UPDATE – Drake was not the beginning. Two years previously, some Romaninans had been at it in the city of Ploiesti (h/t to Jonathan Schofield – @schofield).
Meanwhile, as @AmitavGhosh has pointed out
Wikipedia here – “home to one of the world’s oldest petroleum industries, with its first crude oil exports dating back to 1853”
But that’s only crude oil exports. You’ve also got this.
Yenangyaung (or Yenan Chaung) can be translated as ‘creek of stinking water’ and the fact that ‘yenan’ became the Burmese word for ‘oil’ gives a clue to what those early travellers witnessed. In 1755 George Baker and John North en route to King Alaungpaya’s capital, Shwebo, found “about 200 families who are chiefly employed in getting Earth-oil out of Pitts (sic)”. Forty years later, in 1795-96, Major Michael Symes was leading a delegation from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava at Amarapura and gave a more detailed account of the Yenangyaung riverside export point:
“…the celebrated wells of Petroleum which supply the whole empire (of Ava) and many parts of India, with that useful product were five miles to the east of this place….The mouth of the creek was crowded with large boats waiting to receive a lading of oil, and immense pyramids of earthen jars were raised in and around the village… The smell of oil was extremely offensive. We saw several thousand jars filled with it ranged along the bank. Some of these were continually breaking, and the contents mingling with the sand…”
When (not if) I get things wrong
a) please tell me
b) I will correct the record, without pretending I didn’t make the mitake.
On this day, August 27 in 1859 “Colonel” Drake hit oil
The Drake Well is a 69.5-foot-deep (21.2 m) oil well in Cherrytree Township, Venango County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the success of which sparked the first oil boom in the United States. The well is the centerpiece of the Drake Well Museum located 3 miles (5 km) south of Titusville.
Drilled by Edwin Drake in 1859, along the banks of Oil Creek, it is the first commercial oil well in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Well
[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 286 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
The oil age begins… We have been doing this a long time.
What happened next?
You are living it.