On this day in the year 1859 began the story of the production of black gold, which changed the face of the world and became the most important strategic commodity throughout the twentieth century and still is.

Until then, black gold was wiped from above the ground from which it naturally stems and trenches were dug for it to collect in small quantities, to be extracted and used as a medicine mostly, until Colonel Drake set up the first deep digging tower to start the era of oil extraction.

As a reminder of this day - which corresponds to today's date - the French magazine Le Point published a joint article between Frederic Lueno and Gwendoline dos Santos in which they recalled the start of the story of black gold production that began in Pennsylvania from a farmer of a peasant in Titusville when he dug a trench to collect the oil that naturally originates from his land To extract quantities from it to sell, and he caught the attention of his neighbors who saw this product as a better source of income than raising livestock.

Thus, investors began buying thousands of hectares to try to create wealth, until George Bissell established the Seneca Oil Company, which is based on his idea of ​​converting the oil that he will produce into kerosene, as there is great demand for this substance to run oil lamps, before it becomes to run cars.

The former train captain, Edwin Drake, who was hired by Bissell to locate the oil spill areas was not missing an opportunity. When he found that the land of Beesle was useless, he began to think of an extraction method that would allow them to search for black gold underground, so why not dig the ground like salt miners do? Although the idea had been used before in Europe.

One meter a day

In despair that plagued Bissell, he gave the green light to the former train captain who called himself Colonel Drake, and to implement his idea, he began work in 1857, and his first decision was to hire Billy Smith, a specialist in drilling salt wells, and ordered him to drill a well of 300 meters in Oil Creek. .

The two men used a steam engine to run the drill, but the well collapsed and was less than 5 meters deep, so Colonel Drake - who had become a mockery of the residents - had to start again, and indeed he did not give up, and invented the riser casing to protect the well from collapse, a technique that is still in progress. Use, where the drilling is done inside a tube, which also prevents water leakage.

When the well reached a depth of 10 meters and everything was fine, the driller encountered a rocky layer that he could no longer penetrate except very slowly, as it advanced by one meter per day, and the money began to run out, which delayed the drilling operations.

He succeeded

On August 27, 1859, the well reached a depth of 21 meters without anything happening, but after work stopped at nightfall, oil began to leak at nightfall to the bottom of the well, and they did not discover the black, sticky liquid at the bottom until the next day - August 28. - When they restarted work.

Drake then ran, pleased with his success, after proving - despite people mocking his idea - that the drilling technique he had chosen was the right method, and without wasting time, Colonel Drake began operating a hand pump that he fixed to raise the precious liquid to the surface.

Production was low in the beginning, not exceeding about 25 barrels of crude oil per day if it did not go down much on some days, but this method proved its effectiveness, and those who were laughing at the colonel began to build platforms, so the race was for the black gold in Pennsylvania, where it poured Colossal fortunes.

However, Colonel Drake - who had amassed a great fortune from extracting oil - did not register the patents needed to protect his drilling method, and after losing his money in the financial crisis that followed the Civil War in April 1861, he found himself so poor that the state of Pennsylvania voted on Help him in the amount of $ 1,500.