Col. Fletcher Prouty 1994 Interview on Oil and Rockefeller

In a 1994 interview, Col. Fletcher Prouty talks about oil and what Rockefeller's role was.

Transcript

00:00Then oil went from just a lubricant to a fuel, and it made it valuable.

00:07And Rockefeller happened to be the smartest man in the business at the time, but he made

00:12a lot of, most of his money, or much of it, off the transport of the petroleum as well

00:15as selling it.

00:18But one thing they realized was, if you, because oil, oil is, putting a price on oil is like

00:25putting a price on a pail of water, you know, no initial cost is in the ground.

00:29And in those days, they were, some of it, almost what you'd call surface mining the oil.

00:34They didn't go down deep.

00:36So in order to get the price up, they hit on the idea that they would have to make it appear

00:41to be scarce.

00:42That, boy, after we take the next few barrels out, we're probably going to have to close

00:46as well.

00:47You know, that kind of thing.

00:48Well, a very fructuitous event, in 1892, there was a convention in Geneva of scientists to

00:57determine what organic substances are.

01:02Well, the definition of organic is a substance with hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

01:09And so it's usually a living substance, a tree.

01:12You analyze a dead tree, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen, and grass, and so on, living things,

01:19animals.

01:20They are hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

01:23So at this Geneva Convention, Rockefeller took advantage of sending some scientists over,

01:30who said, oil, petroleum, is hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

01:37Therefore, it must be derived from the spoiling, the rotting, of formerly living matter.

01:48And playing the game properly, when the scientific convention was over, they defined oil as a residue

01:56from formerly living matter.