What was the first company to drill for oil in Venezuela?
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
Despite the knowledge of the existence of oil reserves in Venezuela for centuries, the first oil wells of significance were not drilled until the early 1910s. In 1908, Juan Vicente Gómez replaced his ailing predecessor, Cipriano Castro, as the president of Venezuela. Over the next few years, Gómez granted several concessions to explore, produce, and refine oil. Most of these oil concessions were granted to his closest friends, and they in turn passed them on to foreign oil companies that could actually develop them. One such concession was granted to Rafael Max Valladares who hired Caribbean Petroleum Company (later acquired by Royal Dutch Shell) to carry out his oil exploration project. On 15 April 1914, upon the completion of the (now called MG-I) oil well, the first Venezuelan oilfield of importance, , was discovered by Caribbean Petroleum in the Maracaibo Basin. This major discovery encouraged a massive wave of foreign oil companies to Venezuela in an attempt to get a piece of the action.
Petrolia, California
Petrolia (formerly, New Jerusalem and Petrolea) is an unincorporated community in Humboldt County, California, southeast of Cape Mendocino, at an elevation of above sea level, within ZIP Code 95558, and area code 707. Petrolia was the site of the first oil well drilled in California.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
Upon arrival in the early 16th century, the Spanish conquerors learned from the indigenous people to use the naturally occurring bitumen for caulking their ships as well, and for treating their weapons. The first documented shipment of petroleum from Venezuela was in 1539 when a single barrel of oil was sent to Spain to alleviate the gout of Emperor Charles V.
Science and technology in Venezuela
The Institute of Venezuelan Petroleum Technology () is the research arm of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA). Intevep develops projects in the areas of oil exploration, production and refining. In 1976, the construction project for the facilities and laboratories of INTEVEP was started, located in what until that year had been a Jesuit seminary, called Villa Pignatelli, chosen for meeting the ideal conditions of geographical location. In June 1979, INTEVEP was incorporated as a trading company, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela. Currently, it is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Social District for the Altos Mirandinos and has the coordination of the Ribas Mision.
Petroleum industry in Azerbaijan
In 1846, under the supervision of state advisor V.N. Semyonov an engineer Alekseev drilled a 21 m deep well using a primitive percussion drilling mechanism, in Bibiheybət to explore for oil, with positive results. More than a decade later, on August 27, 1859, "Colonel" Edwin L. Drake struck oil on American soil for the first time.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
After the 1973 oil crisis, the period of economic prosperity for Venezuela was relatively short-lived. As Venezuelan oil minister and OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo had presciently warned in 1976: ""Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see, oil will bring us ruin... It is the devil's excrement."" This was the case during the "1980s oil glut". OPEC member countries were not adhering strictly to their assigned quotas, and once again oil prices plummeted.
Science and technology in Venezuela
José María Vargas (La Guaira, March 10, 1786 – New York City, April 13, 1854) graduated with a degree in philosophy from the Seminario Tridentino obtained in 1809 his medical title from the Real y Pontificia Universidad de Caracas. Vargas was imprisoned by the Spanish in 1813 for revolutionary activities. Upon his release in 1813, he travelled to Scotland for medical training in the University of Edinburgh. Vargas performed cataract surgery. He was one of the earliest oculists (eye surgeons) in Puerto Rico after his arrival there in 1817. He returned to Venezuela to practice medicine and surgery in 1825. Elected as President of Venezuela in 1835–1836 he resigned his charge in 1836. In 1839 Vargas receives from the President Paez office, an oil bottle found in Pedernales, located in the Canton of the Lower Orinoco. He submits it to various physical-chemical analyzes involved the fractional distillation and wrote a much more complete report than the "Silliman Report" which was written 16 years later and which nevertheless appears in texts, as the first scientific report on oil. His final paragraph confirms the wisdom of Vargas: ""this finding is more precious and worthy of congratulation than that of the mines of silver and gold." "It amazes that such phrase was written decades before the invention of the engine to explosion that uses petroleum derivates to move all the cars and airplanes in the 20th century."
History of the petroleum industry in Canada
Stagnant, algae-ridden surface water lay almost everywhere. To secure better drinking water, Williams dug (rather than drilled) a well a few yards down an incline from his plant. In 1858 at a depth of the well struck oil. It became the first commercial oil well in North America, remembered as the Williams No. 1 well at Oil Springs, Ontario. The "Sarnia Observer and Lambton Advertiser", quoting from the "Woodstock Sentinel", published on page two on August 5, 1858: It was 12 years after drilling the first oil well in Baku settlement (Bibi-Heybat) in 1846 on Apsheron peninsula.
Americas Petrogas
In 2004, Americas Petrogas was founded by oil and gas entrepreneur Barclay Hambrook and his long-time business partner Carlos Lau. They decided to focus on the continent of South America. The business partners sought to leverage Lau's knowledge of the history, politics and business cultures of South America as well as the knowledge of hydrocarbon basins provided by a former chief geoscientist who joined their team. They also considered the fiscal regimes, the geology, and access to infrastructure to enable early asset monetization for oil and gas discoveries. At the time, Ecuador and Venezuela did not meet their risk criteria due to political landscapes, Brazil because of the tight control of the oil and gas industry under Petrobras and the necessity of using Petrobras to transport oil and gas. In Chile, there were few oil and gas opportunities and a scarcity of equipment and expertise and Colombia, at the time, was experiencing serious security issues. Peru offered lands that were in jungle environments which were much too risky and costly to operate for a start up company.
Veracruz
The "Golden Lane" ("Dos Bocas-Alamo structure" or The Ridge") refers to a series of oil fields aligned in an arc onshore and a symmetrical alignment offshore, forming two sides of a Cretaceous atoll 180 km long. The structure was discovered in 1908 by Weetman Pearson's Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company San diego de la Mar No. 1 well, which flowed 2,500 bbl/day. The Golden Lane oil fields penetrate a massive elliptical reef platform, identified as the Sierra del Abra limestone (consisting of reef, backreef and lagoonal facies), which dips southeast. The site for the discovery well was selected due to the presence of petroleum seeps, just as was Edward Laurence Doheny's La Paz No. well in the Ebano-Panuco petroleum district west of Tampico, Tamaulipas, the first Mexican discovery well in 1904. In 1908, the infamous Dos Bocas oil fire occurred after the San Diego de la Mar No. 3 blowout. This was followed by the Potrero del Llano No. 4 well, flowing 100,000 bbl per day during the three months it was out of control. Doheny's Cerro Azul No. 4 well, located by Ezequiel Ordonez, became the largest daily production record holder in 1916 at 260,000 bbl. Geophysical studies, in particular gravimetry, starting in 1920 led to the discovery of the Poza Rica Field in 1932 and Moralillo Field in 1948, on the west flank of the Golden Lane in the Tamabra forereef facies. Refraction seismography surveys started in 1930, augemented in 1948 with reflection seismography, which led to the discovery of the southern extent of the atoll with the Ezequiel Ordonez No. 1 well in 1952 and additional discoveries through 1968. Marine seismic and magnetometer surveys starting in 1957 showed the extent of the atoll offshore and led to the first offshore well, Isla de Lobos No. 1-B, in 1963. The depths of wells are on the order of 500 m onshore and 2000 m offshore.
Scarabeo 9
"Scarabeo 9" drilled its first well on the Jagüey prospect in the North Cuba Basin for Repsol in the beginning of 2012. Provider of immediate well intervention and other well-related subsea services was Helix Energy Solutions Group. After drilling for Repsol, "Scarabeo 9" was contracted to drill for Petronas and Gazprom Neft on the Catoche field off the north coast of Pinar del Río Province, and for Petróleos de Venezuela on the Cabo de San Antonio prospect off the west coast of Cuba. Repsol has also contracted the rig for drilling in Brazil.
Oil reserves in Venezuela
Venezuela's development of its oil reserves has been affected by political unrest in recent years. In late 2002, nearly half of the workers at the state oil company PDVSA went on strike, after which the company fired 18,000 of them. Venezuela's crude oil is very heavy by international standards, and as a result much of it must be processed by specialized domestic and international refineries. Venezuela continues to be one of the largest suppliers of oil to the United States, sending about to the U.S. Venezuela is also a major oil refiner and the owner of the Citgo gasoline chain.
ACO, C.A.
