The history of the European oil and gas industry reflects local as well as global political events, economic constraints and the personal endeavours of individual petroleum geoscientists as much as it does the development of technologies and the underlying geology of the region. The first commercial oil wells in Europe were drilled in Poland in 1853, Romania in 1857, Germany in 1859 and Italy in 1860. The 23 papers in this volume focus on the history and heritage of the oil and gas industry in the key European oil-producing countries from the earliest onshore drilling to its development into the modern industry that we know today. The contributors chronicle the main events and some of the major players that shaped the industry in Europe. The volume also marks several important anniversaries, including 150 years of oil exploration in Poland and Romania, the centenary of the drilling of the first oil well in the UK and 50 years of oil production from onshore Spain.

Abstract The history of the European oil and gas industry reflects local and global political events, economic constraints, and the personal endeavours of individual petroleum geoscientists, as much as it does the development of technologies and the underlying geology of the region. Europe and Europeans played a disproportionately large role in the development of the modern global oil and gas industry. From at least the Iron Age until the 1850s, the use of oil in Europe was limited, and the oil was obtained almost exclusively from surface seeps and mine workings. The use of oil increased in the 1860s with the introduction of new technologies in both production and refining. Shale oil was distilled on a commercial scale in various parts of Europe in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century but, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the mineral oils and gas produced primarily from shale and coal could no longer satisfy demand, and oil produced directly from conventional oil fields began to dominate the European market. The first commercial oil wells in Europe were manually dug in Poland in 1853, Romania in 1857, Germany in 1859 and Italy in 1860, before the gradual introduction of mechanical cable drilling rigs started in the early 1860s. In the late nineteenth century, the northern part of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Poland and Ukraine was one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world. The Bóbrka Field in the Carpathian foothills of Poland, discovered in 1853, is still producing and is now the oldest industrial oil field in the world. The 1914–18 and 1939–45 world wars were both major drivers in exploration for and exploitation of Europe’s oil resources and in the development of technologies to produce synthetic fuels from the liquefaction of bituminous coal and the combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen as the Allied and Axis governments struggled to maintain adequate supplies of fuel for their war efforts. In Britain, the first ‘accidental’ discovery of gas was made in 1875 in the Weald Basin, but it was not until 1919 that Britain’s first oil field was discovered at Hardstoft, in Derbyshire, as a result of a government-funded exploration drilling campaign, triggered by the need to find indigenous supplies of oil during World War I. The period of reconstruction after World War II was also critical for the European oil and gas industry with further successful exploration for oil and gas in the East Midlands of England resulting in Britain’s first ‘oil boom’, and the discovery and development of deep gas fields in the Po Valley in northern Italy fuelling the Italian economy for the next 50 years. Drilling technologies developed during Britain’s first oil boom, together with the extrapolation of the onshore geology of the East Midlands oil fields and of the Dutch gas fields, led to the discovery of the huge oil and gas resources beneath the North Sea in the 1960s and 1970s, which enabled Britain, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands to be largely self-sufficient in oil and gas from the late 1970s until production began to decline rapidly in the early 2000s. Today, oil and gas production in most European countries is at an historical low. Exploration for new sources of oil and gas in Europe continues, although increasingly hampered by the maturity of many of the conventional oil and gas plays, but European companies and European citizens continue to play a major role in the global oil and gas industry.

Abstract The development of the retail petroleum industry in the UK has received only sporadic attention by academics. This is curious, as the industry has vital importance to modern commerce. The industry is usually thought of as an oligarchy, with a small number of companies controlling the production and movement of products through vertical integration. However, there is evidence of change in the industry: there has been a significant number of exchanges of retailing sites between the major entities themselves, and a rise in the number and influence of competitors. These constitute both multiple retailers such as supermarket chains and, at the ‘competitive fringe’, a rise in the number of smaller independents. This paper identifies the historical changes and analyses the factors underlying them.

Abstract The story of UK onshore exploration goes back to the days of World War I and was prompted by the increasing use of oil for the war effort. The war was drawing to a close as the campaign commenced in 1918. The UK government sponsored the drilling with a budget of £1 000 000 and the work was undertaken by S. Pearson & Sons, a UK engineering company owned by Lord Cowdray (Weetman Pearson). Pearson also had oil interests and he owned the Mexican Eagle Company that had had exploration success in Mexico. Pearson hired a team of American geologists to select suitable drilling locations in the UK. The Carboniferous rocks in the area surrounding the Derbyshire Dome in England and the Midland Valley in Scotland were chosen because of their similarity to the oil-producing areas of Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the USA. Eleven wells were sunk: seven in Derbyshire, two in North Staffordshire and two in Scotland. The first well to be spudded was at Hardstoft in Derbyshire in October 1918 and it was also the first oil discovery. The geological reasoning behind the selection of the drilling sites will be compared with the actual results from 1918–22.

