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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

This chapter presents a collection of first-generation Swiss geologists, who, around 1900, went abroad in order to work for oil organizations, both public and private. With the rise of oil exploration after 1900, the demand for experienced oil geologists grew rapidly. Oil companies started hiring trained geologists from different parts of the world, which led to an increasing number of Swiss geologists finding employment abroad. One of the first to start his career abroad was Carl Schmidt (1862–1923) from Basel, highly esteemed and later renowned for his achievements as a teacher of younger oil geologists. Another was Josef Erb (1874–1934), who accomplished an unparalleled career at Royal Dutch Shell. Other examples include Hans Hirschi (1876–1964), who worked for the Union des Pétroles d’Oklahoma for a few years, and Arnold Heim (1882–1965), working nearly 50 years for major oil companies. Many more followed over the decades to come, so that virtual successions took place between them: specific territories and specific companies were ‘handed down’ between geologists of the same nationality. Where once the Swiss were employed, others took over; the pioneers acted as door-openers for future generations.

Simon Papp (1886–1970) is regarded as the ‘father’ of Hungarian petroleum exploration. He was also considered internationally as an exceptional oil finder, as his exploration career took him from Hungary to Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, Albania, Canada, Australia and Papua New Guinea.In 1932, Dr Papp returned to Hungary and became engaged in exploration in western Hungary, working for EUROGASCO (an international consortium headed by Standard Oil of New Jersey). His prospecting work was very successful, resulting in the discovery of four oil fields with reserves totalling about 100 MMbbl (million barrels).In 1948, after returning from a trip to the USA, Dr Papp was arrested by the communist secret police in Hungary, allegedly because of sabotage and attempting to overthrow the communist government. After being forced to ‘confess’, he was sentenced to death but, probably due to worldwide protest by scientific organizations, the sentence was changed to life in prison.As his exceptional knowledge of the petroleum industry was a major asset, the communist regime arranged for him to continue his work from his prison cell. He was finally released from prison in 1955 and lived in retirement in Budapest until his death in 1970.

Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood (1846–1919) stands as a giant in the history of petroleum science and technology. This paper pieces together scattered information about his life and work, and discusses his contributions, directly or indirectly, to petroleum exploration and production in various parts of the world, especially Burma (Myanmar), Persia, Mexico and the West Indies with which British colonial and commercial interests were related. Redwood established one of the first and most successful consulting firms for petroleum companies, and, in this way, trained generations of petroleum geologists and engineers. His masterpiece, Petroleum: A Treatise, which went through five editions from 1896 to 1926, summed up the knowledge of petroleum of its age, and still remains a valuable book for historical reference. Redwood’s mediatory position between scientific, industrial and political circles in Britain enabled him to play a leading role in the development of petroleum technology, as well as Britain’s oil operations around the world during the 1880s–1910s. He served as a technical advisor to many government committees and oil companies, and his total dedication to Britain’s oil security during World War I and during the transformation of the Royal Navy’s fleet from coal to oil fuel were the climax of his professional life.