ACO, C.A. is a Venezuelan holding company for an umbrella organization of over eighty companies engaged in a wide variety of industries throughout Venezuela predominately in the automotive industry. It is best known for the sale, servicing and leasing of automobiles nationally. It was founded in 1951 by Arnold Orav, Chairman along with Harry Männil , President & CEO, and with the financial backing of Alcoa Aluminum Corp. (majority shareholder), the Juan Simon Mendoza family (Polar Group), the Tamayo family (largest Venezuelan liquor distributor "et al."), and other prominent Venezuelan investors. The company emerged in the 1970s as the world's largest tractor dealership as the dealer for John Deere Tractors in Venezuela. It also became the largest automobile dealership in South America, according to the Ford Motors Company (USA). A significant contributor to the success of the Grupo Aco was the innovative introduction in Venezuela of in-house auto sale financing using a captive finance company. Whereas Grupo Aco had equity stakes in a great number of companies, the balance of ownership of many of these companies was held by Grupo Aco shareholders. As a result, Grupo Aco commanded a larger market share than would be suggested only by its totally owned companies. It attained US $900 million in sales during 1973 and ranked as the most profitable private sector company in the nation that year. Changes in Venezuela's economy and political environment during the early 1980s caused a downturn for many large businesses in Venezuela. In the case of the Aco Group, a financial crisis emerged as motor vehicle sales plummeted. By 1993, the Aco Group was forced into reorganization and a restructuring of the entire group. This led to Harry Mannil becoming the largest shareholder, at 24% of common shares. Efforts to recover financially were overwhelmed by continuous declines in the nation's private sector economy. Aco, S.A. was splintered into several groups, with a substantial number of auto dealerships taken under direct ownership by Harry Mannil.
Lago Petroleum Corporation
C. Ledyard Blair's Blair & Co. and Chase Securities sold a controlling stake in Lago to Pan American Petroleum in a complex transaction at the end of 1925.
By the late 1920s a trio of foreign-controlled companies were operating in the eastern Lake Maracaibo region. Shell Oil had the Aranguren concession onshore. Gulf Oil had acquired the Creole Syndicate's leases in the strip of shallow water wide along the lake shore. Standard of Indiana through Pan American owned Lago's operations in the lake bed.
In 1932 Pan American sold its foreign properties to Standard Oil of New Jersey for about $100 million.
The deal included Pan American's large oil concessions in Venezuela.
Lago Petroleum became a subsidiary of Creole Petroleum Corporation, now the Venezuelan subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Included in the sale were the Lago Oil and Transport Company and the Lago Shipping Company, and the finalized plans to build the Lago refinery, "the giant", on Aruba. It later operated under the name Creole Petroleum Company, then under Standard Oil's name, Esso.
The company was nationalized with the rest of the Venezuelan petroleum industry in 1976.
Saint Croix
Saint Croix was home to HOVENSA, one of the world's largest oil refineries. HOVENSA is a limited liability company owned and operated by Hess Oil Virgin Islands Corp. (HOVIC), a division of U.S.-based Hess Corporation, and Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), the national oil company of Venezuela. Gas prices on the island were slightly higher than average when compared to gas prices in the continental United States.
Heerema Marine Contractors
Heerema Marine Contractors was formed in 1948 as a small construction company providing oilfield platforms in Venezuela.
El Observador (RCTV)
Presented by the Creole Petroleum Corporation (a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey), "El Observador Creole" was Venezuela's first regular news program. The face and voice of Francisco Amado Pernía animated the newscasts from Monday to Saturday and Sunday the newscast corresponded to Cristóbal Rodríquez Pantoja. Seeing that the majority of the personnel that created RCTV originally came from Radio Caracas (later known as Radio Caracas Radio to differentiate it from Radio Caracas Televisión), it was clear that radio personalities such as Amable Espina, Carlos Quintana Negrón, Marco Antonio de Lacavalerie, and Pedro José Fajardo participated in the contest run by The Creole Oil Company to select their pair of hosts for their news program.
France–Venezuela relations
As of 2005, French oil company Total SA was the largest foreign investor in Venezuela. In 2005, Total commenced negotiations with the Venezuelan Government over a possible USD 5 billion project to develop heavy oil in eastern Venezuela. In April 2006, the Venezuelan government seized control of foreign owned oil fields including those operated by Total.
Crisis in Venezuela
In 2011, the United States sanctioned Venezuela's state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela.
Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray
In 1902, after sulphur was found in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Pearson used a Texas drilling crew to drill Potrerillos, a rise of ground close to his railway. Well No. 4 confirmed the location of a salt dome at a depth of 709 feet. This was a good sign, since oil was found at Spindletop in 1901, alongside the edge of a salt dome. Well No 8 became Mexico's first commercial oil well. Pearson then brought in Anthony Lucas to help spot 20 drilling locations, developing areas at Jáltipan, Capacan, Tecuanapa, and Soldedad. In 1908, Eagle built Mexico's first oil refinery, located at Minatitlán. In 1910, Potrero del Llano No. 4, came in as a real gusher. In 1921, Pearson added Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company (Cia. Mexicana de Petroleo el Aguila, S.A.) to the Shell-Royal Dutch merger.
Carson, California
1921 marked the first drilling for oil at Dominguez Hill, on the northwest side of the Dominguez Rancho, site of the famous battle during the Mexican–American War called the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in 1846. The mineral rights to this property were owned by Carson Estate Company, the Hellman Family, the Dominguez Estate Company, and the Burnham Exploration Company of Frederick Russell Burnham. On September 7, 1923, Burnham Exploration partnering with Union Oil brought in the first producer on the site: Callender No. 1-A well at a depth of and . Before long a number of refineries were up and running, with over 350 oil derricks, tank farms, and sprawling industrial complexes becoming a familiar part of the scenery. The principal leases were with Shell Oil Company and Union Oil of California and the first two wells were located west of Central Avenue and north of Victoria Street. Oil led to an increase in jobs in the community and a subsequent post-war population surge. An average of was produced from each of these wells through 1960.
Bolivar Coastal Fields
Nationalism then played a role in the oil industry; no new exploration concessions were offered after 1958, and the industry was nationalized at the end of 1975. The nationalized entity, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, is now one of the world's largest integrated oil companies.
Cabimas
Before 1900, Venezuela was known to possess commercial quantities of petroleum. One major find was the 'Zumaque 1' well in 1914, in the area of Mene Grande, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Cabimas. It was the blowout of the Barroso No. 2 well in Cabimas in 1922 that marked the beginning of Venezuela's modern history as a major producer.
Gulf of Venezuela
It was discovered by westerners in 1499 when an expedition commanded by Alonso de Ojeda in which he was accompanied by Amerigo Vespucci, explored the Venezuelan coasts compiling information and naming the new lands, said expedition arrived to the gulf after passing through the Netherlands Antilles and the Peninsula of Paraguaná.
Economic history of the United States
Following a shareholder disagreement, Bissell and fellow investor Jonathan Eveleth investor split with Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. and formed Seneca Oil in 1858. Edwin Drake, a shareholder, was hired by the company to drill for oil. The site chosen to drill the well was on Oil Creek near Titusville, PA, where a water well was producing oil. Drake chose to use brine well drilling technology based on the technique used in China since ancient times that reached the West in the late 1820s, except that Drake used iron cable, an iron well casing and a steam engine. The Drake Well hit oil at a depth of 69.55 feet on August 27, 1858, starting a drilling boom in the region.
History of Venezuela
Christopher Columbus sailed along the eastern coast of Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498, the only one of his four voyages to reach the South American mainland. This expedition discovered the so-called "Pearl Islands" of Cubagua and Margarita off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. Later Spanish expeditions returned to exploit these islands' abundant pearl oysters, enslaving the indigenous people of the islands and harvesting the pearls intensively. They became one of the most valuable resources of the incipient Spanish Empire in the Americas between 1508 and 1531, by which time the local indigenous population and the pearl oysters had been devastated.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
By 1940 Venezuela was the third largest producer of crude oil in the world with more than 27 million tonnes per year - just slightly less than the production in the USSR. 
In 1941, Isaías Medina Angarita, a former army general from the Venezuelan Andes, was indirectly elected president. One of his most important reforms during his tenure was the enactment of the new Hydrocarbons Law of 1943. This new law was the first major political step taken toward gaining more government control over its oil industry. Under the new law, the government took 50% of profits. Once passed, this piece of legislation basically remained unchanged until 1976, the year of nationalization, with only two partial revisions being made in 1955 and 1967.