Abstract Oil production in West Lothian in Scotland started in 1851. It was not the first place to produce oil from shale but it was the largest and most successful. This oil production led to major developments in oil refining and, as a result, a large demand for oil products was created. This new demand for oil products stimulated the search for oil around the world and resulted in the first modern-day oil well being drilled in Titusville Pennsylvania in 1859. Over the next 100 years, an estimated 75 MMbbl (million barrels) of oil and 500 Bcf (billion cubic ft) of gas were produced from the shales of West Lothian. Initially, the oil was produced from a thin layer of shale at Torbanehill near Bathgate. Later, the much thicker deposits in the Dinantian West Lothian Oil-shale Formation (WLO) were used to produce the oil, although there was also oil produced from other shales mostly in the Lower Coal Measures and Limestone Coal Formation. This paper looks at the Scottish oil-shale industry from the viewpoint of the modern-day shale-gas industry and highlights the contribution the industry made as the forerunner of the oil industry. The paper attempts to explain why the Scottish oil-shale industry was so successful and influential. Reasons why the oil-shale industry did not develop into modern oil-well production are also put forward. The Scottish shale-oil industry was successful not only thanks to James Young and his colleagues but also because of the geology of the Central Belt of Scotland and, in particular, the geochemical properties of the WLO. The shale-oil industry, natural oil seepage, free oil encountered during mining and the historical exploration drilling demonstrate a rich functioning source rock suggesting significant prospectivity for future exploration for both oil fields and shale gas.

Abstract Following an adventitious oil flow into a coal mine in 1847 in the Riddings area of the county of Derbyshire in the English Midlands, the young Scottish chemist James Young carried out seminal work into the development of oil refining technology. In Derbyshire, by the end of 1848, he set up an early refinery to exploit this oil commercially by distillation, producing both lighting and lubrication fractions which he sold directly to end customers. His findings in Derbyshire led him to move on to investigate production and refining of oil from coal by destructive distillation, technology for which he gained his global reputation; Young’s patented technology was adopted by the commercial refineries that were to follow in many countries as the world’s oil fields sprang to life.

Abstract In June 1975, oil from the Argyll Field became the first to be produced from the UK North Sea. Seventeen years later, the Argyll Field was abandoned with all production facilities removed. In 2001, two new companies, Acorn Oil & Gas and Tuscan Energy, had identified Argyll as a potential field redevelopment. The UK’s Department of Industry was approached with a request to relicense the Argyll Field out of round in order to redevelop the field. No company previously had sought to obtain a licence for production rather than exploration. In September 2003, a well was drilled on the renamed Ardmore Field. It flowed at 20 000 barrels of oil per day. However, after 2 months of sustained high rate, the well cut water. With a second well on stream, production peaked at 28 000 barrels of oil for 1 day before the facilities, designed for 50 000 barrels of fluid per day, tripped-out. All was not well; facilities and well issues limited production. In mid-2005, the field was abandoned again: 5 MMbbl (million barrels) from an expected 25 MMbbl was produced. However, the story was not yet finished. By 2013 EnQuest had acquired the licence and drilled six wells. Production restart began in late 2015.

Abstract Hydrocarbon exploration in the East Irish Sea Basin began with the identification of surface oil seeps in peat beds in Lancashire, UK. This precipitated the drilling of the first onshore exploration wells. The discovery of the Formby Field in west Lancashire at the end of the 1930s triggered a wave of further drilling. Wells drilled in west Lancashire had limited success, with only minor hydrocarbon shows, whilst the production from the Formby Field was modest. Nonetheless, the invaluable geological information taken from onshore wells and the ratification of the Continental Shelf Act led to a shift in focus to the offshore and a period of significant interest in the East Irish Sea. Two key periods of oil and gas exploration activity stand out in the history of the offshore basin, the first headed by the Gas Council during the 1970s resulted in the discovery of the gas giants of Morecambe Bay, whilst the second fronted by Hamilton Oil during the 1990s heralded the discovery of oil with the Douglas and Lennox fields in Liverpool Bay. Exploration in the basin has waned during the last decade; however, to date, this mature hydrocarbon province has yielded estimated hydrocarbon reserves of over 1.8 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent).

