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| THE HISTORY OF ROMANIAN OIL INDUSTRY (9.07.2007) |
| (2007-07-09) |
| Last updated: 2007-07-09 16:52 EET |
Oil is one of the most important resources of contemporary world. Discovering new oil resources is one of the biggest challenges today, with the exhaustion of present resources being an issue of hot debates. Oil has been the main reason for the conclusion or dissolution of many political and military alliances, while oil-rich countries have always attracted investments.
In 2007, Romania itself will celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of its oil industry, a long-standing tradition that has been very profitable for Romanian economy. For a long time, in fact, the oil industry was the most important industrial branch in Romania. The first refinery was built in 1857 in Ploiesti, 60 km north of Bucharest, a town which is the very point of reference in the history of oil industry in this country.
The year 1857 is when this industry was first developed, Romania being the first country in the world with a crude oil output officially recorded in international statistics, namely 275 tonnes. Prahova (a county in southern Romania) is the best known area in terms of the oil industry, where oil has been extracted ever since the ancient times.
To mark the 100th year anniversary of the Romanian oil industry in 1957, the authorities set up an oil museum in Ploiesti. On October 8th 1961 the National Oil Museum, the only one of its kind in the country and among the few in the world was officially opened. Gabriela Tanasescu, the director of the National Oil Museum in Ploiesti knows more about the history of the Romanian oil industry:
“People knew about oil in the Antiquity, as shown by archaeological evidence, and later also by written records. The first documents attesting the existence of fuel oil on today’s territory of Romania do not tell us, however, how oil was extracted or what it was used for. Fuel oil is only mentioned in passing, as a mere topographic detail. The first document from the Romanian historical province of Moldavia is dated October 4th 1440, while the first records mentioning oil from Wallachia is dated 1517. Archaeologically speaking, I would like to mention the Roman mugs with pieces of pitch dating back to the turn of the 3rd century, and the fragments of bitumen dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries.”
The means of exploitation developed during field research and prospecting. Gabriela Tanasescu explains.
“In the beginning, crude oil exploitation simply meant collection from the shallow pits and ditches in the outcrops of the Sub-Carpathian area. The technique involved digging small holes into the ground, where fuel oil was collected, while the crude oil was channelled through ditches towards a collecting pit. The exhaustion of these so-called outcrops led to the in-depth exploitation of the crude oil by means of technologies taken over from other industrial sectors. The so-called “oil bath”, for example, was imported from the coal industry, and was used extensively from the late 16th century to the 19th century. Fuel oil washeries were used at the same time. Some progress was made when pits started to be dug, in square and circular shape depending on the depth of the oil field “.
With the industrial revolution of the 19th century, Romanians, too, became more interested in the systematic exploitation of oil. Here is Gabriela Tanasescu with the details:
”The publication called The Science of Petroleum confirms that Romania was the first country in the world to have had its own production officially registered. The US did the same thing in 1859. It was followed by Italy in 1860, Canada in 1862 and Russia in 1863. The first oil processing installations in Romania are those in Lucacesti-Bacau, built in the 1840s, which were nothing more than simple manual workshops where the method for oil refining was the same used by farmers to refine their home-made brandy. Industrial distillation was a technology first used by a refinery built by the Mehedinteanu brothers, on the outskirts of Ploiesti, in southern Romania. The equipment consisted of cylindrical cast iron recipients, under which a fire was lit. The equipment was ordered from a German company making bituminous schist boilers. The building of the so-called “gas factory” started in 1856, and was commissioned by Marin Mehedinteanu.”
The development of oil drilling, extraction and processing equipment has gone hand in hand with the development of geological research. The Oil Museum in Ploiesti boasts a collection of 11 thousand exhibits. It has proposed that 10 of them be part of the national treasury. The visiting public can see everything from drilling hoists, dredges, hydraulic preventers, some of which are 100 years old, geologic maps and rare photographs. The oldest exhibit , the only one of its kind in Romania, is a bailing drum dating back to 1870. “Petroleum”, a book written by Cucu Starostescu in 1881 is the first specialised book on oil to have been published in the world. The first mechanical drill dates back to 1861.
In Romania, we can only speak about oil industry using mechanical equipment starting with 1870. Names of leading scientists such as Gregoriu Stefanescu, Grigore Cobalcescu, Ludovic Mrazek, Valeriu Patriciu, Ion Tanasescu, Virgiliu Tacit, Ion Bazgan and Andrei Dragulanescu are linked to the history of the oil industry. Here is Gabriela Tanasescu again, speaking about the contribution made by Romanians to the development of the world oil industry.
”Ludovic Mrazek, for example, carried out an outstanding geological activity in the field of oil exploitation. It was under his guidance that the first geological map of Greater Romania was drawn in 1920. In 1912, engineer Virgiliu Tacit patented the blow-out preventer, a remote-controlled valve with a piston, which can stand pressures of up to 100 atmospheres. The invention was then taken over by Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire and Mexico. A prominent figure in the domain of oil processing was engineer Lazar Edeleanu, who made an important contribution to improving the quality of the Romanian lamp oil, using the so-called liquid bio-sulphur selective method. His method was patented in 1908 and afterwards was applied in all countries with an oil processing industry. Edeleanu’s successful method as well as his entire scientific activity brought him world recognition. In 1932, he was awarded the Redwood medal, thus becoming the first foreigner to have received that medal, the second one being Ludovic Mrazek. Another Romanian who stood out in the domain of oil exploitation is Ion Bazgan, the author of many inventions. He patented a special method, first in Romania in 1934 and then in the US in 1934. The method was meant to improve rotative drilling, starting from the “sonicity” theory by another Romanian scientist, Gogu Constantinescu”.
Many social and professional changes in society are linked to the oil industry. Between 1900 and 1940, Romania saw the emergence and fast development of big factory centres following foreign investment. Those economic transformations are still visible today, the Prahova county still being one of the most industrially active areas in Romania.
(Steliu Lambru)
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