Long before petroleum became a global energy commodity, the dark liquid was collected from the ground, transported by animals, and sold for various purposes.
In Baku, now part of Azerbaijan, oil was already being used to light homes centuries before modern oil drilling emerged in the United States.
Yet the history of petroleum did not begin with a single well or discovery. It involved many people who collected, traded, and processed oil in different ways as human energy needs evolved.
Petroleum Before the Industrial Era
The use of petroleum dates back thousands of years. According to Alfred N. Mann in Some Petroleum Pioneers of Pittsburgh (2009), people in Mesopotamia used oil around 4000 BCE as an adhesive and to coat ships.
Other civilizations also used it in construction and medicine, while its use for lighting and heating remained limited.
In Pennsylvania, the United States, the Seneca people had collected and traded naturally seeping oil for centuries. Known as Seneca Oil, it was used for purposes including medicinal salves and traditional remedies.
European settlers later began collecting oil from natural seeps in the region, with records dating back to at least 1792.
Meanwhile, the oil trade had developed in Baku. The explorer Marco Polo recorded the use of oil for household lighting in the 13th century.
Centuries later, travel accounts and geographical records described oil being transported to various regions by camels and donkeys. In 1683, Engelbert Kaempfer, a German traveler, recorded that oil from Baku was exported to Russia and Eastern Europe.
These accounts show that oil trading existed long before drilling became an industrial activity. However, the oil traded at the time was not necessarily used as fuel in the modern sense. Without processing, crude oil had limitations that made its widespread use difficult.
When Petroleum Began to Be Processed into Fuel
A significant shift came as people sought ways to process crude oil into more practical products. One of the figures involved was Samuel Kier, a businessman from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who began selling oil from his family's salt wells around 1847.
Marketed as Rock Oil, the product was sold in small bottles for 50 cents per half-pint and promoted as a remedy for various ailments.
Around 1854, Kier began refining crude oil through distillation. According to Mann, the main product was kerosene, a fuel better suited for lamps.
This development became an important part of petroleum history because processing made crude oil more useful for lighting and other purposes.
Similar efforts to produce illuminating fuel were underway in Europe. Abraham Gesner, a Canadian chemist, received a US patent in 1854 for kerosene as an illuminating fluid.
Meanwhile, in what is now Poland, Ignacy Łukasiewicz helped develop the use of kerosene lamps. A lamp designed by Łukasiewicz and made by Adam Bratkowski was first lit at a hospital in Lwów on July 31, 1853, according to the Bóbrka Museum of Oil and Gas Industry.
However, refining oil and drilling for it were two distinct developments. Oil that seeped naturally from the ground, or was discovered while digging wells for other purposes, had been used long before this period.
The next challenge was to obtain oil in larger, more consistent quantities to meet market demand.
The Birth of the Modern Oil Industry
This effort brought Edwin Laurentine Drake to Titusville, Pennsylvania. Drake was neither a geologist nor the discoverer of petroleum. A former railroad conductor, he was hired by the Seneca Oil Company in 1857 to find a commercially viable way to produce oil.
Working with William Smith, a salt-well driller, Drake used drilling techniques to reach oil beneath the surface. On August 27, 1859, their well struck oil at a depth of approximately 69 feet, or 21 meters.
The achievement became a major milestone in the emergence of the modern oil industry in the United States. However, Drake was not the first person to discover, use, or trade petroleum.
Long before the Titusville well, oil had been collected from natural seeps and used for various purposes. In Canada, James Miller had also drilled an oil well about a year before Drake's success, although its production was limited.
Drake's legacy rests primarily on demonstrating that oil could be extracted through drilling in quantities that supported commercial development. Afterward, more people flocked to Pennsylvania in search of oil, while refining and trading facilities expanded to accommodate the growing supply.
Over time, petroleum evolved from a liquid collected from natural seeps into a commodity that powered industry and transportation. This transformation did not stem from a single discovery, but from practices and innovations that had developed over centuries.
