TIMELINES OF PETROLEUM

• 1815 Oil is produced in the United States as an undesirable byproduct from brine wells in Pennsylvania.
• 1848 The first modern oil well is drilled in Asia, on the Aspheron Peninsula northeast of Baku
• 1849 Canadian Abraham Gesner develops a process to distill kerosine (coal oil) from cannel coal and bituminous shale; he will become known as the “father of the petroleum industry.
• 1853 Kerosine is extracted from petroleum.
• 1854 The first oil wells in Europe are drilled 30 to 50 metres deep at Bobrka, Poland.
• 1854 The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, the first oil company in the United States, is formed.
• 1858 The first oil well in North America is drilled in Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada.
• 1859Petroleum became a major industry following the oil discovery at Oil Creek Pennsylvania .
• 1862 Early problems disposing of the gasoline fraction lead to the contamination of kerosine resulting in subsequent fires, and this leads to the development and standardization of flash-point methods.
• 1865 Titusville is slow to react to the building of pipelines. However, a six-inch gravity pipeline (no pumps) is completed this year by the Pennsylvania Tubing and Transportation Company. This line delivers 7,000 barrels of oil per day to its terminus at the mouth of the Pithole Creek and is expedited by a gradient of 52 feet [10 meters per kilometer] per mile. 
• 1898 ASTM International, originally known as the American Section of the International Association for Testing Materials.
• 1904 First plant for extracting natural gasoline (Casinghead gasoline) from natural gas by the compression method built by Andrew Fasenmeyer near Drake Well at Titusville, PA.
• 1908 October 1 - First Model T Ford built First commercial natural gasoline plant built at Sistersville, W.VA.
• 1919 Gasoline replaced kerosene as product leader of the American petroleum industry
• 1919 The American Petroleum Institute is established.
• 1947 The first off-shore oil well is drilled.
• 1960 The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is formed by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.