Oil has been useful to humans for thousands of years, but it became truly important in the mid-1800s, when the first commercial well was drilled and kerosene replaced whale oil as the dominant lighting fuel. From there, oil’s significance expanded in waves: powering naval fleets before World War I, fueling the automobile revolution, and becoming the raw material for plastics and synthetic materials after World War II. Each leap made oil more central to civilization than the last.
Ancient Uses of Bitumen and Petroleum
Long before anyone drilled a well, people in the ancient world collected petroleum that seeped naturally to the surface. Bitumen, a thick, tar-like form of petroleum, served as a waterproofing agent, adhesive, and building material in Mesopotamia. The ancient Egyptians eventually adopted it for mummification, though later than many people assume. Biomarker analyses of Egyptian mummies show no detectable bitumen use before the New Kingdom period, around 1550 BC. After that, it appears in roughly half of mummies from the New Kingdom through the Late Period, and in 87% of mummies from the Ptolemaic and Roman eras.
Classical writers documented petroleum’s presence in the ancient world. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, described bitumen in various practical contexts unrelated to burial. Strabo, in the first century BC, catalogued known bitumen sources and noted that Egyptians used it for embalming. In China, natural gas seeps were used for heating and salt production centuries before the modern era. But none of these ancient applications created widespread economic dependence. Oil was a useful curiosity, not a strategic resource.
The 1859 Well That Started an Industry
The modern oil era began on August 27, 1859, when Edwin Drake struck oil at a depth of 69 feet near Titusville, Pennsylvania. It was the world’s first commercial oil well, and it triggered an immediate rush. By the end of 1859, wells had sprouted across the surrounding countryside, collectively producing about 4,500 barrels that year. That number sounds tiny now, but it proved something critical: oil could be extracted reliably and refined into useful products.
The most valuable product at the time was kerosene for lighting. Whale oil, the dominant lamp fuel, had become painfully expensive. Prices averaged $1.77 per gallon between 1845 and 1855, and hit $1.92 per gallon in 1854. Kerosene refined from petroleum was dramatically cheaper and burned more cleanly. Within a decade of Drake’s well, the whale oil industry was collapsing. By 1896, whale oil had dropped to $0.40 per gallon as demand evaporated. Kerosene didn’t just replace whale oil; it made artificial lighting affordable for ordinary families for the first time.
Spindletop and the Age of Cheap Fuel
If Drake’s well proved oil could be a business, the Spindletop gusher in southeast Texas proved it could reshape the world. On January 10, 1901, a drill bit at 1,139 feet deep hit a pressurized reservoir that sent a column of oil more than 100 feet into the air. It took nine days to cap the well, which flowed an estimated 100,000 barrels per day. That single gusher produced more oil than all other American wells combined at the time.
Spindletop flooded the market with cheap fuel and made Texas the center of the global oil industry. Companies that would eventually become Texaco, Gulf Oil, and Humble (later ExxonMobil) trace their origins to the Spindletop boom. More importantly, the sheer abundance of cheap oil opened the door for industries that needed inexpensive energy at scale, particularly the automobile industry. Henry Ford’s Model T, introduced in 1908, ran on gasoline, a petroleum byproduct that had previously been considered almost worthless. Cheap oil from fields like Spindletop made mass automobile ownership possible.
Oil as a Military Weapon
Oil crossed from economic importance to geopolitical necessity when the world’s navies began converting from coal to oil in the early 1900s. Oil-powered ships were faster, could refuel at sea more easily, and required fewer crew members to manage their engines. The Italian navy experimented with oil first, followed by the U.S. Navy. Britain, which had dominated the seas partly because of its vast domestic coal reserves, committed to an oil-powered fleet out of fear it would fall behind. That decision carried a serious tradeoff: Britain went from energy independence with coal to reliance on foreign oil, particularly from the United States and the Middle East.
By World War I, oil had become a deciding factor in military strategy. Nations that could secure fuel supplies had a decisive advantage. By World War II, oil’s military importance was even more pronounced. Germany’s campaigns in North Africa and the Soviet Union were driven partly by the need to capture oil fields. Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was preceded by an American oil embargo that threatened to immobilize the Japanese fleet. Control of oil had become inseparable from national security.
Plastics, Chemicals, and Everyday Life
After World War II, oil’s importance expanded beyond fuel into the materials that define modern life. Although early synthetic plastics like Bakelite appeared in the early twentieth century, widespread civilian use of plastics didn’t take off until the postwar period. Global production of plastic resins and fibers grew from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to 380 million metric tons in 2015, a compound annual growth rate of 8.4%. That growth rate was roughly 2.5 times faster than the global economy itself over the same period.
Petroleum became the feedstock for an astonishing range of products: synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon, fertilizers that transformed agriculture, pharmaceuticals, detergents, paints, and packaging. By the mid-twentieth century, oil was no longer just what powered your car or heated your home. It was woven into virtually every manufactured object you touched. This deep integration into supply chains is what makes oil so difficult to replace, even as alternatives to petroleum-based fuels become more viable.
The 1973 Crisis and Oil as a Political Tool
The moment that made oil’s importance impossible to ignore for ordinary people came in October 1973. After the United States supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, OPEC imposed an embargo on oil exports to the U.S. and subsequently quadrupled the price of oil. Gas stations ran dry. Long lines stretched around city blocks. The American economy, built on the assumption of cheap, abundant fuel, stumbled badly.
The 1973 crisis revealed how thoroughly oil had woven itself into the fabric of industrial economies. Transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, heating, and electricity generation all depended on it. A disruption in supply from a relatively small number of producing countries could ripple through the entire global economy within weeks. That vulnerability hasn’t disappeared. Oil price shocks have preceded or worsened several recessions since, and the geopolitics of oil-producing regions continues to shape foreign policy decisions worldwide.
A Resource That Grew More Important in Stages
Oil didn’t become important in a single moment. It accumulated importance through a series of transitions, each one locking it more deeply into the global economy. In the 1860s, it was a lighting fuel. By 1901, it was an industrial commodity. By 1914, it was a military necessity. By the 1950s, it was the raw material for modern consumer goods. And by 1973, the world learned just how dependent it had become. Each wave of adoption created infrastructure, industries, and political relationships that reinforced oil’s centrality, making each successive stage harder to reverse than the last.