Venezuela
The discovery of massive oil deposits in Lake Maracaibo during World War I proved to be pivotal for Venezuela and transformed the basis of its economy from a heavy dependence on agricultural exports. It prompted an economic boom that lasted into the 1980s; by 1935, Venezuela's per capita gross domestic product was Latin America's highest. Gómez benefited handsomely from this, as corruption thrived, but at the same time, the new source of income helped him centralize the Venezuelan state and develop its authority.
Amuay
Amuay appears for first time in a map by the year 1800. Its first inhabitants belonged to the native tribe "Amuayes", who populated the Paraguana Peninsula with the "Moruyes" tribe members. They used to exchange products by barter. Amuay means "caquetío" in their native language: "Place where water and winds meet". Until 1947 it was only barely populated as a fishing village; after that year, the Creole Petroleum Corporation built the refinery and this changed the way of life of the villagers.
At 01:11am on August 25, 2012, an explosion tore through the gas storage facility in Amuay with 39 confirmed dead and 80 wounded. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered an urgent investigation and announced:It has been decided to have three days of mourning, national mourning because this affects everyone in the big family of Venezuela.
History of the oil tanker
With facilities prepared in Jakarta, Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Kobe, the fledgling Shell company was ready to become Standard Oil's first challenger in the Asian market. On August 24, 1892, the "Murex" became the first tanker to pass through the Suez Canal.
In the meanwhile, in 1890 the "Koninklijke Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Petroleumbronnen in Nederlandsch-Indie" (KNMEP) ("Royal Dutch Company for the Working of Petroleum Wells in the Dutch Indies") — part of Royal Dutch Petroleum — was founded. In 1892 it found oil near Pangkalan Brandan on Sumatra, just some months before Samuels kerosene arrived in Singapore. At first, chartered ships were used, but in 1896 KNMEP launched its first tankers, the "Besitang" and "Berandan". The threat of the Tank Syndicate was reduced as the Dutch government excluded them from trading in the Dutch East Indies. To prevent a hostile takeover by Standard Oil, preference shares were issued. By the time Shell merged with Royal Dutch Petroleum in 1907, the company had 34 steam-driven oil tankers. Standard Oil started building tankers the same way as Shell and by 1900 owned around 60 tankers.
Petronas
Before the formation of Malaysia, Royal Dutch Shell first began the oil exploration in Miri, Sarawak; after Rajah Charles Brooke signed the first Oil Mining Lease in 1909. In 1910, the first oil well was drilled in Miri. This oil well is later known as the Grand Old Lady. In 1929, oil was discovered in Brunei. There were no other drilling activities in Borneo or British Malaya until 1950s. In 1966, the enactment of Petroleum Mining Act gave Exxon and Shell rights to explore oil territories and produce oil royalties and tax payments to the government. In the late 1960s, Esso and Continental Oil were given concessions to explore oil off the shores of the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. By 1974, Malaysia's output of crude oil stood at about to .
Venezuela
Oil was discovered in the early 20th century, and today, Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis. Inflation peaked at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rose to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak. The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s. The Venezuelan government under Hugo Chavez then established populist social welfare policies that initially boosted the Venezuelan economy and increased social spending, temporarily reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime. However, such populist policies later became inadequate, causing the nation's collapse as their excesses—including a uniquely extreme fossil fuel subsidy—are widely blamed for destabilizing the nation's economy. The destabilized economy led to a crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages of basic goods and drastic increases in unemployment, poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition and crime. By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies. In 2018, the country's economic policies led to extreme hyperinflation, with estimates expecting an inflation rate of 1,370,000% by the end of the year.
Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI.
Petrochemical industry in Romania
This is an incomplete list of oil refineries in Romania:1857 - First drilling of oil wells at Bend, northeast of Bucharest, on the Romanian side of the Carpathians; this year is registered as a beginning of Romania’s oil production. In 1846, in Baku (settlement Bibi-Heybat) the first ever well drilled with percussion tools to a depth of 21 meters for oil exploration, based on data of Nicolay Voskoboynikov; it was 11 years before the Romanian's well was drilled in Bend.4. www.geohelp.net/world.html; 
5. Mirbabayev Miryusif. "Brief history of the first oil drilling wells in Baku region" - "Noema" (Romania), 2018, v.XVII, p.175-185
6.
Venezuelan general strike of 2002–03
The Coordinadora Democrática, led by the business federation Fedecámaras and the trade union federation Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), called for a fourth "paro cívico", which turned out to be the most serious, and is known as the 2002–2003 oil lockout/strike, to begin on 2 December 2002. The opposition also called a recall-referendum-petition-signature-gathering day for 4 December. Initially the strike had a mixed response, with affluent eastern Caracas seeing most shops closed, while downtown and western Caracas was busy; many business owners either supported Chávez or put their business above politics. Early attempts to block a crucial navigation channel in Lake Maracaibo, in order to paralyse the oil industry, were foiled by the navy. The National Electoral Council voted to hold a non-binding recall referendum on 2 February, but the Coordinadora Democrática chose to ignore it. On 4 December the captain of a large oil tanker named for the beauty queen Pilín León anchored in the Lake Maracaibo shipping channel and refused to move. The rest of PDVSA 13-ship fleet was quickly similarly grounded. Combined with the PDVSA management walkout, this effectively paralysed the Venezuelan oil industry.
Wilmer Ruperti
Ruperti’s career began in 1987 as a tanker master for Venezuelan oil company, Maraven, S.A., an industry affiliate of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). He later studied shipping in Plymouth, England, before returning to Caracas, Venezuela, to set up his own small shipbroking firm.
Cabimas
Cabimas was founded by a group of Cistercians monks in 1758 as the Mission of Saint Ambrosio of Punta de Piedra, located in the modern day "La Mision". Some archeological remains have been found, however not a single wall survives. The existence of Cabimas is stated in the chronicles of Venezuelan Archbishop Mariano Marti who visited the town in 1771. The town grew as a fishing village on Lake Maracaibo's coast until the discovery of oil by the Venezuelan Oil Concessions (VOC) with the well Santa Barbara (R2) in 1917. However, it was the well "Los Barrosos 2" (R4) (1922) which 100,000 bpd blow out reached the world newspaper's headlines. Many oil companies and workers from other parts of Venezuela and abroad came to Cabimas, increasing its population. Most foreign personnel were of American or Dutch origin. La Rosa Oilfield was given in concession by Venezuela president Juan Vicente Gómez.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
After Hugo Chávez officially took office in February 1999, several policy changes involving the country's oil industry were made to explicitly tie it to the state under his Bolivarian Revolution. Since then, PDVSA has not demonstrated any capability to bring new oil fields onstream since nationalizing heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt formerly operated by international oil companies ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total. Chávez’s policies damaged Venezuela's oil industry due to lack of investment, corruption and cash shortages.
History of oil in California through 1930
In 1875, the Star Oil Works, later reorganized as the California Star Oil Works Company, hired Charles Alexander Mentry (1846-1900) to supervise its drilling operations in Pico Canyon, which became the Pico Canyon Oilfield. Mentry drilled three wells in 1875 and 1876 that showed promise, but the "gusher" came with the fourth well. Mentry began drilling Well No. 4 in July 1876 and struck oil on September 26, 1876, at a depth of . The well immediately began producing . When Mentry drilled the well to a depth of in 1877, the oil spurted to the top of the derrick, increasing the production to . After Well No. 4 proved to be a success, Mentry constructed the first oil pipeline in California from Pico Canyon to the refinery in Newhall, later extending it to the ocean at Ventura, California. Well No. 4 continued producing oil for 114 years before it was finally capped in 1990.
Venezuelan rock
First steps for Rock music in Venezuela in the late 1950s and can be traced to the band "Los Dangers", where after , it would be part with Henry Stephen of "Los Impala", a band from the prominent crude oil city Maracaibo and the first South American group with a high reputation and considerable impact in other continents (pretty much of his career in Spain). In Caracas "Los Holidays" released several albums, and were the first Latin-American rock band to travel and work in Europe (Mostly Spain's Costa Brava, July 1966-October 1966). Los Holidays main vocalist, Wolfgang Vivas went on to a solo career, as did guitarist/vocalist Franklin Holland (Van Splunteren) who later joined the American band "Gary and the Playboys", and created a new and very original "Proyecto Franklin Holland" in Caracas, 1984, releasing several well received albums on the Sonografica label. Then came up bands like "Los Darts", "Los 007", "Los Supersonicos" and "Los Claners" who followed the British rock pattern. Bands such as "Ladies WC" or "Azúcar, Cacao y Leche" focused on progressive and even the fusion stage of rock. "Las Cuatro Monedas" introduced in Venezuela the Jamaican rithms as Reggae and Ska.
