Most of that land has not been drilled, but what few off shore drilling sights that have been drilled have yielded rich deposits. There is a great controversy in this country concerning the use of off shore sites for drilling oil. Many environmentalists say that the environmental impact would be too severe if drilling was conducted off shore. Quite often in the search for petroleum, large pockets of natural gas are found. In the past, these deposits have been burned off at the surface, but the natural gas offers a cheaper cleaner burning fuel.
Natural gas is used in heaters as well as special converted engines.
It is also easy to transport through pipelines. We will have to learn to harness the natural gas deposits that we have instead of wasting them. Besides being processed and used for fuel sources, petroleum can also be a source of a wide range of organic compounds that forms the basis of the petro-chemical industry. Hundreds of plastics, synthetic textile fibers, synthetic rubber products, pharmeceuticals, pigments, and dyes are products from petroleum. It wasn't until the oil crisis of 1973 that we began to realize how much we depended upon crude petroleum for petro-chemical products.