Abstract Hydrocarbon exploration in North Yorkshire began in 1937, targeting Triassic and Permian reservoirs below the surface expression of the Cleveland Anticline. D’Arcy drilled the successful well Eskdale-2, marking the first gas discovery in the Zechstein carbonates in the UK. Since then approximately 100 wells have been drilled in the basin with exploration success relatively high. Out of the 25 pure exploration wells in the region, 13 have found hydrocarbon accumulations (flowed gas) and eight of the discoveries have been developed to date. The primary reservoir is the Permian-aged Zechstein carbonate sequence and, more specifically, the Z2, Kirkham Abbey Formation (KAF), which is a tight carbonate reservoir overprinted by a high permeability fracture system. Despite considerable investment and effort over the years, the historical development story of these fields has been very much one of repeated technical and investment failure, with approximately 39 Bcf (billion cubic feet) of the mapped gas initial in-place (GIIP) of c . 326 Bcf produced to date, an estimated recovery factor of 12%. Historical production data show that all the Zechstein reservoirs have experienced early water breakthrough, leading to impaired gas rates and low recoveries. The water influx is due to a highly mobile, but finite aquifer, which under field production conditions preferentially flows through the high permeability fracture system, bypassing the gas stored in the tighter matrix. Third Energy is aiming to resolve the issue of water influx by using artificial lift to encourage the gas to flow. A trial is currently being undertaken at the Pickering gas field and, if this programme is successful, this will provide sufficient confidence for a phased redevelopment programme of surrounding fields. Whilst North Yorkshire has experienced only limited exploration and production (E&P) activity in the last decade, solving the issue of premature water influx in the KAF fields, combined with the search for unconventional resources in the Bowland section of the Mid and Lower Carboniferous strata will herald a new and exciting phase of E&P activities for this province.

Abstract The manufactured gas industry was one of the great technological innovations of the industrial revolution. Whilst it was developed in Great Britain, this was not in isolation, and required the input of many European engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs for its success. Although the innovation of making inflammable gas for lighting may now seem quite simple, it brought considerable change to society. Initially, gas was used for lighting, replacing candles and oil lamps, greatly improving safety within factories by reducing the occurrence of fires. The concerns over street crime and the potential benefits of brighter gas street lights were key factors in its wider uptake. Lighting was its primary use for the first 70 years. As competition emerged from electricity, the gas industry found new markets in heat and power. Gas manufacturing also produced a range of by-products which were later found to have some very useful properties and became important feedstocks to the chemical industry. Manufactured gas was the first integrated utility energy network and its success in Britain led to a rapid spread across Europe. Since its demise and replacement by natural gas, it has left a shared but unique legacy in each country.

Abstract The northern segments of the Carpathians, stretching between Limanowa (Poland) and Kosów (Ukraine), belonged to the most prolific hydrocarbon province in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The earliest written accounts of natural occurrences of hydrocarbons in the Carpathians date back to the sixteenth century. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Rzączyński, Kluk, Hacquest and Staszic provided accounts on methods of practical use related to oil. Staszic’s geological map shows numerous oil seeps and different rock types containing hydrocarbons. The development of the oil industry was triggered by Łukasiewicz’s discovery of an oil-distillation process and the construction of a kerosene lamp. Following this, the oil industry flourished in the Northern Carpathians. Oil production peaked at 2 Mt (million tons) of crude oil in 1910. In subsequent years, the level of oil production steadily decreased due to a turbulent economy. Exploration for oil, gas and ozokerite resulted in the development of modern micropalaeontology and geological mapping, with a prime example being the regional coverage of almost the entire Northern Carpathians provided by the Atlas Geologiczny Galicyi ( Geological Atlas of Galicia ), which consisted of 99 high-quality geological maps at a scale of 1:75 000. Geophysical surveying techniques were applied to subsurface mapping, and higher educational institutions were established in order to support exploration efforts.

Abstract Oil and gas activities in Romania cover a long time interval from antiquity until the present day. Most importantly, the year 1857 represents the starting point for industrial production in Romania when three world oil firsts were achieved: the first country with a crude oil production formally recorded in domestic and international statistics (275 tons); the first petroleum industrial refinery, located in Ploiești, with a processing capacity of 7.5 tons/day; Bucharest became the first city in the world to have public illumination, using lamp oils. After 1857, the evolution of the oil and gas industry in Romania was controlled by important historical events: World Wars I and II, the communist regime (1945–89), and the post-communist period (1990–today).

