People have used oil since the dawn of civilization. But early on, the only available oil came from natural seeps, places where oil-filled reservoir rock intersects the Earth’s surface or where fractures connect a reservoir rock to the Earth’s surface, so that oil flows out on the ground on its own.
In the United States, during the first half of the nineteenth century, people collected “rock oil” (later called petroleum, from the Latin words petra, meaning rock, and oleum, meaning oil) at seeps and used it to grease wagon axles and to make patent medicines. But such oil was rare and expensive. In 1854, George Bissel, a New York lawyer, came to the realization that oil might have broader uses, particularly as fuel for lamps (to replace whale oil). Bissel and a group of investors contracted Edwin Drake, a colorful character who had drifted among many professions, to find a way to drill for oil in rocks beneath a hill near Titusville, Pennsylvania, where an oily film floated on the water of springs. Using the phony title “Colonel” to add respectability, Drake hired drillers and obtained a steam-powered drill. Work was slow and the investors became discouraged, but the very day that a letter arrived ordering Drake to stop drilling, his drillers found that the hole, which had reached a depth of 21.2 m, had filled with oil. They set up a pump, and on August 27, 1859, for the first time in history, oil was pumped out of the ground. No one had given much thought to the question of how to store the oil, so workers dumped it into empty whisky barrels. This first oil well yielded 10 to 35 barrels a day, which sold for about $20 a barrel (1 barrel equals 42 gallons).
Within a few years, thousands of oil wells had been drilled in many states, and by the turn of the twentieth century civilization had begun its addiction to oil. Initially, most oil went into the production of kerosene for lamps. Later, when electricity took over from kerosene as the primary source for illumination, gasoline derived from oil became the fuel of choice for the newly invented automobile. Oil was also used to fuel electric power plants. In its early years, the oil industry was in perpetual chaos. When “wildcatters” discovered a new oil field, there would be a short-lived boom during which the price of oil could drop to pennies a barrel. In the midst of this chaos, John D. Rockefeller established the Standard Oil Company, which monopolized the production, transport, and marketing of oil. The Supreme Court eventually broke Standard Oil down into several companies (including Exxon, Chevron, Mobil, Sohio, Amoco, Arco, Conoco, and Marathon). Oil became a global industry governed by the complex interplay of politics, profits, supply, and demand. The business has evolved, and as the twenty-first century began, many of the companies have merged.
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