New Delhi, May 4 -- Crude oil, the undistilled kind right out of the ground, was known to the Mesopotamians, Persians and Babylonians. The Chinese were the first to dig shallow wells and transport flammable oil through bamboo pipelines. Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner was the pioneer who began to distil oil and coined the term 'kerosene' in the mid-1850s.

John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, founded in 1870, integrated production, transport, refining and marketing of crude oil and its distillates until its anti-trust related breakup in 1911.

Meanwhile, the action was heating up in West Asia; Masjed-e-Soleyman in Iran emerged as the first oil well in the country, discovered in 1908. While mature, it is still an active well, located not ...