I was wondering, which came first? The machines that drill for oil, or the oil that runs the drilling machines? And for that matter, which came first? The refinery, or the machines (cranes, dozers, etc) that build the refinery???
Pure guess here, but people have had drilling equipment for a long time, to drill wells for water. Dunno what they lubricated those pumps with for sure, but there are animal and vegetable sources for grease and oil. And petroleum does sometimes seep to the surface. Serendipitous discoveries aren’t rare in this world – various oils are useful as fuel, for lighting and lubrication, it’s not impossible to start looking for one use and discover another. For example, early oil drillers were annoyed by a pasty, jelly-like contaminate of the petroleum they were drilling for fuel, that gloppy paste clogged their rigs – and also soothed their abrasions, hence the use of petroleum jelly. I don’t think anyone work up one morning and said, “I’m sure if I drill random spots on the Earth, I’m bound to find something I can use to lubricate a rectal thermometer for better comfort.”
Original drilling machines were based on machines that existed to drill for salt wells. Edwin “Colonel” Drake was the first person widely credited with successfully drilling for oil (as with virtually every such thing, a few individuals were doing it earlier but because their actions did not precipitate an oil boom or gain much attention they aren’t historically relevant.) The drill he used was a steam-powered machine, and I imagine like most steam engines of the late 1850s it was powered by coal. Burning coal created the heat required to create the steam which powered the moving parts.
Lubricant has existed for thousands of years for wagon wheels and other such things, and typically it was animal fat prior to the industrial revolution. I couldn’t know specifically what lubricant Drake was using for his machine, but animal fat based lubricants were still widely used in the 19th century.
At the time the primary use for oil was not as a source of fuel for machines, but as a source of fuel in simple oil lamps of the day. That technology already was fully developed but it all ran on whale oil. Whale oil prices were high enough that people start to believe “rock oil” which had been known since ancient times but not collectable in any large scale might be able to provide a cheap alternative to whale oil if a way was found to collect lots of it. Thus people started drilling for it, without knowing particularly very much about geology or anything of that nature.
Most of what I know of the early oil industry comes from incidental references found in reading general U.S. history, which by no means makes me an expert…
The earliest extraction of crude oil came from simply scooping up small quantities of the stuff from seeps where it had risen to the surface, the La Brea tar pits in California being one of the best-known examples. Commercial use was limited, mostly used in caulking, lubrication (where it was used in place of various animal and vegetable oils), and particularly in patent medicines. A lot of the early drilling in the California oil fields was centered around drilling around these natural seeps in order to increase the flow, and these wells were pretty shallow. Early ones were drilled by conventional water-well drilling methods, often by use of a percussion drill which was frequently hand-powered. So the techniques for drilling were well-established long before oil extraction became a serious enterprise.
Refining was first done by fractional distillation which is a pretty simple process and does not require any particular specialized infrastructure. I suspect that early refining was done on a small scale to manufacture small amounts of patent medicine, so no large refining facilities were needed.
SS
In addition, I’m sure that distilling coal would produce some sort of liquid usable for lubricating machinery.
SeldomSeen, I thought oil was first discovered in PA. I’ll have to read up on just how they done it!
Yes, but it’s a difficult & expensive process. Now normally used only when oil it not available (like in some Axis countries during WWII). Otherwise it’s much cheaper to use oil. This might change in the future, as oil gets more scarce and producing ‘synthetic’ oil becomes more cost-effective.
No, oil has been known since ancient times. It seeped out of the ground naturally in many places, and people would collect it. However up until the late 19th century human beings were not aware of oil’s potential as a fuel source. Whenever it was collected it was typically used in the small patent medicine trade or as an alternative to fat-based lubricants.
In the 1840s, salt drilling had become a fairly big and important industry. An owner of a salt works had a common problem, his salt well was being fouled up with oil. Initially this was just seen as a detriment to operations because the oil was not very marketable. Samuel Kier tried to earn some profit off his “useless” byproduct by selling it as a medicine / lubricant but he made very little money off of that application.