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Near Drohobych and Boryslav in Galicia, significant oil reserves were discovered and developed during the mid 19th and early 20th centuries. The first European attempt to drill for oil was in Bóbrka in western Galicia in 1854. By 1867, a well at Kleczany, in Western Galicia, was drilled using steam to about 200 meters. On December 31, 1872, a railway line linking Borysław (now Boryslav) with the nearby city of Drohobycz (now Drohobych) was opened. American John Simon Bergheim and Canadian William Henry McGarvey came to Galicia in 1882. In 1883, their company, MacGarvey and Bergheim, bored holes of 700 to 1,000 meters and found large oil deposits. In 1885, they renamed their oil developing enterprise the "Galician-Karpathian Petroleum Company" (), headquartered in Vienna, with McGarvey as the chief administrator and Bergheim as field engineer, and built a huge refinery at Maryampole near Gorlice, in the southeast corner of Galicia. Considered the biggest, most efficient enterprise in Austro-Hungary, Maryampole was built in six months and employed 1000 men. Subsequently, investors from Britain, Belgium, and Germany established companies to develop the oil and natural gas industries in Galicia. This influx of capital caused the number of petroleum enterprises to shrink from 900 to 484 by 1884, and to 285 companies manned by 3,700 workers by 1890. However, the number of oil refineries increased from thirty-one in 1880 to fifty-four in 1904. By 1904, there were thirty boreholes in Borysław of over 1,000 meters. Production increased by 50% between 1905 and 1906 and then trebled between 1906 and 1909 because of unexpected discoveries of vast oil reserves of which many were gushers. By 1909, production reached its peak at 2,076,000 tons or 4% of worldwide production. Often called the "Polish Baku", the oil fields of Borysław and nearby Tustanowice accounted for over 90% of the national oil output of the Austria-Hungary Empire. From 500 residents in the 1860s, Borysław had swollen to 12,000 by 1898. In 1909, Polmin with headquarters in Lviv was established for the extraction and distribution of natural gas. At the turn of the century, Galicia was ranked fourth in the world as an oil producer. This significant increase in oil production also caused a slump in oil prices. A very rapid decrease in oil production in Galicia occurred just before the Balkans conflicts.
History of Venezuela (1908–1958)
It did not take much geological expertise to know that Venezuela had large petroleum deposits, because the petroleum oozed out from seeps all over the country and an asphalt lake had formed naturally. Venezuelans themselves had tried to extract oil for a small hand-pumped refinery early in the 20th century. When word spread internationally of Venezuela's oil potential, representatives of large foreign companies came to the country and started lobbying for rights of exploration and exploitation, and Gómez established the concessionary system. Venezuela had inherited from Spain the law that the ground surface—presumably, as deep as a plow or a water well went—could belong to individuals but everything under the soil was state property. Thus, Gómez began to grant huge concessions to family and friends. Any one who was close to Gómez eventually would become rich in one way or another. Gómez himself accumulated immense expanses of grasslands for cattle-raising, which had been his original occupation and was a lifelong passion. The Venezuelan concessionaires leased or sold their holdings to the highest foreign bidders. Gómez, who didn’t trust industrial workers or unions, refused to allow the oil companies to build refineries on Venezuelan soil, so these were built them in the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao. The one in Aruba was for a time the second largest in the world, after the one in Abadan, Iran. Although the Venezuelan oil boom started around 1918, the year when oil first figured as an export commodity, it took off when an oil well called Barroso blew a spout that threw up an average of the equivalent to 100,000 barrels a day. It took five days to bring the flow under control. By 1927, oil was Venezuela's most valuable export and by 1929 Venezuela exported more oil than any other country in the world.
Petroperú
Petróleos del Perú S.A. (Petroperú) is a Peruvian state-owned petroleum company. Its activities include transport, refinery and commercialization of fuel and other oil derivatives. It was created on July 24, 1969, during the presidency of Juan Velasco Alvarado, using properties expropriated by Peru from local oil companies and the International Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of Esso Corporation. Those properties included the world's oldest giant oilfield, "La Brea y Pariñas", first discovered in 1869 and eventually acquired by Esso. The original title to the property was granted by Simón Bolívar himself. In 2013, it was informed that Petroperú was interested in buying all of the assets of Repsol in Peru. However, this takeover did not occur. 
Petroperú is responsible for the oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon in February 2016.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
By 2017, PDVSA could not even afford to export oil through international water, which requires safety inspections and cleaning under maritime law, with a fleet of tankers stranded in the Caribbean Sea due to the issue.. In July 2017, this arrangement was extended from just the first half of 2017 to continue until March 2018 . This continued depression in income from oil has led Maduro to pressure the OPEC to raise the falling oil prices to help the Venezuelan economy. In April 2017, a controversial Venezuelan Supreme Court ruling granted Maduro executive powers over PDVSA, which allow him act autonomously in selling shares or make international agreements of the oil company. In October 2017, Venezuela had its lowest oil output in 28 years, with only 1.863 million bpd being pumped that month. By late-2017, the PDVSA struggled to repay $725 million of debt, part of a total $5 billion owed..
Edward L. Doheny
In 1919 the Colombian Petroleum Company, a P.A.T. subsidiary, bought a 75% interest in the Barco oil concession in Colombia. Doheny was also interested in plans to develop the oil industry in Venezuela, and in building a pipeline from Colombia to Venezuela to make it more economical to export the Barco oil from the west coast of Lake Maracaibo.
In 1920 Pan American was the largest oil company in the United States, ahead of Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation and the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. Automobile production was booming and oil prices were high. The Mexican Petroleum Company was the largest in Mexico, and Mexico was the largest oil producer in the world.
In 1922 Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased the oil field at Elk Hills, California, to the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company.
Around the same time, the Teapot Dome Field in Wyoming was leased to Sinclair Consolidated Oil Corporation.
Both oilfields were part of the US Navy's petroleum reserves. Neither lease was subject to competitive bidding. 
In 1924 rumors about corruption in the deals escalated into the Teapot Dome scandal.
José Lino Vaamonde
After the Republican defeat Vaamonde stayed briefly in Paris and Havana, then went into exile in Venezuela.
He arrived in Venezuela in 1939.
He spent his first years in Valencia working in commerce.
In 1942 the Spanish General Office of Architecture imposed on Vaamonde "perpetual disqualification for exercise of the profession in public, managerial and trust positions and disqualification from private practice of the profession for thirty years".
Around 1945 Vaamonde moved to Caracas.
He collaborated with Joaquín Ortiz García on the Edificio Peque (1946) in the San Bernardino district of de Caracas.
In 1946 Vaamonde started to work for Shell Venezuela, where he held various positions before becoming the company's consulting architect, a very senior position.
When he joined the company it was in the process of consolidating its Caracas headquarters into a single building, which would not be completed until 1950 and at the time was the largest office building in the city.
He founded and organized the company's architectural services, initially concerned with design and planning of homes, hospitals, clubs and schools, which until then had been purchased prefabricated or pre-designed.
This led to provision of residences and infrastructure for the oil camps.
Vaamundo developed oil camps such as Lagunillas (1954) and Altagracia (1958), self-contained communities where the workers were isolated from the "wild" exterior.
In the 1950s the architecture section began to undertake design of service stations and gas stations, the most visible aspect of the company to the citizens.
Vaamonde directed completion of the first service stations, Blandín and Las Mercedes in Caracas.
