Drilled oil well (Drake well)
Pozo de petróleo perforado (Drake)
- Date
- 1859 · confidence high
- Place
- Titusville, Pennsylvania, United States
- Credited to
- Edwin Drake and William 'Uncle Billy' Smith (Seneca Oil Company)
- People
- 👤 Edwin Drake1819–1880
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The first well drilled expressly to extract petroleum, using percussion drilling and casing, to a depth of 21 m. It triggered the first oil rush and founded the modern petroleum industry.
Łukasiewicz opened the first oil well dug in Bóbrka (Galicia) in 1854; Drake's was the first drilled with machinery and the one that started the industry on a large scale. There were also earlier wells in Baku (1846).
What it led to
- The oil rush in Pennsylvania and boom towns like Pithole
- Refineries, pipelines and Standard Oil (1870)
- Cheap kerosene and the displacement of whale oil
- The energy base of the internal combustion engine and the 20th century
Built on
- First commercial natural gas well (Fredonia)1821
- Kerosene lamp1853
- Percussion drilling of salt wells (China; Kanawha)
- Łukasiewicz's Bóbrka well (1854)
Made possible
- Digboi oil well and refinery1889
- Spindletop gusher and rotary drilling1901
- Oil discovery at Masjed Soleyman26 de mayo de 1908
- Industrial distillation of petroleum
- Oil pipeline
- Petrol engine
- Petrochemicals