[Surtur]

You mentioned oil drilling as one of the fundamental ways to create wealth. What about refining the oil?

I hate to jump into someone else's conversation, but I will anyway. Refining oil is a manufacturing process. You take a raw material (crude oil) and process it into a finished product (gasoline, kerosene, and other chemical products), and that is the essence of manufacturing in nut shell.

[Logophile]

I hate to jump into someone else's conversation, but I will anyway. Refining oil is a manufacturing process. You take a raw material (crude oil) and process it into a finished product (gasoline, kerosene, and other chemical products), and that is the essence of manufacturing in nut shell.

I agree that refining is manufacturing, and so does the original poster. But what about my follow-up question: Do the engineers who design the refinery also create wealth?

(By the way, please feel free to jump in at any time—these are very public conversations.)