PDVSA
PDVSA bought 50% of the United States gasoline brand Citgo from Southland Corporation in 1986 and the remaining half in 1990. With full ownership of Citgo, PDVSA at its peak controlled 10% of the US domestic oil market, creating a lucrative export chain from Venezuelan soil to American consumers, as the two largest buyers of Venezuelan petroleum are the United States and China, respectively. PDVSA was, despite dwindling performance, able to add Russia's Rosneft as an extraction partner in 2013, with the anticipation of extracting 2.1 million barrels of petroleum per day. With the onset of the Venezuelan Crisis, Venezuela loaned 1.5 billion dollars from Russia, offering 49.9% of PDVSA's share in Citgo as collateral; Venezuela's high likelihood of default means Citgo could be absorbed by Rosneft in the near future. On October 30th, 2018 PDVSA paid $949 million on its Citgo backed bond to investors, a payment many analysts thought was impossible for the company given its recent liquidity struggles. This payment means that PDVSA will continue to own Citgo for the time being, but failure to pay in the future will result in Citgo transferring ownership to one of PDVSA's creditors. Losing Citgo would be disastrous for PDVSA, as they would lose the key terminal of their export chain to the US and the chemical additives necessary for oil refinery that Citgo produces; this loss would wreak additional havoc on Venezuela's economy, drying up the revenue stream that provides 90% of the government's hard-currency earnings. The next payment is due in April 2019; whether or not PDVSA will make a full payment is uncertain as Venezuela has been completely insolvent with the rest of their $60 billion debt. Canadian mining firm Crystallex is another creditor of PDVSA's Citgo holdings and could potentially end up in control should PDVSA default in 2020. Crystallex, through a US court case, has already received an undisclosed amount of Citgo shares in compensation for Venezuela's 2008 nationalization of their mines. A separate Canadian mining firm, Rusoro, is also pursuing $1.28 billion in repayment for the prior nationalization of its assets, which it is pursuing through the US justice system until PDVSA begins making payments.
Venezuela
For much of the period between 1950 and 1973, the Venezuelan economy was characterized by its stability and sustained strength, factors that contributed decisively to being able to maintain a fixed exchange rate without major inconveniences. In the period of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979, his first time as president), as a result of the Arab-Israeli war (the Yom Kippur war), the average price of a barrel of oil went from 3.71 to 10.53 dollars and continued to rise to exceed 29 dollars in 1981. The income of the public sector went from 18,960 million bolivars in 1973 to 45.564 million in 1974. The economic bonanza also had the characteristics of an economic bubble, but Venezuelans remember the "Ta barato, dame dos". The increased inflow of funds to savings and loan entities and mortgage banks allowed an increase in the mortgage loan portfolio, which also tripled. In general, Venezuela was a prosperous country in the governments of Rómulo Betancourt (1945- – ; 1959–1964), Rafael Caldera (1969–1974; 1994 – ) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979; 1989 – ). In 1975 the iron industry was nationalized and the following year the oil industry, creating Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Both Caldera and Pérez partially broke with the Betancourt Doctrine.
The election in 1973 of Carlos Andrés Pérez coincided with an oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability.
List of companies of Venezuela
Venezuela is a federal republic located on the northern coast of South America. Oil was discovered in the early 20th century and, today, Venezuela has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis. Inflation peaked at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rose to 66% in 1995 as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak. The recovery of oil prices in the early 2000s gave Venezuela oil funds not seen since the 1980s. A destabilized economy led to a crisis in Bolivarian Venezuela, resulting in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages of basic goods and drastic increases in poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition, and crime.
Petroleum industry in Nigeria
The history of oil exploration in Nigeria dates back to 1907 when Nigerian Bitumen Corporation conducted exploratory work in the country, at the onset of World War I the firm's operation were stopped. Thereafter, licenses were given to D'Arcy Exploration Company and Whitehall Petroleum but neither company found oil of commercial value and they returned their licenses in 1923. A new license covering was given to Shell D'arcy Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, a consortium of Shell and British Petroleum (then known as Anglo-Iranian). The company began exploratory work in 1937. The consortium was granted license to explore oil all over the territory of Nigeria but the acreage allotted to the company in the original license was reduced in 1951 and then between 1955 and 1957. Drilling activities started in 1951 with the first test well drilled in Owerri area. Oil was discovered in non-commercial quantities at Akata, near Eket in 1953. Prior to the Akata find, the company had spent around 6 million pounds in exploratory activities in the country. Shell-BP in the pursuit of commercially available petroleum found oil in Oloibiri, Nigeria in 1956. Other important oil wells discovered during the period were Afam and Bomu in Ogoni territory. Production of crude oil began in 1957 and in 1960, a total of 847,000 tonnes of crude oil was exported. Towards the end of the 1950s, non-British firms were granted license to explore for oil: Mobil in 1955, Tenneco in 1960, Gulf Oil and later Chevron in 1961, Agip in 1962, and Elf in 1962.
Prior to the discovery of oil, Nigeria (like many other African countries) strongly relied on agricultural exports to other countries to supply their economy. Many Nigerians thought the developers were looking for palm oil. But after nearly 50 years searching for oil in the country, Shell-BP discovered the oil at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta. The first oil field began production in 1958.
PDVSA
In 2012, PDVSA announced that it would enter into a joint venture agreement with Eni SpA and Repsol in order to initiate a gas production project at the Cardon VI gas block in Venezuela. Production from this joint venture is estimated to reach between 80-100 million cubic meters of gas. In February 2014, PDVSA and the Anglo-French oil firm Perenco entered into talks for a $600 million financing deal to boost production at their Petrowarao joint venture. In October 2014, Venezuela imported its first ever ship of oil from Algeria so that they could dilute their oil.
Ventura Oil Field
The area was worked initially in 1885, followed by Ventura County Power Company drilling 7 shallow gas wells in 1903. While they reached depths of between 400 and , it is not known if they produced oil. In May 1916 the first commercially viable well, No. "Lloyd" 1, was drilled by State Consolidated Oil Company to a depth of 2,555 feet. Initial production consisted of 100 barrels a day. Shell Oil drilled the first well into what is now known as the 2nd Pool, in the Pico Formation, in March 1919, reaching a depth of .
Jean-Baptiste Boussingault
During the insurrection of the Spanish colonies, in 1822 with the Peruvian geologist , he went to Venezuela as a mining engineer on behalf of an English company contracted by the General Simón Bolivar. In Urao lagoon near Lagunillas, Merida State, Venezuela discovered the mineral Gaylussite.
Greeks in Venezuela
Apparently one of the first Greeks to arrive in the country was "Juan El Griego" to Margarita Island, and "Kalimios" in 1922, who founded the company of "Ferry-Boats" in Maracaibo Lake.
Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company
Doheny found heavy oil in El Ebano in 1901, which he exported to the United States for use in paving.
He formed the Mexican Petroleum Company and funded it with $6 million of his own money.
In 1905 he bought properties near Tuxpan, Veracruz, and formed the Huasteca Petroleum company to hold them.
In 1910 his wells in the Juan Casiano Basin in the Faja de Oro field started to produce good quality oil. 
The gusher at Casiano number 7 spewed out 60,000 barrels a day, and by 1918 had delivered over 85 million barrels of oil.
In 1911 Doheny signed a contract to supply Standard Oil.
Doheny's Mexican Petroleum Company made a major strike in February 1916 with the Cerro Azul No. 4 well in Cerro Azul, Veracruz, Mexico.
When the well struck it shot a stream of oil into the air. It became world's largest, pumping 260,000 barrels per day. Over the next fourteen years the well produced over 57 million barrels.
The Mexican Petroleum Company eventually acquired ownership or leasehold rights to of land.
2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt
In March 2002, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company that acted somewhat autonomously and accounted for 70% of Venezuela's foreign revenue, was targeted by Chávez out of fear of the oppositions ability to call national strikes and was to receive strict control from the government. Chávez's attempts to end the functional independence of PDVSA and to bring its oil revenues under state control were met with strong resistance from PDVSA officials and managers. Many supported the old Rafael Caldera-era policy of "apertura", that is, opening the Venezuelan oil sector to much greater foreign participation, to raise production; Chávez argued instead for cutting production, with coordination via OPEC, to raise prices and increase oil revenues. Chávez suspected "apertura" supporters of ultimately wanting to privatize the company, and the government attacked PDVSA management saying it was diverting too much of its revenues into its own pockets (PDVSA royalties paid to the state had fallen from 71% of gross earnings in 1981 during the peak of Venezuela's economy to 39% in 2000 following decades of financial hardship). On April 7, Chávez fired the President of PDVSA, Brigadier-General Guaicaipuro Lameda Montero and replaced him with "a former Communist Party militant", in addition to firing another 5 of the 7 members of the PDVSA board of directors on his Aló Presidente program, mocking each worker by name and used a whistle "as if to eject them from a soccer match". Such actions by Chávez caused further anti-Chávez developments with a series of walkouts and work slowdowns followed.