Abstract Since the early 2000s, the exploitation of shale gas has radically modified the US energy scenario. In a number of European countries, the US boom has elicited questions about its repeatability in Europe. Among the staunchest supporters of the development of national shale-gas resources were Polish administrations, which grounded their activism in this domain in the language of energy security, autonomy vis-à-vis Russian gas, and in Poland’s old oil history. The history of hydrocarbon exploration in the country dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, and is connected to the oil boom that occurred in the region of Galicia. While the boom was over by World War I, promising estimations made in recent years by several agencies about Poland’s shale gas reserves have stirred hopes of a ‘second Galicia’. From 2007, the Polish government started assigning permits to both national and foreign gas companies. However, factors linked to legislation, geology and macroeconomics caused a premature end to hopes of Polish autonomy. After a reconstruction of the history of oil in Galicia and the constitution of the Polish oil and gas sector, this paper narrates the rise and fall of Poland’s ‘affair’ with shale gas.

Abstract The exploration activities in the Barents Sea started as far back as 1907 with the first geological expedition to the Spitsbergen archipelago. Exploration for oil and gas started with the Kvadhuken well in 1961, followed by several other wells. Fina Exploration drilled two wells on the Island of Hopen in 1973. The NPD acquired the first seismic data in 1969. The universities collected seismic profiles from 1969 as part of the Continental Shelf Project. The first licences in the Barents Sea were awarded in the 5th concession round in Norway in 1980. The results so far (2016) are two fields in production, Snøhvit and Goliat, and several in the evaluation phase. The main exploration challenges in the Barents Sea are the Tertiary uplift and erosion of Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks, and the maturation of the source rocks due to the uplift. The discoveries Gotha and Alta in 2013–15 proved the Permian carbonate play. The awards in the 23rd concession round opened the Barents SE area bordering Russia. One well was drilled in 2017 with encouraging results and two more will be drilled in 2018.

Abstract The aim of this work is to provide a synthetic history of the Italian upstream oil and gas industry, from its early start until today. Among European countries, Italy has one of the richest abundance of evidence of hydrocarbon seepages. The populations that have inhabited the country during the various historical periods took advantage of these phenomena, harvesting oil and bitumen from the surface. A testimony of such activity is an ingot of purified bitumen dated as first century AD found in central Italy. In the nineteenth century, seepages attracted the interest of oil companies that began to explore the Apennines. The drilling of the first modern oil well was realized in 1860 near Ozzano (Parma). The first onshore seismic reflection survey was acquired in 1940. The well Caviaga-1 was drilled in 1944 near Milan, discovering a gas field of 12.5 Bcm. It was one of the major European gas fields and it marked the starting point of the modern Italian petroleum industry. The widespread use of seismic reflection triggered an intense period of exploration. The first material oil discoveries were Ragusa (in 1954) and Gela (in 1956), both in Sicily. By the mid-1950s, the first offshore seismic survey started in the Adriatic Sea. In 1959, the drilling of well Gela 21, the first offshore well in Europe, boosted further exploration possibilities. During the following decades, the level of exploration and production (E&P) activities remained high, while from the beginning of the third millennium there has been a general slowdown. Since 2007, the level of exploration drilling has dropped to under 10 wells per year. In 2014, this negative trend was further confirmed with no exploratory wells drilled. The causes of this decline derive from the exploration maturity of the biogenic gas play and from the heavy bureaucratic processes involved in obtaining authorization. However, the main cause is probably the strong opposition from environmentalist associations to any kind of petroleum activities.

