History of the oil industry in Poland until 1939

Abstract

AbstractNatural crude oil seeps are fairly common in SE Poland, especially in areas of exposure of the Carpathians Flysch series. The first records of such seeps may be traced back to the first half of the sixteenth century. Some remarks on the occurrences and usability of so-called rock oil may be found in the works of Kluk, Staszic and Zejszner, and descriptions of simple hand-dug pits for collecting this oil – already operating at the end of the eighteenth century – in a book by Hacquet. Rapid development of the oil industry in Poland was triggered by the discovery of a method of distillation of kerosene from seep-oil and by the invention of an effective modern kerosene lamp by Ignacy Łukasiewicz in 1853. When the first oil well was drilled at Titusville (Pennsylvania) in 1859, several dozen wells were already producing oil in the Carpathians. Oil prospecting and production were initially concentrated in the region of Gorlice, Jasło and Krosno, but shifted eastwards after the discovery of large oil fields in Schodnica and Borysław. Drilling operations in the latter area were conducted by Długosz. Polish oil geologists at the turn of the nineteenth century included Zuber, Szajnocha, Grzybowski and Tołwiński, who were the leading world authorities in this field.