[sandworm101]

>> the entire Middle East

Except for Saudi sweet. There is plenty of very high quality oil in Saudi Arabia, which is no doubt in the heart of the "middle east". (Iraq and the UAE also produce sweet crude.) The really nasty stuff, the really energy-intensive gunk, is the tarsand bitumen from Canada. Saudi oil is positively green in comparison.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_crude_oil

>> The term sweet originates from the fact that a low level of sulfur provides the oil with a mildly sweet taste and pleasant smell.

[SEJeff]

Much to most of KSA's oil is full of heavy sulfur content and is considered sour. Virtually all of the Texas oil is considered sweet. WTI (Texas Sweet) is basically the benchmark for the best oil. Some of the best oil (sweet) in the middle east traditionally was from Libya, but since team america world police took out Gadaffi it has been a mess there. I'm not very familiar with Canadian oil as we don't need much of it here.

https://www.oilandgasmiddleeast.com/drilling-production/3496...

""" Saudi crude is generally a mix of heavy to medium sour oil, which is generally high in sulfur and yields a decent amount of residual fuel and vacuum gasoil. """

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_crude_oil

""" The major producers of sour crude oil include ... Saudi Arabia """

I wasn't meaning they have no sweet light crude oil, only that it is the overwhelming minority of what they have.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-middle-east-crude/analysi...

[eloff]

I wonder who took it upon themselves to taste all the different kinds of crude oil to classify them by flavor... Job for a grad student?

[xyzzyz]

Oil prospectors invented the terms when they were combing the backcountry looking for oil, without access to proper chemical labs.

[vo2maxer]

I just found this humorous clip of the Trailer Park Boys, which alludes to the tastes of various types of gasoline: https://youtu.be/RXtePW4v8zs

[sleepydog]

Wasn't oil used medicinally for a while after its discovery? Not ingested, but rubbed on your skin to ease joint pain?

[sandworm101]

More than for "a while". Oil was discovered hundreds, thousands, of years ago. It used to seep out of the ground in many places (See the opening sequence of The Beverly Hillbillies). Only once we started pumping it did all the surface seeps dry up.

[SEJeff]

Fun fact, it still does, in 2019, seep out of the ground in downtown Los Angeles. Literally on the miracle mile sits the La brea Tarpits. You can see the pond with oil bubbling out of the water. If you're ever in Los Angeles, it is a very memorable thing to visit.

https://tarpits.org/