisoner has resigned, and every character, location, and apparent escape route seem to be part of a grand scheme to trick the player into revealing a code number representing the prisoner's reason for resigning. The game occasionally breaks the fourth wall by acknowledging that a game is being played.
Compu-Math was a series of mathematics tutorials developed and published by Edu-Ware Services in the 1980s. Each program in the Compu-Math series begins with a diagnostic Pre-Test, which presents learners with mathematics problems to determine their current skill level in the subject and then recommends the appropriate learning module. Each learning module begins by specifying the instructional objectives for that module and proceeds to teach those specific goals using shaping and cueing methods, and finishes by testing to verify that learners have indeed learned the skills being taught by the module.
Space is a text-based role-playing video game for the Apple II designed by Steven Pederson and Sherwin Steffin of Edu-Ware Services. It was one of the first science fiction RPGs to appear on personal computers. An expansion pack, Space II by David Mullich, was released in the same year.
Terrorist is a real-time, two-player strategy game developed by Steven Pederson of Edu-Ware Services for the Apple II and published in 1980. One player plays the government authority, while the other plays a terrorist organization in three scenarios: the capture of a building and taking of hostages, air piracy, and nuclear blackmail. Players make their moves at the same time through the use of game paddles. Winner and loser is judged by an elaborate scoring system based upon the government player's societal values and the terrorist player's goals.
Network is a real-time, two player business simulation game developed by David Mullich for the Apple II and published by Edu-Ware in 1980.
Petroleum has been a major industry in the United States since the 1859 Pennsylvania oil rush around Titusville, Pennsylvania. Commonly characterized as "Big Oil", the industry includes exploration, production, refining, transportation, and marketing of oil and natural gas products. The leading crude oil-producing areas in the United States in 2023 were Texas, followed by the offshore federal zone of the Gulf of Mexico, North Dakota and New Mexico.
Rendezvous: A Space Shuttle Simulation, is a space simulator published 1982 by Edu-Ware, and developed by Titan Computer Products and NASA scientist Wesley Huntress.
On 8 March 2020, Saudi Arabia initiated a price war on oil with Russia, which facilitated a 65% quarterly fall in the price of oil. The price war was triggered by a break-up in dialogue between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia over proposed oil-production cuts in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia walked out of the agreement, leading to the fall of the OPEC+ alliance.
The Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act of 1980 was enacted as part of a compromise between the Carter Administration and the Congress over the decontrol of crude oil prices. The Act was intended to recoup the revenue earned by oil producers as a result of the sharp increase in oil prices brought about by the OPEC oil embargo. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Act's title was a misnomer. "Despite its name, the crude oil windfall profit tax... was not a tax on profits. It was an excise tax... imposed on the difference between the market price of oil, which was technically referred to as the removal price, and a statutory 1979 base price that was adjusted quarterly for inflation and state severance taxes."
As part of the sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian War, on September 2, 2022, finance ministers of the G7 group of nations agreed to cap the price of Russian oil and petroleum products in an effort intended to reduce Russia's ability to finance its war on Ukraine while at the same time hoping to curb further increases to the 2021–2023 inflation surge.
