Modern oil well

By the 1850s, the modern oil well was waiting to be drilled. Kerosene had created demand for petroleum. Salt well drilling technology—perfected over centuries in China and refined in Appalachia—provided the extraction technique. The geological understanding that oil accumulated in underground reservoirs was emerging. The components were converging.

The first modern oil well is contested between continents. In Galicia (then Austrian, now Polish), Ignacy Łukasiewicz and Jan Zeh dug a hand-dug well near Bóbrka in 1854, establishing what many consider the world's first oil mine. Łukasiewicz, a pharmacist who had already developed a practical kerosene distillation process in 1853, recognized the commercial potential. By 1856, he had opened the world's first oil refinery in Ulaszowice.

In North America, the more famous Drake Well emerged five years later. Edwin Drake arrived in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1858, dispatched by investors who had observed oil seeping into salt wells. Drake's innovation was applying salt-well drilling techniques systematically to petroleum extraction. After numerous setbacks—skeptical locals called it 'Drake's Folly'—his drill struck oil on August 27, 1859, at a depth of 69.5 feet.

The convergent emergence across both locations demonstrated the adjacent possible at work. In Galicia, proximity to petroleum seeps and Łukasiewicz's kerosene expertise created the conditions. In Pennsylvania, abundant surface oil seeps near Titusville and established salt drilling infrastructure provided the foundation. The whale oil crisis had created market pull for petroleum; the extraction technology existed; the commercial incentive aligned.

Drake's well triggered an immediate oil rush. Within months, prospectors descended on western Pennsylvania. Oil City, Pithole, and dozens of boomtowns erupted. Production was chaotic—early wells often gushed uncontrollably, wasting petroleum and sometimes igniting. The price of oil collapsed from $20 per barrel in January 1860 to 10 cents by December 1861 as supply overwhelmed demand.

The technical challenges of oil extraction drove rapid innovation. Wooden derricks gave way to iron. Steam engines replaced human and horse power. Pumping systems extracted oil after initial pressure declined. Pipelines replaced teamster transport. John D. Rockefeller recognized that refining, not extraction, was where scale economics applied—his Standard Oil dominated through controlling kerosene production, not wells.

Galician oil production developed in parallel, peaking in the 1900s when the region produced about 5% of world oil. The Romanian oil industry, centered on Ploiești, followed similar trajectories. Russian oil from Baku emerged in the 1870s, eventually rivaling American production. Each region had the same adjacent possible components—petroleum deposits, kerosene demand, drilling knowledge—and each developed similar extraction systems.

The modern oil well initiated the petroleum age. Within a generation, oil had displaced coal gas for lighting, whale oil for lubrication, and created entirely new industries in chemicals and eventually transportation fuels. The infrastructure built for kerosene distribution—refineries, pipelines, railroad tank cars, distribution networks—would later serve the automobile industry. Path dependence ensured petroleum's centrality to twentieth-century civilization.