Spindletop is an oil field located in the southern portion of Beaumont, Texas, in the United States. The Spindletop dome was derived from the Louann Salt evaporite layer of the Jurassic geologic period. On January 10, 1901, a well at Spindletop struck oil. The Spindletop gusher blew for 9 days at a rate estimated at 100,000 barrels (16,000 m3) of oil per day. Gulf Oil and Texaco, now part of Chevron Corporation, were formed to develop production at Spindletop. The Spindletop discovery led the United States into the oil age. Prior to Spindletop, oil was primarily used for lighting and as a lubricant. Because of the quantity of oil discovered, burning petroleum as a fuel for mass consumption suddenly became economically feasible.
The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force, if necessary, to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf. It was a response to the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, and it was intended to deter the Soviet Union, the United States' Cold War adversary, from seeking hegemony in the Persian Gulf region.
William Knox D'Arcy was a British-Australian businessman who was one of the principal founders of the oil and petrochemical industry in Persia (Iran). The D’Arcy Concession was signed in 1901 and allowed D'Arcy to explore, obtain, and market oil, natural gas, asphalt, and ozokerite in Persia.
Immanuel Nobel the Younger was a Swedish engineer, architect, inventor and industrialist. He was the inventor of the rotary lathe used in plywood manufacturing. He was a member of the Nobel family and the father of Robert Nobel, Ludvig Nobel, Alfred Nobel and Emil Oskar Nobel. In 1827 he married the children's mother, Andriette Ahlsell. He also often experimented with nitroglycerin with his sons, which led to his son Emil Oskar's death because of an explosion at his father's factory Heleneborg in Stockholm in 1864.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number of shares, effectively nationalizing the company. It was the first company to extract petroleum from Iran. In 1935 APOC was renamed the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Company" (AIOC) when Reza Shah formally asked foreign countries to refer to Persia by its endonym Iran.
Daniel Howard Yergin is an American author and consultant within the energy and economic sectors. Yergin is vice chairman of S&P Global. He was formerly vice chairman of IHS Markit, which merged with S&P in 2022. He founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates, which IHS Markit acquired in 2004. He has authored or co-authored several books on energy and world economics, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, (1991) The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (2011), and The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (2020).
Ludvig Immanuel Nobel was a Swedish-Russian engineer, a noted businessman and a humanitarian. One of the most prominent members of the Nobel family, he was the son of Immanuel Nobel and Andriette Nobel, and the older brother of Alfred Nobel. With his brother Robert, he operated Branobel, an oil company in Baku which at one point produced 50% of the world's oil.
Benjamin Silliman Jr. was a professor of chemistry at Yale University and instrumental in developing the petroleum industry.
The Petroleum Production Company Nobel Brothers, Limited, or Branobel, was an oil company set up by Ludvig Nobel and Baron Peter von Bilderling. It operated mainly in Baku, Azerbaijan, but also in Cheleken, Turkmenistan. Originally established by Robert Nobel and the investments of barons Peter von Bilderling and Standertskjöld as a distillery in 1876, it became, during the late-19th century, one of the largest oil-companies in the world.
Wanda Jablonski was an American journalist who covered the global petroleum industry. She was called "the most influential oil journalist of her time" in Daniel Yergin's The Prize.
The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1992.
Emanuel Ludvig Nobel was a Swedish oil baron, the eldest son of Ludvig Nobel and his first wife, Mina Ahlsell, grandson of Immanuel Nobel and nephew of Alfred Nobel.
While the local use of oil goes back many centuries, the modern petroleum industry along with its outputs and modern applications are of a recent origin. Petroleum's status as a key component of politics, society, and technology has its roots in the coal and kerosene industry of the late 19th century. One of the earliest instances of this is the refining of paraffin from crude oil. Abraham Gesner developed a process to refine a liquid fuel from coal, bitumen and oil shale; it burned more cleanly and was cheaper than whale oil. James Young in 1847 noticed a natural petroleum seepage when he distilled a light thin oil suitable for use as lamp oil, at the same time obtaining a thicker oil suitable for lubricating machinery. The world's first refineries and modern oil wells were established in the mid-19th century. While petroleum industries developed in several countries during the nineteenth century, the two giants were the United States and the Russian Empire, specifically that part of it that today forms the territory of independent Azerbaijan. Together, these two countries produced 97% of the world's oil over the course of the nineteenth century.
John Arthur Love was an American attorney and Republican politician who served as the 36th Governor of the State of Colorado from 1963 to 1973.
The 1980s oil glut was a significant surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1970s energy crisis. The world price of oil had peaked in 1980 at over US$35 per barrel ; it fell in 1986 from $27 to below $10. The glut began in the early 1980s as a result of slowed economic activity in industrial countries due to the crises of the 1970s, especially in 1973 and 1979, and the energy conservation spurred by high fuel prices. The inflation-adjusted real 2004 dollar value of oil fell from an average of $78.2 in 1981 to an average of $26.8 per barrel in 1986.
Pangkalan Brandan (Pangkalanberandan) is a port town in Langkat Regency, North Sumatra province, Indonesia, forty miles north west of Medan, close to the boundary with Aceh. The area's population is estimated at 21,000.
Jean Baptiste August Kessler was a Dutch entrepreneur and oil explorer who was largely responsible for the growth and development of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., now part of present-day Shell.
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World is an international bestselling book by energy expert Daniel Yergin. The book was initially published on September 20, 2011 through Penguin Press and is considered to be the follow-up to Yergin’s 1992 Pulitzer Prize–winning history of oil, The Prize, and describes the development of the current energy system and prospects for the future. Upon its release, the book received praise and criticism both for its breadth of subject as well as for its impartiality. It is often suggested as a "primer" or "guide" to the energy field for the way it combines a narrative across the entire energy spectrum into a single volume.
The American Independent Oil Company, commonly known as Aminoil, was a United States oil exploration and production company, incorporated in 1947.
