Yet this is an enormous oversimplification since a barrel of oil can yield hundreds of end products without which we are all stuffed. To take an obscure but increasingly important example, I once visited the Phillips 66 Humber Refinery in the English county of Lincolnshire, where they turn the tarry stuff left at the bottom of the barrel into something called “needle coke.” That needle coke—a hard, black, stony substance, which looks a lot like coal—is the main feedstock for the production of synthetic graphite, the chief ingredient in the anodes in lithium-ion batteries.
