Oil Industry

Petroleum

Petroleum or crude oil, sometimes colloquially called black gold or "Texas Tea", is a thick, dark brown or greenish liquid.

Petroleum exists in the upper strata of some areas of the Earth's crust. It consists of a complex mixture of various hydocarbons, largely of the alkane series, but may vary much in appearance and composition.

Petroleum is used mostly, by volume, for producing fuel oil and gasoline (or petrol), both important "primary energy" sources (IEA Key World Energy Statistics).

Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics.

History

The first oil wells were drilled in China in the 4th century or earlier. They had depth of up to 243 meters

By the 10th century, extensive bamboo pipelines connected oil wells with salt springs.

Ancient Persian tablets indicate the medicinal and lighting uses of petroleum in the upper echelons of their society.

The beginning of the “black gold ” industry

The modern history of petroleum began in 1846, with the discovery of the process of refining kerosene from coal by Atlantic Canada's Abraham Pineo Gesner.

In 1859 retired railroad conductor Edwin L. Drake drilled a well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, and struck oil. Soon western Pennsylvania became an important oil-producing area, and petroleum products (such as kerosene) replaced whale oil in lamps.

In the 1880s prospectors discovered oil in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana.

In 1901 the Spindeltop Field was found in eastern Texas. During the early 1900s Texas and California became leading oil producers, meeting the demand for new products, such as gasoline to fuel the newly invented automobile.

When Drake and others have placed probes in the soil, none of the chemical industries, machine or no plastic existed.

Hydropower was to that time the dominant industrial energy source.

Coal burning steam engines were on the wave, but since 1859 the U.S. energy system started to use widly fossil fuel.

At the beginning the role of oil was focusing on lighting and only after ten years it became an essential element in the raw material industry.

Nowadays, the oil industry is amazing extent, but it starting to become clear that global oil reserves will be soon exhausted, unless this has already happened.

ROMANIA

Romania was one of the major oil producers since the early industrial era of this important natural resource.

The year 1857 was a milestone in the history of Romanian and world oil industry.