From Shale Oil to Super Majors: Ten Pioneers of the Oil Business

In 1850 Young patented a process for distilling paraffin oil and wax from cannel coal and later oil shale, founding a commercial mineral oil industry in Scotland years before petroleum drilling began.

Bissell founded the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, the first petroleum company established in America, which is why he is widely called the father of the American oil industry.

Drake struck oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania on 27 August 1859, the conventional birth of the modern petroleum industry, and his iron drive pipe made drilling through loose ground practical.

Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in 1870 and built it into the dominant American oil company, until the Supreme Court ordered it broken into more than thirty companies in 1911.

Flagler co-founded Standard Oil and later spent his oil fortune on the Florida East Coast Railway, which opened the state east coast to settlement and tourism.

Nobel built Branobel into the dominant producer in the Baku oil fields during the 1870s and 1880s, introducing the first oil tankers on the Caspian Sea and pipelines that moved crude away from the wells.

From 1892 Samuel shipped bulk oil through the Suez Canal in specially designed tankers, and in 1907 he merged Shell with Royal Dutch Petroleum to form Royal Dutch Shell.

Lucas leased land on the Spindletop salt dome in 1899 and drove the drilling that blew in the Lucas gusher on 10 January 1901, the well that opened the modern petroleum industry.

In 1901 D'Arcy obtained a concession to explore for oil across much of Persia, and in 1909 he used it to found the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became BP.

Getty founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and became one of the wealthiest private citizens in the world, with a fortune estimated at 1.2 billion dollars in 1966.