Apparently when one of his pools of oil caught fire one day it gave him an idea to try and market it as a fuel for lamps. The processing of oil into kerosene was a process already invented by this time, however it was not very efficient and was not considered economical due to the fact that oil was not widely produced. With no formal training in chemistry Kier actually developed a more efficient method of refining crude oil into kerosene and he began selling it as lamp fuel to coal miners. This actually worked, and while Kier failed to patent his invention and thus cut himself out of immense amounts of profit, he still became quite wealthy off of selling kerosene for lamps.
Up to that point as has been mentioned the primary lighting fuel was whale oil. As anyone can probably figure out, that is a commodity that was in limited supply and only getting more and more limited. Demand for whale oil along with skyrocketing demand for lighting was a big part of what nearly drove many species of whale to extinction in the 19th century. It also meant whale oil was steadily getting more expensive. When someone found a way to produce a good amount of an alternative, there was suddenly a whole new avenue for industrialists to make money. It was a true game changer.
Kier started cashing in on his byproduct oil in the early 1850s. Some businessmen began to speculate that if you can get oil out of a salt well as a byproduct, there must be large underground pools of oil and if they were tapped you could drill large amounts of oil directly. This was essentially pure conjecture and there was little formal science to support these conclusions. Nonetheless some individuals put some money together and sent Edwin Drake out into Pennsylvania to try and drill for oil. They chose Pennsylvania because it was one of the places where oil was known to seep freely from the ground, and logic suggested that would be a place you could find larger underground pools of oil.
Apparently the businessmen backing Drake got cold feet pretty quickly, and he was essentially on his own after only spending a small amount of time in Pennsylvania. Drake became a bit of a local joke, and locals began to come by to see the crazy guy drilling into ground for oil. The Seneca Oil Company which had originally financed the venture had essentially abandoned him and the project continued based purely on Drake’s own desire to see it succeed, Drake eventually had to acquire more investment capital from friends to continue operations.
Drake actually had consulted with Samuel Kier about the process of drilling and it was arranged that when/if Drake struck oil, he would send his shipments to Kier who would refine them into kerosene. Since Kier was one of the few people who was doing kerosene refining on a meaningful scale at that point. So with oil, the refinery came first, even the drilling came first (for salt), and the machines that did the drilling were probably coal powered steam engine driven drilling machines initially.
What was so important about Drake’s success was it was done in a way that showed people this was a real deal, a potential massive industry, and that drilling for oil was capable of producing a consistent, large amount of crude. Kier wasn’t the first person to refine kerosene from oil, although he was the first one in America who thought it might be a good business venture. Drake was not the first person to successfully get oil out of a well, but he was the first one who successfully drilled a large amount of oil from a well and had it immediately refined and sold.
Elaborating a bit on what Seldom Seen said, Titusville, PA, where the famous oil well was drilled, is on the banks of Oil Creek. The creek was called that already long before the well was drilled, because oil seeps out of the ground along the banks. We might not be impressed with the quantity today, but the locals had been collecting the oil for centuries and using it for things like waterproofing and medicines for skin problems.
Didn’t mean to imply that California was the first oil discovery, only that it was one of the earlier ones, and that early on the same techniques were used that already existed for water wells, including the hand-powered percussion drills. There is evidence that the La Brea pits were used by native Americans for various purposes long before European settlers arrived. No doubt that occurred in other places where surface oil was located as well…the CA oilfields just happen to be the area I’m somewhat familiar with through reading.
Thanks, Chacoguy for the link, I wasn’t aware of the Elaterite Butte source.
SS
Family note–my ancestors were investors in the third oil well ever drilled.
Or the second, I forget which.
It was in Pennsylvania, just like the first.
I can’t help but mention the oil producer Joseph Hatch, who - having first run out of whales, then seals - moved on to penguins.
You’re more than welcome; I’d be happy to take you downriver sometime.
“Every man has to go down the river sometime”* 
Edward Abbey vide Huckleberry Finn