PETROLEUM:

ITS ORIGIN, OCCURRENCE, PRODUCTION

AND TECHNOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

History of Petroleum-History of the Petroleum Industry in the United States, Galicia, Roumania, Russia, and other Countries.

WITHIN the memory of comparatively young men, petroleum, from being a medicinal curiosity, has advanced to be an almost indispensable article of consumption; and from a few barrels, which, in 1859, were collected by slow and painful processes, the annual production has increased to many millions of barrels, and is still increasing. It may safely be said that ever in so short a time at

no other branch of commerce has tained such enormous proportions. Forty years ago the value of petroleum was unrecognized, and the vast sources from which it was to be derived, although separated from us only by a thin crust of rock and soil, were unsuspected. With careless and unsuspecting feet we traveled over hidden treasures more valuable and wonderful than the gold mines of California. Now the extraction, refining and transportation of petroleum forms a branch of industry involving the employment of vast amounts of capital and thousands of busy hands. Inventive brains have

been set at work and stimulated to contrive appropriate apparatus for furnishing by it the most economical and beautiful light. Ships rendered no longer necessary for chasing the whale by the introduction of an oil cheaper and more available than whale oil, have been freighted with the rival oil, and sent with it to the markets of the world. All this has happened since 1859.

Petroleum has been known from the earliest historic periods, but was used for different purposes from to-day. The first notices of it we find in the Bible, it being stated in the Second Book of the Maccabees, Chap. I., “that when the Jews were led into Persia, they found pits in which the priests concealed the sacred fire they required for their sacrifices." After many years their grandchildren-contemporaries of the prophet Nehemiah-searched for the concealed fire and found an oil which, when poured upon the hot sacrificial stone, burst into a huge flame. The Jews enclosed these pits, and designating them holy, applied to them the term nephtar or nephtoj―a place of expiation or forgiveness—from which the word naphtha is derived. Höfer states that Herodotus (about 450 B. C.), mentions that "eight days' journey from Babylon stands a city called Is, the present Hit, on a small river of the same name, which discharges its stream into the Euphrates. Now the river brings down with its waters many lumps of bitumen, which is collected and used in Babylon for building purposes." Diodorus, Dio Cassius, Strabo, Plutarchus and Quintus Curtius Rufus make similar statements.

Semi-fluid bitumen was used in the construction of Nineveh and Babylon to cement bricks and slabs of alabaster, and the grand mosaic pavements and beautifully inscribed slabs used in the palaces and temples of these ancient cities, many of which were of enormous size, were fastened in their places with this material. It was also used to render cisterns, and silos for the preservation of grain, water-tight, and some of these struct

1 H. Höfer, Das Erdöl, 1888.

ures of unknown antiquity are still found intact in ancient cities of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Asphalt was much used by the Egyptians for embalming corpses, as well as for the manufacture of peculiar black vessels, and as an excellent mortar. While Greece procured its bitumen from the island of Zante, it was found in large quantities in Syria and Mesopotamia.

In 1811 Dr. Nicholas Nugent visited the West Indies, and on his return to England wrote an account of the famous pitch lake of Trinidad, near the mouth of the river Orinoco.' From 1820 to 1830 remarkable activity was manifested in the investigation of the nature and occurrence of bituminous substances. The Hon. George Knox read a communication to the Royal Society of Great Britain, in which he noticed the wide distribution of these substances in nature. In 1824 Reichenbach discovered paraffin in the products of the destructive distillation of wood, and in the following year Gay Lussac analyzed it.3 In 1826 the Hon. John Crawfurd was sent by the British government as ambassador to Ava, and in his journal' describes the petroleum wells of Rangoon, furnishing many details regarding the method of their operation and the amount of their product. Boussingault investigated the bitumen of Pechelbronn in Lower Alsace, and compared its peculiarities with those of bitumens from other localities. His work on these substances became very celebrated, and gave rise, in France, to further investigations of both solid and liquid bitumens. Boussingault continued his general researches and, in 1837, published a classical paper on the subject. Virlet d' Oust about the same time propounded the first theory regarding the origin of bitumens; and the asphalts of the Dead Sea, of Pyrmont," and near Havana, Cuba," were examined. Hess wrote on the products of dry distillation, and Reichenbach, in conjunction with Lau1 Trans. Geol. Soc., London (1), i, 63. 2 Phil. Magazine (2), i, 402. 3 Ann. Chim. et Pharm. (2), i, 78. 4 Journal of Embassy to the Court of Ava, 1834. Constitution of Bitumen, Phil. Jour. (2), ii, 487. 6 Ann. Chim. et Pharm. (2),

lxiv, 141. 'Bull. Soc. Geol. France (1), iv, 372. Rozet. Bull. Soc. Geol. France (1), iv, 372.

8 Journal des Savants, 1855, 596. 10 Taylor & Clemson, Phil. Mag., x,

rent, continued his researches upon paraffin.' In 1833, Prof. Benjamin Silliman described, in the American Journal of Science, the oil spring of the Seneca Indians near Cuba, New York.

The decade from 1840 to 1850 was remarkable for the number of travelers who, in different parts of the world, noticed the occurrence of bitumen, and also for several elaborate researches upon the geological occurrence and chemical constitution of its different varieties. Travelers visited the far East, and even China, and gave descriptions of the Naphtha springs of Persia," the fire-worshipers of Baku, and the fire-wells of China. In this country, Percival, in Connecticut, and Beck, in New York, called attention to the fact that bitumen was of frequent occurrence in thin veins traversing the metamorphic and eruptive rocks of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

Notwithstanding its wide geological distribution, petroleum is obtained only in few countries to such an extent as to form the basis of a flourishing industry, the United States of America standing in the front rank in this respect. Of great importance also are the oil regions of the Caucasus (Baku) and of Galicia. Considerable quantities of oil are also obtained in Roumania as well as in Germany (Alsace).

The Petroleum Industry in the United States.

In the United States the commencement of the industry dates from the period between 1850 and 1859, though curiously contrived pits lined with roughly-hewn logs, in the oilproducing region of Pennsylvania, indicate that long before the discovery of America by the white race, the existence of the oil was known, and that it was gathered in this crude way. Similar pits or shafts have been found in Ohio (Mecca) and in Canada. Höfer attributes these pits to a prehistoric race which inhabited those regions before the Indians, and possessed

5 Am.

1Jour. f. ökonom. Chemie, viii, 445. Pottinger; W. Robinson; Ainsworth. 3 Kinnier: Persia. * Humboldt: Asie Centrale, ii. 519; Cosmos, i, 232. Jour. Sc. (3) xvi, 130; Am. Jour. Sc. (1) xiv, 335- "Das Erdoel, 1888.