What if oil was never commercially viable?

Been building out this timeline for a while.
Petroleum exists but refining it proves unworkable. Coal and early electrification fill the gap instead.

-No internal combustion engine as we know it. Steam and electric rail dominate overland transport well into the 20th century.
-The Middle East never becomes a strategic prize. No Sykes-Picot carve-up driven by European oil interests. Any Arab uprisings against the Ottomans happen organically, and the Ottoman Empire probably survives into the 1940s in some form.
-WWI still happens since the underlying nationalist tensions are all there, but it looks very different without mechanized blitzkrieg.
-The US rises on coal and hydro, but the balance of power in the Pacific shifts. Japan’s imperial expansion changes character without oil as a strategic chokepoint.
Genuinely the rabbit hole that keeps giving. Happy to go deeper on any branch if there’s interest.