Invention

Part 2 - Oil Wells

The American Merrimac Company was the first to drill an oil well in 1857, in the Caribbean island of Trinidad (it was 280 feet deep). This inspired Edwin Drake's 1859, steam engine powered rig that drilled a 69-foot (21 m) deep oil well near Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Samuel Kier built America's first oil refinery in Pittsburgh in 1853 and, in 1858, James Miller Williams found oil and developed a large petrochemical refining centre in Ontario, Canada.

In 1875, David Beaty discovered a crude oil field in Pennsylvania and, by 1885, this produced 77 % of the world's oil supply. However, by 1900, the Russian Branobel company in Azerbaijan, was producing more than half of global production.

At first, in north America, refineries extracted only kerosene from the crude oil. There was no demand for the more volatile fractions, including naptha and gasoline, and this was often dumped into the nearest river. The market for kerosene declined with the introduction of electric lighting but the internal combustion engine provided a market for gasoline and diesel fuel. The more recent invention of the gas turbine provided a market for jet fuel (kerosene).The growing demand for oil products created oil booms in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, and California and U.S. crude oil production increased from 2,000 barrels, in 1859, to 126 million barrels in 1906. John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company, in 1865, and became the first "oil baron". By 1879, he controlled 90% of America's refining capacity and most pipelines.

The Rothschild family, competing with the Nobel family for control of Russia's oil riches commissioned the first oil tankers and adopted the name Shell from the name of the first tanker (the Murex, a type of seashell). By 1892, Royal Dutch Petroleum, with refining operations in Indonesia, joined with Shell, in 1907, to form the Royal Dutch Shell Group.

Between 1863 and 1914 oil fields were found in Sumatra, Iraq, Iran, Peru, Venezuela and Mexico. Oil fields were exploited in Alberta (Canada) from 1947. The first offshore oil wells were drilled at Oil Rocks in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan and huge reserves of oil were discovered along the coast of the Persian Gulf in 1938.In 1907, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded to exploit Iranian oil and went on to become British Petroleum in 1954 (now BP).The 1901 discovery of the Spindletop field in Texas, USA, was exploited by Gulf Oil and Texaco among others.

In the 1930s, Gulf Oil, BP, Texaco, and Chevron made major discoveries, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and formed a cartel, with Exxon (originally Standard Oil), Royal Dutch/Shell, BP, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, and Chevron, that controlled the world's oil and gas business for most of the twentieth century.

Prior to the 1920s, the natural gas that was produced along with oil was burned (flared) as a waste by-product. Eventually, gas was used as fuel for industrial and residential heating and power generation. Now, where it is impracticable to use it, the gas is often pumped back into the oil field. Until the mid-1950s, coal was the world's main source of energy. Today, oil supplies 40% of total energy consumed in the United States. Sea, land and air transport all depend entirely on oil products and oil is the feed stock for many industrial chemicals. In 2018, worldwide production was about 95 million barrels of oil per day.