History of Oil:  A Timeline of Key Events in the Oil Industry

1850 – Kerosene Gaslight Company was formed by Abraham Gesner, a Canadian geologist who developed a process to refine kerosene from coal.  Kerosine burned more cleanly than whale oil, the dominant illumination fuel at the time.

1853 – An early commercial well is hand-dug in Poland

1853 – America’s first oil refinery built by Samuel Kier in Pittsburgh, PA

1857 – American Merrimac Company digs a “well” to 280 feet in Trinidad, Caribbean

1858 – James Miller Williams digs an oil well in Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada

August 27, 1859 – First oil well drilled in Titusville, PA by Edwin Drake of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company

1866 – Oil production begins in Oil Springs, Texas

1867 – Rockefeller forms the Standard Oil Company

1870 – Standard Oil is the dominant refining company in Pennsylvania

1870 – Kerosine replaces whale oil as the dominant fuel for illumination, bringing an end to the era of whale oil.

1880s – Pennsylvania is producing 77% of the global oil supply.  Russia would eclipse as the dominant producer by the 1900s.

1892 – Edward L. Doheny drills the first oil well in Los Angeles.  Within five years there would be 2500 oil wells and two hundred oil companies in the area.

1894 – First significant Texas oil field developed near Corsicana and would eventually build the first modern refinery in Texas.

1900 – Standard Oil begins to operate in California

January 10, 1901 – Spindletop Geyser

The well-known Spindletop (actually named the Lucas No. 1 well) was a literal gusher of oil that had never been seen before in the United States.  This discovery near Beaumont, Texas would set off the oil industry boom in Texas.

More than 1500 oil companies would be formed within a year of the Spindletop geyser.

1909 – Oil production in the United States surpassed that of the rest of the world combined.

1911 – US Supreme Court ordered the Standard Oil Trust to break apart.  The monopoly would become thirty-four separate companies.

1938 – Discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia

1956 – Suez Crisis and nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt

1960 – OPEC formed in Baghdad, Iraq

1973-74 Arab oil embargo

1980s – Oil glut sends the price of oil from $35 a barrel to below $10

1989 – Exxon Valdez oil spill

1990 – Gulf War

1997 – Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) proliferates after the Mitchell Energy Company perfects the technique making it economically feasible.

The 2000s – Oil prices spike.  With prices for oil generally staying below $25 a barrel, prices hit $30 in

2003.  The price of oil continues to climb above $65 in 2005 and eventually hits a high of $147.30 in 2008.

2008 – Global Financial Crisis – Just as oil prices are topping out at $147 a barrel, the global financial crisis sends economic demand into rapid decline.

2010 – BP Horizon oil spill

2015 – Oil Glut.  The effectiveness and explosion of oil production in the US due to advancements in hydraulic fracturing leads to a global glut in oil supplies.  The US lifts oil export ban that has been in place to strategically protect domestic oil reserves.

The impending oil price collapse would eventually lead to consolidation among oil industry producers.