Renewable biodiesel from saltwater algae has been around a while. This was the original oil industry and was profitable for several thousand years.
I read somewhere that it was due to a shortage of whale oil in World War II. that Automatic Transmission Fluid was invented.
It is certainly a fine lubricant, I use it for many things, guns, any place a very fine oil is called for, I hadn’t realized it but after 1990 Ford went to using ATF in their manual transmissions as well.
Till about 1840.