William Henry McGarvey
Using the "pole tool" system of drilling invented in the Petrolia region, they struck their first "gusher" within six months; it produced 30,000 barrels of crude oil a day. Over the next nine years, they drilled 370 wells and fended off or absorbed the hordes of competitors eager to share in the riches. The two men renamed their business the Galician-Karpathian Petroleum Company (Galizisch-Karpathische Petroleum Aktien-Gesellschaft) in either 1885 or 1895. They built a huge refinery in Maryampole which employed 1000 or more under the supervision of McGarvey's son Fred.
Armenians in Baku
The discovery of oil in Baku in the mid-19th century attracted a large number of Armenians to the city. In 1871, the first successful well was drilled by Ivan Mirzoev, an ethnic Armenian. He was followed by oil tycoon Alexander Mantashev, whose A.I. Mantashev and Co. trading house opened branches in major cities in Europe and Asia and established majority control (51.3%) over the total stock of oil and an overwhelming majority (66.8%) of the oil content in the Caspian Sea. He financed the construction of an east-west pipeline which extended 500 miles from Baku to the Black Sea port of Batumi. With rising competition against the Nobel Brothers and the Rothschilds, the A. I. Mantashev and Co. ultimately merged with several other Russian companies to form the Russian General Oil Company (OIL) in 1912. OIL eventually bought a number of oil production companies in Baku, including Mirzoev Brothers and Co., A. S. Melikov and Co., the Shikhovo (A. Tsaturyan, G. Tsovianyan, K. and D. Bikhovsky, L. Leytes), I. E. Pitoev and Co., Krasilnikov Brothers, Aramazd and others.
Grandin brothers
On August 27, 1859, Edwin Drake dug a successful commercial oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania which is commonly credited as the first oil well dug specifically as a commercial well in the United States. Days after the Drake well came in, news reached the Grandin General Store in Tidioute approximately 20 miles away. After hearing that Drake was selling barrels of oil at 75 cents each, John Livingston (then aged 23) who knew of petroleum seepage in the area, immediately began buying up small tracts of land surrounding an “oil spring” he knew of. On August 31, 1859, 4 days after the Drake well, John Livingston set up a spring-pole well, a simpler setup than Drake’s technique. This well is credited as being the second well dug specifically for commercial oil drilling purposes in the United States. Despite drilling down 134 feet, nearly twice the depth of Drake’s well, in an area Grandin had seen petroleum seepage at surface level, Grandin’s first well was unsuccessful and dry. John Livingston then recruited his brother William James and after that first unsuccessful attempt, they dug several more wells that were then successful and turned extremely profitable. Around this time Elijah Bishop returned to Pennsylvania to join his brothers in their oil business. Together they set up pipelines and containers. Along with Edwin Drake's, their efforts were a precursor to the Pennsylvania oil rush. According to legend, over the next several years the Grandin Brothers' oil endeavors eventually became so successful that John Livingston set up an appointment to meet John D. Rockefeller, another oil prospector at the time, to negotiate a partnership, but Rockefeller kept him waiting and after a period of time, refusing to wait any longer Grandin walked out before Rockefeller arrived, possibly forfeiting a chance for them to get in on the ground floor with Standard Oil.
Carabobo Field
Carabobo is an oil field located in Venezuela's Orinoco Belt. As one of the world's largest accumulations of recoverable oil, the recent discoveries in the Orinoco Belt have led to Venezuela holding the world's largest recoverable reserves in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia in July 2010. The Carabobo oil field is majority owned by Venezuela's national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). Owning the majority of the Orinoco Belt, and its estimated 1.18 trillion barrels of oil in place, PDVSA is now the fourth largest oil company in the world. The field is well known for its extra Heavy crude oils, having an average specific gravity between 4 and 16 °API. The Orinoco Belt holds 90% of the world's extra heavy crude oils, estimated at 256 billion recoverable barrels. While production is in its early development, the Carabobo field is expected to produce 400,000 barrels of oil per day.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
According to Corrales and Penfold, ""Chávez was not the first president in Venezuelan history to be mesmerized by the promise of oil, but he was the one who allowed the sector to decline the most"", with most statistics showing deterioration of the industry since the beginning of his presidency.
Rubio, Venezuela
The economy of the city is based on coffee production. The first exploitation of oil in Venezuela (1883) was in La Petrolia by the company "Compañia Nacional Minera Petrolía del Táchira" and the first well was called "Salvador" ("Savior").
Jonathan Greenleaf Eveleth
Pennsylvania Rock Oil later leased its property to Seneca Oil, which under the management of Edwin Drake, drilled the first oil well in the United States and became the first to strike oil in 1859. Bissell continued to considerably expand his and the New York investors' land in the Titusville region, in Franklin and Petroleum Center, PA. However, Eveleth's life was cut short only 2 years later due to illness. Bissell went on to become known as "the father of the American oil industry".
Crystallex International Corporation
In November 2018 Venezuela entered an agreement with Crystallex, Venezuela completed an initial payment of $425 million, mostly in the form of “liquid securities,” on Nov. 23, according to a filing in the Ontario Court of Justice, where Crystallex sought protection from creditors in 2011. Part of the payment was made in bonds issued by Venezuela and its state oil company, PDVSA, according to a Venezuelan finance industry source with knowledge of the issue.
El Dorado
Prior to the time of the Spanish conquest of the Muisca and discovery of Lake Guatavita, a handful of expeditions had set out to explore the lowlands to the east of the Andes in search of gold, cinnamon, precious stones, and anything else of value. During the Klein-Venedig period in Venezuela (1528–1546), agents of the German Welser banking family (which had received a concession from Charles I of Spain) launched repeated expeditions into the interior of the country in search of gold, starting with Ambrosius Ehinger's first expedition in July 1529.
India–Venezuela relations
During President Chávez's visit to India in March 2005, the two countries signed a bilateral agreement on co-operation in the hydrocarbon sector and an MoU granting ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) rights for oil and gas exploration in Venezuela. OVL subsequently opened an office in Venezuela. In April 2008, OVL and PDVSA established a joint venture called Petrolera IndoVenezolana SA for exploration and production oil in the San Cristóbal field. OVL has a 40% stake in the company and the remaining 60% is held by PDVSA. OVL helped certify heavy oil reserves in the Orinoco river belt in 2010.
Colonial Venezuela
Christopher Columbus sailed along the eastern coast of Venezuela on his third voyage in 1498, the only one of his four voyages to reach the South American mainland. This expedition discovered the so-called "Pearl Islands" of Cubagua and Margarita off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. Later Spanish expeditions returned to exploit these islands' once abundant pearl oysters, enslaving the indigenous people of the islands and harvesting the pearls so intensively that they became one of the most valuable resources of the incipient Spanish Empire in the Americas between 1508 and 1531, by which time both the local indigenous population and the pearl oysters had become devastated.
History of Venezuela
Klein-Venedig ("Little Venice") was the most significant part of the German colonization of the Americas, from 1528 to 1546, in which the Augsburg-based Welser banking family obtained colonial rights in the Province of Venezuela in return for debts owed by Charles I of Spain. The primary motivation was the search for the legendary golden city of "El Dorado". The venture was led at first by Ambrosius Ehinger, who founded Maracaibo in 1529. After the deaths of first Ehinger and then his successor Georg von Speyer, Philipp von Hutten continued exploration in the interior, and in his absence from the capital of the province the crown of Spain claimed the right to appoint the governor. On Hutten's return to the capital, Santa Ana de Coro, in 1546, the Spanish governor Juan de Carvajal had Hutten and Bartholomeus VI. Welser executed. Charles later revoked Welser's charter.
Baseball in Venezuela
Baseball in Venezuela originates with the early twentieth century cultural influence of United States oil companies, and is the country's leading sport. The Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (VPBL) is a winter league that was established in 1945, with Leones del Caracas the leading team; another leading club is Valencia's Navegantes del Magallanes, established in 1917. There is a Venezuelan Summer League established in 1997 and composed of teams affiliated with Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs. The Liga paralela is a secondary Venezuelan winter league, with the teams acting as farm teams for VPBL clubs. 
Venezuelan teams have won the Caribbean Series a number of times. The Venezuela national baseball team won the Baseball World Cup several times in the 1940s, and the baseball tournament at the Pan American Games in 1959. The team finished 7th in the inaugural World Baseball Classic and 3rd in the 2009 event, but has dropped to 10th in the 2013 event.
