In the year 600 B.C. Chinese discovered oil and transported it for the first time in pipelines made from bamboo.
However, Colonel Drake's heralded discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859 and the Spindletop discovery in Texas in 1901 set the stage for the new oil economy.
But even when Drake and Spindletop had set the stage for a new oil economy, everyone was still skeptical about the long-term utility of oil.
Investors in the oil industry were afraid of putting their money into oil or refineries because there was uncertainty about whether or not oil would dry off in a few years or maybe nobody in the next decade would even need oil for anything.