Hydrocarbon-degrading Yeasts

As all fossil fuels, petroleum consists primarily of a complex mixture of molecules known as hydrocarbons (molecules which contain both and carbon). It's called crude oil until it comes out of the earth, and it may have various liquids, solids, and trace minerals mixed along with it. A variety of consumer products are made of petroleum through the refinement processes. The most popular examples are fuels: gasoline, jet fuel, diesel oil , kerosene, and propane. It is also used for the production of asphalt and lubricant grease, and is a raw material for synthetic chemicals. Petroleum-derived chemicals and materials include plastics, pesticides , fertilizers, paints, solvents, refrigerants, cleaning fluids, detergents, antifreeze, and artificial fibres. The modern oil industry started in Pennsylvania in 1859, when the first oil well was built by a person named Edwin L. Drake, a facility to extract petroleum from natural reservoirs. Petroleum has since become a valuable commodity in industrialized parts of the globe and oil companies are actively exploring crude oil deposits and building large oil extraction plants.