Running Out of Whales

DR. RICHARD ALLEY: This is an editorial cartoon that was published in the magazine, the publication, Vanity Fair in the year 1861, just before the US Civil War. And it is the grand ball given by the whales in honor of the discovery of the oil wells in Pennsylvania. And you'll notice the whales in their evening dress being served by frogs. And it's just before the Civil War, so you have the oil wells of our native land, may they never secede. And you have oils well that ends well. And we whale no more for our blubber. We have whales because we burn fossil algae. We don't burn whales to see at night anymore.

DR. RICHARD ALLEY: This is the history of whale oil production from the Yankee fleet from New England in the United States from the year 1800 on your left to the year 1880 on your right. And you'll see that they got better and better at whaling. And then, they went over peak whale oil and down the other side.

A lot of this was things like there's a civil war over here, when some whaling ships were sunk to block Southern harbors. The whaling fleet is crushed in the ice off of Alaska over here, and insurance prices go through the roof. But they were up off of Alaska because they couldn't find whales anywhere else. And that's what was going on.

Now here, there are 10,000 men on ships out of New England looking for whales in the world oceans. And there's lots more people working in New England to process the whale oil and what have you. Because you kill the whale and you boil the whale to make the oil, but then all the pieces of the whale were used for various things.

Now, as they get better at whaling, the price went down. And the low point here is about 7 dollars a gallon for whale oil that was used in lamps. As soon as peak whale oil wash it, the price of whale oil went up to 23 dollars a gallon. And this is the equivalent of modern money.

And so, what you find is it's not when you run out of the resource that the price goes up. It's as soon as the resource starts to get scarce. Now indeed, the free market worked in some sense. People went up the road from where I'm speaking to you and they drilled the first modern oil well, the Drake Well, in 1859. But you'll notice even that didn't really bring the price back down.

All of this oil-- 100 years of whaling-- 10,000 men at the peak-- collected as much whale oil as about one week of modern US oil imports. So, there's really no chance that we can actually go back to the way we used to do things.

DR. RICHARD ALLEY: This is actually the cover of a piece of sheet music that was published in 1864 in New York. This is "The American Petroleum Polka," or charge, or gallop, or waltz, or march. And it has a picture of a beautiful Pennsylvania scene, the oil well spouting its oil. Now oil was black back then. Oil is still black. But you couldn't have black oil falling on the lady's pink dress, so they made the oil white. And then bragging, "This oil well threw pure oil a 100 feet high." people understood the value that you get from oil, from petroleum. And they celebrated that.