The Modern History Of Oil - 1336 Words

The modern history of oil can be traced back to the early nineteenth century in 1849. Abraham Gesner, a prominent Canadian geologist, can be seen as one of the primary founders of Kerosene. Before this invention of kerosene, whale oil was the primary application for illumination in lamps but it was expensive and gave off a strong odor. Kerosene provided a cheaper and cleaner burning alternative. Shortly after his discovery, he founded the Kerosene Gas Light Company and first began by installing streetlights in Canada. Demand grew substantially and lead to Gesner relocating to the United States. Even though Gesner never hit it rich from his discovery, he has been known in history as the Father of the Petroleum Industry. People had begun to†¦show more content†¦Bissel had the crazy idea of drilling for oil. This was seen as irrational at the time, since mining was the standard. Bissel ended up contracting a man named Edwin Drake to investigate oil deposits in Pennsylvania. In August of 1859, Drake strikes oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania. This event goes down as being one of the major moments in the birth of the petroleum industry and is what initiated the oil boom. Titusville and the surrounding areas began to fill with oil refineries and wells. The Titusville population alone increased from 250 to 10,000 in just five years. Ten years after Drake’s discovery, annual domestic output was at 4 million barrels. Oil became the second most valuable export of the United States during this time. Because of this large influx, price per barrel shrunk down to 10 cents. This caused the producers to create the Oil Creek Association, which capped output and enacted floor pricing to $4 a barrel. By 1970, John D. Rockefeller had officially founded the Standard Oil Company. This time period for the oil industry was a topic of hot debate as there were no anti-monopoly laws in place at the time. Standard Oil became the largest oil refiner and Multinational Corpora tion in the world. Rockefeller was aware of the competition in the oil industry and proactively began to purchase many of them. Any company that was purchased and deemed inefficient was shut down. Rockefeller also began secret negotiations with