The “basics” of the petroleum, also known as crude oil, are not that basic. The goal of our site is to make it a bit more basic while emphasizing the environmental and social impacts that this chain inevitably creates. Below is a video to give a better idea of the basics of the process that turns an underground substance into something that we use every day. If you go to the commodity chain page, we explain briefly the questions that our page answers and have a graph of the basic commodity chain. Links from that page will go into detail, including lists and visual aids. We also created a map, listed under the maps portion of our site, and our references are listed here. We hope that our website is informative and easy to follow. For those of us that are not experts on geology and chemistry, this information can be tough to decipher, so we hope that this site can be used as an educational tool to learn more about a process that impacts our daily lives. No matter where you live, it is likely that you use petroleum. Whether you use gas to fuel your home or car or breathe in fumes as you walk through the city, petroleum is all around you. It is critical to understand the impacts that this substance that is so pervasive in our society has on not just us, but our environment. Happy reading!