Abstract This article aims to present selected episodes of the scientific and entrepreneurial activities realized in the Majella oil district, Abruzzo, central Italy, between the 1830s and the 1940s. Majella had an important role in the early process of modernization of the Italian oil industry. As we will see, the application of science and technology in the wellsite, a pioneering integrated production model, unexpected environmental constraints and the longevity of the business made Abruzzo into a benchmark. Between 1864 and 1865, the pattern of the secular and unchanged local manufacturing of bitumen, based on human labour and the manual harvesting of the mineral from natural outcrops, was outdone by two new conditions: the study of subsoil and the utilization of mechanical drilling. These early records of paid oil consultancies and the utilization of steam power were followed by the impressive, but short and illusory, peak in production never recorded before. In the following decades, the Majella district was very active and drew the attention of several international operators, in spite of the declining production of crude – compensated for by the yield of bitumen and shales – and the unstoppable rising of the Emilian Apennine ridge in the provinces of Pavia, Piacenza and Parma. From the early 1900s, foreign companies gradually reduced investment in new exploration in Maiella, where the core production was now bitumen and asphalts rather than oil and, by the 1920s, most of the industry was controlled by government authorities and local business. The advent of Fascism in the 1930s saw Maiella become a stronghold of the autarchy’s policies; later, the improvised and inefficient national fuel planning of Italy at the start of the Second World War saw Abruzzo’s oil and bitumen supplies become a strategic resource. The Maiella district has the longest production history in Italy and today geoscientists are surveying and interpreting the geology of the area with a new perspective.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to frame selected episodes in the establishment and development of the modern oil and gas industry in the Northern Apennines (Emilia-Romagna region), Italy. The research spans between the political unification of the Italian peninsula into the Kingdom of Italy (1861), and the outbreak of World War I (1914). In the attempt to delve into the socio-economic scenario of those times, we look to contextualize and describe the work of the geologists and engineers who contributed to developing the early scientific knowledge of practical utility on the oil-bearing formations of the Northern Apennines. The history of the Emilia-Romagna oil industry was influenced and shaped by several episodes, and this paper discusses in particular two events that occurred during 1911. The first is an important and political act: the promulgation from the Italian authorities of the first regulation aimed at fostering the national oil industry, including the generous and criticized subsidies to support oil well drilling. The second is a technical–scientific landmark: the publication by Enrico Camerana and Bartolomeo Galdi (both engineers in the Royal Corps of Mines in Bologna) of the treatise I giacimenti petroleiferi dell’Emilia [ The Oilfields of the Emilia Region ], thanks to which Italian oil expertise made an important step forward. This seminal study on the state of the art of geological exploration of the oilfields of northern Italy represents the point of fracture between the empirical knowledge concerning oil and gas exploration and production and the development of the first national original research in the field of geosciences, to be fully developed in the decades to come.

Abstract The Ayoluengo Field, commonly cited as the only onshore oil field in Spain, was discovered in June 1964 by Amospain, a joint venture of Chevron, Texaco and CAMPSA, by then the state-owned company. Ayoluengo is located about 300 km north of Madrid in the southern part of the Basque–Cantabrian Basin, a geological region where natural oil seeps, tar sands and asphalt have been recognized in outcrops since the early twentieth century. Now, 50 years after the first oil in 1967, the field has a cumulated production of 17 million barrels of oil. The 50-year production concession expired at the end of January 2017 and the field is now closed, awaiting a bidding process for a new concession to be awarded. The Ayoluengo Field consists of a NE–SW-orientated salt-cored anticline, related to Triassic salt movements. The field is divided into two large structural blocks by a normal fault. Oil and gas production comes from a series of thin lenticular fluvio-lacustrine sandstone packages of Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous age. More than 50 separate oil and gas sandstone beds have been identified by drilling. This multilayer reservoir, together with the structural component, means that Ayoluengo is considered to be a grouping of hundreds of small oil and gas fields. After years of intense exploration activity, the Ayoluengo Field still, surprisingly, remains a unique oil discovery and is the only onshore commercial oil field in Spain and also the only one in the entire Iberian Peninsula. This geological singularity has resulted in recurrent discussions between petroleum geologists because it is difficult to explain why a petroleum system is working uniquely at this particular spot and nowhere else within such a vast territory.

Abstract The onset of hydrocarbon exploration and production activity in Spain dates back to 1860, mainly consisting of rudimentary mining of tar sands, asphalts and bituminous shales. Petroleum exploration drilling started properly in 1900 by simply locating wells in the vicinity of petroleum impregnations at the surface, often with little or no geological input. Until 1940, most of these early exploration wells were shallow tests (less than 500 m deep), commonly operated by small private companies with foreign investment, but no oil and gas accumulations were found. Systematic hydrocarbon exploration in Spain began in 1940 after the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Two oil companies led these activities: CAMPSA, a state-run petroleum monopoly established in 1927; and CEPSA, a fully private Spanish company founded in 1929, which created the exploration subsidiary CIEPSA in 1940. However, the poor economic situation in Spain, the currency shortage and the international embargo after the Civil War made it very difficult to import any rig capable of deep drilling until the late 1940s. During the early 1950s, the domestic and international position of Spain started to improve. Slowly, foreign hydrocarbon exploration companies (especially German and American) began to form partnerships with national and Spanish private companies. They conducted the acquisition of the first seismic reflection surveys and were responsible for a considerable increase in deep drilling and pioneering borehole logging. Noteworthy amongst these were the intense activities of the VALDEBRO, a consortium formed in 1952 by American companies and the state. In 1960, 100 years after the initiation of petroleum production in Spain, the first commercial success was obtained with the discovery of dry gas in the Castillo-1 well, drilled by CIEPSA in the onshore Cantabrian–Basque Basin. This find was later complemented by the oil discovery at Ayoluengo in 1964 by a joint venture led by CAMPSA and which still remains the only commercial oil field discovered onshore Spain.