History of Oil Industry

In the present chapter, the evolution of the oil industry in Romania is presented, starting with the 19th century until today. Romania was one of the first countries to refine crude oil, starting with 1857 when the first refinery was established. Rich in oil resources, Romania has made the most of this advantage, developing a powerful oil exploitation and refining industry. The evolution of exploitation and refining technologies is presented in the chapter, marking the significant stages of this development as well as the scientific personalities who marked it. The Romanian School of Petroleum formed its specialization at all levels: conception, management and execution, which produced technologies, machinery and specific equipment at world technical level. Engineers, geologists, other Romanian specialist and researchers, in addition to developing the appropriate technologies, have made important contribution to the global progress of geophysical investigation methods by electrometry in geophysical prospecting and electric core drilling, deep well drilling technologies; substantiated and successfully experimented with the technology of extracting heavy and viscous crude oil by in situ combustion; they experimented with many unconventional methods for increasing recovery factor from the fields; built plants for machinery and equipment, so that between the 1970s and 1980s Romania became the second world exporter of oil machinery.