Republic of Venezuela
This period was characterised by the alternation of political power established in the Punto Fijo Pact; by the nationalisation of the oil industry in 1976 and the creation of PDVSA, the national oil and gas company; and by the rise of new social elites. Internationally, Venezuela became a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The 1980s in particular were characterised by the flowering of art and culture and by the artistic development of the nation, especially in television. Pioneering media like RCTV made Venezuela famous with soap operas such as "Kassandra".
Commonwealth Oil Refining Company, Inc.
Commonwealth Oil Refining Company, Inc. (CORCO) was an oil refinery established in the towns of Peñuelas and Guayanilla in Puerto Rico in the second half of the 20th century. At one point, the company was ranked among the 500 largest in the United States by Fortune Magazine. In 1978, it supplied 80% of all petroleum products consumed in Puerto Rico and, at 2700 employees, it was Puerto Rico's largest employer. In addition, it was considered "among the largest independent petroleum refiners and petrochemical producers in the world." 
The project started as part of "Operation Bootstrap" with the first unit being constructed in 1954. The company started operations in 1956. Hugo David Storer Tavarez was one of the men in charge of seeing that CORCO became a reality. The financing for CORCO was provided by First Boston Corporation.
Energy policy of Venezuela
Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1975–1976, creating Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA), the country's state-run oil and natural gas company. Along with being Venezuela's largest employer, PdVSA accounts for about one-third of the country's GDP, 50% of the government's revenue and 80% of Venezuela's exports earnings.
Republic of Venezuela
Carlos Andrés Pérez took office in 1974, amid an oil crisis that had begun the previous year and had increased the global price of oil from $3 per barrel to nearly $12 per barrel. Venezuela nationalised its iron industry in 1975 and its oil industry the following year.
Russ Dallen
In Venezuela, Dallen began pointing out shortages - including being the first to point out most famously the toilet paper shortage—in January 2013 when oil was above $100 a barrel and warning of the economic collapse that would come. At the same time, Dallen was able to double investments of his firm and clients in Harvest Natural Resources (NYSE: HNR) in one month before taking profits and earn a 60% return in 6 months in Venezuelan Koch brothers entity Fertinitro. In January 2015, Dallen began warning investors in U.S. based Citgo when the Venezuelan government-owned company issued $2.8 billion in new debt, not for its own corporate purposes but to send back to cash-strapped Venezuela. Canadian miner Crystallex, which won a $1.4 billion judgment against Venezuela for the expropriation of the company's mining investments in an arbitration before the World Bank's International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), would subsequently sue Citgo and PDVSA under the Delaware Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act to recover the money.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
In response to the chronically low oil prices of the mid and late 1950s, oil producing countries Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait met in Baghdad in September 1960 to form the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The main goal of the OPEC member countries was to work together in order to secure and stabilize international oil prices to ensure their interests as oil producing nations. This was managed largely via maintaining export quotas that helped prevent the overproduction of oil on an international scale.
The Petroleum Trail
During the mid 19th and early 20th centuries, significant oil reserves were discovered and developed in Galicia near Drohobych and Boryslav, The first European attempt to drill for oil was in Bóbrka, Krosno County, Western Galicia, in 1854. By 1867, a well at Kleczany was drilled to about 200 meters using steam. On December 31, 1872, a railway line linking Borysław (now Boryslav) with the nearby city of Drohobycz (now Drohobych) was opened. American John Simon Bergheim and Canadian William Henry McGarvey came to Galicia in 1882. In 1883, their company, MacGarvey and Bergheim, bored holes of 700 to 1,000 meters and found large oil deposits. In 1885, they renamed their oil developing enterprise the "Galician-Karpathian Petroleum Company" (), headquartered in Vienna, with McGarvey as the chief administrator and Bergheim as field engineer, and built a huge refinery at Maryampole near Gorlice, in the southeast corner of Galicia.
Colonial Venezuela
Spanish expeditions led by Columbus and Pepito Perez reached the coast of present-day Venezuela in 1498 and 1499. The first colonial exploitation was of the pearl oysters of the "Pearl Islands". Spain established its first permanent South American settlement in the present-day city of Cumaná in 1522, and in 1577 Caracas became the capital of the Province of Venezuela. There was also for a few years a German colony at Klein-Venedig.
Americas Petrogas
In 2004, Barclay and Carlos began assembling a large land portfolio along with a management and operations team with the aim of creating an attractive investment opportunity, first for those investors who could appreciate the attractive risk reward scenarios and, later, for leading oil and gas companies. Americas Petrogas is now one of the largest land holders in the Neuquén Basin with almost 900,000 net acres spread over 12 large blocks, 11 of which the company operates. This includes 4 blocks with partner ExxonMobil with Americas Petrogas as the operator. Americas Petrogas has specialized in drilling and discovering unconventional shale oil and, shale gas, while undertaking conventional exploration and production in the Medanito Sur, Rinconada Norte, and Vaca Mahuida blocks. Americas Petrogas has drilled 5 Vaca Muerta shale wells, all discoveries. Testing of these wells has placed them as some of the best performing of all shale wells drilled in the Neuquen Basin to date.
Yondó
Yondó is a town and municipality in Antioquia Department, Colombia. The first settlers arrived around 10,000 BC; archaeological site. The town was founded in 1941 for lodge the, at that time, discovered Casabe oilfield's workers. The town became a municipality in 1979. It is a Magdalena river port, across a river from Barrancabermeja, where Colombia's oldest and largest oil refinery is located.Yondó was an oilfield's worker camp built by the Royal Dutch Shell oil company in 1945 in order to house some 2,000 workers and employees. It was built in the usual manner for camps in remote locations: with large comfortable cabins, plenty of potable water, electricity, sewage system, schools, small hospital, radio and telephone communications, etc. These were (and would be today) considered "luxuries" and attracted -as many enclave developments in remote areas do- a large number of settlers in the periphery of the oil production facilities. The oil company had acquired rights for a 40 year exploitation of the oil fields, until 1985 but resigned in 1981 under pressure from FARC guerrillas and settlers. The production facilities and camp installations were turned in to the government. This latter were destined to house bona fide and opportunist settlers and thus the new town was "founded".
Lake Bermudez
In 1890 the mining started by the , a subsidiary of General Asphalt based in New York. In 1899 the government under Cipriano Castro put higher taxes on the company; in response the company supported politically the opposing side under Manuel Antonio Matos. The conflict escalated and culminated in 1902-1903 in the "Asphalt War / Venezuelan conflict". The conflict even led to a temporary interruption in the diplomatic relations with the USA between June and December 1908, after Castro had expropriated the company.
Ultramar plc
The Company was founded by four South African goldmining concerns in 1935 to explore for oil in Venezuela and initially traded as the "Ultramar Exploration Co. Ltd". It changed its name to the "Ultramar Co. Ltd" in 1940.
History of the petroleum industry
The question of what constituted the first commercial oil well is a difficult one to answer. Edwin Drake's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, discussed more fully below, is popularly considered the first modern well. Drake's well is probably singled out because it was drilled, not dug; because it used a steam engine; because there was a company associated with it; and because it touched off a major boom. However, the first well ever drilled anywhere in the world, which produced oil, was drilled in 1857 to a depth of 280 feet by the American Merrimac Company in La Brea (Spanish for “Pitch”) in southeast Trinidad in the Caribbean. Additionally, there was considerable activity before Drake in various parts of the world in the mid-19th century. A group directed by Major Alexeyev of the Bakinskii Corps of Mining Engineers hand-drilled a well in the Baku region in 1846. There were engine-drilled wells in West Virginia in the same year as Drake's well. An early commercial well was hand dug in Poland in 1853, and another in nearby Romania in 1857. At around the same time the world's first, but small, oil refineries were opened at Jasło, in Poland, with a larger one being opened at Ploiești, in Romania, shortly after. Romania is the first country in the world to have its crude oil output officially recorded in international statistics, namely 275 tonnes. In 1875, crude oil was discovered by David Beaty at his home in Warren, Pennsylvania. This led to the opening of the Bradford oil field, which, by the 1880s, produced 77 percent of the global oil supply. However, by the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire, particularly the Branobel company in Azerbaijan, had taken the lead in production.
Economy of Curaçao
The discovery of oil in the Maracaibo Basin of Venezuela in the early 20th century forced the Venezuelan government to search for ideal locations for large scale refining. Curaçao's proximity to the country, naturally deep harbors, and stable government led Royal Dutch Shell to construct the , the largest refinery in the world at the time. The refinery is located in Willemstad harbour and began operating in 1918.
