A chronicle of oil, gas, and the ground they came from
Energy Histories
From a hand-drilled well in Pennsylvania to the creeks of the Niger Delta — the story of oil and gas told through the fields, the founders, and the decisions that shaped Nigeria, Africa, and the world.
Drag the line through 165 years
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The Drake Well
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Three vantage points, one industry
The same barrel of oil looks different depending on where you're standing — a Niger Delta creek, a West African rig, or a boardroom in Houston. These are the threads worth following in each.
Nigeria
- 1956Oloibiri: the well that started it all
- 1977Why the NNPC was built the way it was
- 2021Inside the Petroleum Industry Act
Africa
- 1959Libya's Zelten field and a new exporter
- 2007Ghana's Jubilee field and a late start
- 1990sThe deepwater rush off West Africa
Global
- 1859Edwin Drake and the first drilled well
- 1960Baghdad, and the founding of OPEC
- 2010sHow shale rewrote the supply map
Explore by theme
Cut across the timeline a different way.
Discovery
The wells, surveys, and lucky accidents that turned geology into industry.
Nationalization
How producing nations took control of their own reserves — and what it cost them.
Shocks & crises
Embargoes, price collapses, and the politics that moved through a barrel of crude.
Transition
What happens to oil and gas economies as the world reaches for something else.
Why this site exists
Most energy writing treats history as background noise for today's price chart. Energy Histories treats it as the main event — tracing how a well drilled in 1859 led, eventually, to a barge at Oloibiri in 1956, and from there to the industry Nigeria and the rest of the continent inherited.
Built for students, engineers, policy people, and anyone who wants the story behind the barrel.
- Years covered1859–2024
- Milestones charted—
- Regions3