History of Crude Oil Refining

Recently I was researching the early history of refineries and as a result i came up with following data that was compiled from different research papers which really show us how things started from scratch as a "Grass Root Refinery".  

Nearly every aspect of our modern lifestyle is impacted by oil. Oil is used to power our vehicles, to create medicines that keep us healthy, and to make the plastics, cosmetics, and other personal products that enhance our daily lives. However, none of these products would exist without the refining process. For example, you wouldn’t put crude oil in the gas tank of your car! It has to be refined into gasoline first!

The global Petroleum Refining Industry never stops changing. As the economies of developing countries continue to strengthen and new sources of crude oil emerge, grass root refinery projects are being continually planned, and upgrades, revamps and retrofits for existing refineries are increasingly frequent.

Today, crude oil is refined all over the world. The largest oil refinery is the Jamnagar Refining Complex in India, which can process 1.24 million barrels of oil each day. In fact, most of the oil industry’s largest refineries are in Asia and South America. Nevertheless, the practice of refining oil was created in the United States, where it continues to be an important part of the nation’s economy.

Samuel M. Kier, a native of southwestern Pennsylvania, was the first person to refine crude oil. In the mid-1840s, he became aware of crude oil through his salt business. Occasionally, wells drilled for salt water would produce foul-smelling petroleum alongside the brine. For many in the salt business, the oil was a nuisance, and they were content to burn it or allow it to run off into nearby waterways. However, Kier was an entrepreneur, and he believed that he could turn the oily by-product of his salt wells into something of value.

Kier first used the flammable oil produced by his salt wells to light his salt works at night. The burning crude produced an awful smell and a great deal of smoke. Nevertheless, Kier was able to light his business without paying for an expensive illuminant like whale oil. Next, Kier packaged pure crude oil in half-pint bottles for sale as a medicine. A bottle of Kier’s Petroleum sold for 50 cents. Kier employed a workforce of salesmen who traveled the countryside in colorful wagons advertising and marketing his medicinal product. Later, he sold Kier’s Petroleum exclusively through drug stores. However, by 1852, oil’s medicinal fad had faded, and Kier needed another way to make his oil useful and valuable.

Kier knew crude oil would burn and thought that it could make a good and inexpensive lamp oil. However, the smell and smoke that burning oil produced made it hard to sell as an illuminant. In 1849, Kier took samples of his crude oil to Philadelphia where they were analyzed by Professor James C. Booth, a chemist. Booth agreed that crude oil could be used for illumination, but that it needed to be distilled or refined to get the best burning fluid. Thus, in 1850, Kier started experimenting with distillation and became the first person in the U.S. to attempt to use liquid petroleum as a starting material to produce lamp oil. His refining experiments were successful and by 1851, Kier produced a product called Carbon Oil, a fuel oil which burned with little smoke and odor. He sold his Carbon Oil for $1.50 a gallon.

In partnership with John T. Kirkpatrick, Kier created the first U.S. petroleum refinery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started with a small one or two-barrel still, but by 1854, he had a larger five-barrel still in operation. When Edwin L. Drake struck oil near Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859, the market became flooded with oil, and Pittsburgh saw seven new oil refineries come into operation. By the end of the 1860s, there were 58 refineries operating in Pittsburgh alone. Samuel M. Kier spent a great deal of his life trying to make crude oil useful and valuable and along the way he gave birth to the U.S. refining industry.