Basque Venezuelan
It was the most important mercantile company of its time (1728-1785); Its objective to displace the Dutch from the Venezuelan cocoa trade (also tobacco and hides). The royal permit authorized the Guipuzcoans to bring it in exchange for carrying their own merchandise from Pasaia and Cadiz and to pay a canon to the monopolistic port of Cadiz. The main factor in Caracas was Pedro de Olavarriaga. Factories were opened in La Guaira, Caracas, Puerto Cabello, San Felipe, Maracaibo, Cumaná and Guayana. Not only did he carry goods from Gipuzkoa, but also supplies and troops and enabled his own ships to defend Venezuela from the English attacks, a war in which Blas de Lezo was distinguished. It was due to the colonization of Cumana and several fishing trials. The free trade declaration of 1778 and the English harassment determined its closure. The Basques established in Venezuela continued colonization mainly in the valleys of Aragua, in the plains of Cojedes, Portuguesa, Orinoco and coasts of Caracas. They introduced, among other things, the indigo of dye, the cotton and the sugar cane. The link with Pasaia-San Sebastián remained until the end of the century.
History of the petroleum industry
By 1910, significant oil fields had been discovered in the Dutch East Indies (1885, in Sumatra), Persia (1908, in Masjed Soleiman), Peru (1863, in Zorritos District), Venezuela (1914, in Maracaibo Basin), and Mexico, and were being developed at an industrial level. Significant oil fields were exploited in Alberta (Canada) from 1947.
First offshore oil drilling at Oil Rocks (Neft Dashlari) in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan eventually resulted in a city built on pylons in 1949.
Availability of oil and access to it, became of "cardinal importance" in military power before and after World War I, particularly for navies as they changed from coal, but also with the introduction of motor transport, tanks and airplanes. Such thinking would continue in later conflicts of the twentieth century, including World War II, during which oil facilities were a major strategic asset and were extensively bombed.
In 1938, vast reserves of oil were discovered in the Al-Ahsa region along the coast of the Persian Gulf.
History of the Venezuelan oil industry
Cabimas still plays an important role in production from the nation's largest oil fields, which are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo. Other fields are increasing in importance, mainly in eastern Venezuela. About twenty years after the completion of the first oil-producing well Venezuela had become the largest oil exporter in the world and, after the United States, the second largest oil producer. Exports of oil boomed between 1920 and 1935. By the end of the 1930s, Venezuela had become the third-leading oil producer in the world, behind the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the leading exporter.
Aroa mines
In 1832 Bolivar's sisters Juana and Maria Antonia sold the mines to the Robert Dent, an Englishman who owned the Bolívar Mining Association.
In the 1830s Cornishmen in the reduction department of the Aroa mines made significant advances in methods of calcinating the copper ore.
However, the company closed the mines in 1836 due to high mortality among the European workers and tensions with the native workers.
The Bolívar Mining Association was succeeded by companies such as the Quebrada Land Mining Company, Quebrada Railway Land and Copper Company Limited, Aroa Mines Limited and Bolívar Railway Company Limited.
The owners planned to build a railway to the coast in the 1830s under the supervision of the young English engineer, John, later Sir John Hawkshaw.
However, the project was put off several times due to civil wars and problems at the mines.
The mines were damaged during the Federal War (1859–1863).
Finally a narrow gauge line from Aroa to the port of Tucacas was opened in 1877.
The railway was built by the British-controlled New Quebrada Railway, Land, and Copper Company, which also established a shipping service from Tucacas to Puerto Cabello, the region's main import-export centre.
The Ferrocarril Bolívar was the first railway in Venezuela.
Also in 1877 the road from Barquisimeto to Aroa was upgraded so it could be used by wagons and carts.
In 1891 the railway was extended from Aroa via Duaca to Barquisimeto.
History of Trinidad and Tobago
The American Merrimac Oil Company drilled an early oil well at La Brea at Trinidad and Tobago in 1857, where oil was struck at . Also mentioned is the pioneering work of Capt. Darwent with his Paria Petroleum Company Limited, and Conrad F. Stollmeyer (who was great grandfather of Republic Bank’s then Chairman, former West Indies cricket captain, Jeffrey Stollmeyer), an entrepreneur of that period who felt that a combustible fuel could not be distilled out of the asphalt from the pitch lake. The other point of view from Capt. Darwent was that a combustible fuel, refined from oil drilled from the earth would be the ideal fuel for the future."
Chelsea, Oklahoma
According to the American Oil & Gas Historical Society, Edward Byrd, whose wife was a Cherokee woman, discovered oil seeps in 1882 southwest Chelsea, which was then part of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. He apparently took no action to exploit his discovery until 1887, when he and William B. Linn, a Pennsylvanian, and a group of investors from Kansas organized the United States Oil and Gas Company (USOGC). The company subsequently leased drilling rights from the Cherokee Nation on of land lying west of Chelsea between the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad and the Verdigris River. USOGC completed its first well in 1890, on Spencer Creek. It was a rudimentary operation, compared to productive sites completed a few years later. The well began producing a half barrel of good-quality crude per day from a depth of only . This was enough for USOGC enthusiasts to claim it was, "... the first oil well in Oklahoma."
Malaysia–Venezuela relations
Chávez proposed in December 2006 that Venezuela would build an oil refinery in Malaysia, and Golden Hope, a Malaysian state-owned palm oil company, agreed with the Venezuelan state oil company to cultivate 40,000 ha of oil palms in Venezuela, while Malaysian company Petronas would start oil exploration in Venezuela. Malaysia also agreed to help Venezuela with city planning.
Noxal oil field
In December of 2005, the quest to drill into the Gulf began with the intent to replace the dwindling supply of oil from the Cantarell field. Pemex, a Mexican petroleum company, began their first deepwater research and discovered Noxal and Lakach. Noxal, located in the Catemaco Folded Belt, was the first ever deepwater oil well found by Pemex. The news about this discovery went public in 2006. When tests were conducted at four different intervals, they confirmed the well was indeed filled with natural gas, containing 10 billion barrels of oil. After the success of the Noxal oil field, Pemex drilled into the second oil field it discovered, Lakach. Noxal and Lakach are just a few of many oil fields that have been discovered and ready to be drilled into so Pemex can bring these gases to land. However, at the time of the discovery of both of these oil fields, Pemex encountered issues due to having no knowledge or experience with deepwater drilling. Pemex was also not allowed to have outside help due to the nationalization of oil reserves in Mexico. This was one of the reasons for the country’s decline in the production of oil in the first place.
Edward L. Doheny
He then began highly profitable oil operations in Tampico, Mexico's "golden belt", drilling the first well in the nation in 1901. He expanded operations during the Mexican Revolution, and opened large new oil fields in Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela). His holdings developed as the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company, one of the largest oil companies in the world in the 1920s.
Hugo Chávez
At the start of the 21st century, Venezuela was the world's fifth largest exporter of crude oil, with oil accounting for 85% of the country's exports, therefore dominating the country's economy. Previous administrations had sought to privatise this industry, with U.S. corporations having a significant level of control, but the Chávez administration wished to curb this foreign control over the country's natural resources by nationalising much of it under the state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA). In 2001, the government introduced a new Hydrocarbons Law through which they sought to gain greater state control over the oil industry: they did this by raising royalty taxes on the oil companies and also by introducing the formation of "mixed companies", whereby the PdVSA could have joint control with private companies over industry. By 2006, all of the 32 operating agreements signed with private corporations during the 1990s had been converted from being primarily or solely corporate-run to being at least 51% controlled by PDVSA. Chávez had also removed many of the managers and executives of PdVSA and replaced them with political allies, stripping the state-owned company expertise.
Lago Agrio oil field
In 1964, Texaco Petroleum Company (TexPet) began exploring for oil in northeast Ecuador, in an area which was inhabited by indigenous people. The following year, it started operating a consortium owned equally by itself and Gulf Oil to develop a tract in the area. Nueva Loja was founded as a base camp of Texaco. The consortium struck oil in 1967 and began full-scale production in 1972. The Ecuadorian government, through its national oil company CEPE, now Petroecuador, obtained a 25 percent interest in the consortium in 1974. Gulf subsequently sold its interest to CEPE. By 1976, the consortium was majority-owned by the Ecuadorian government. TexPet, however, was still the company responsible for drilling technical operations. TexPet transferred management of the consortium to Petroecuador in 1990. TexPet's concession expired in 1992, leaving Petroecuador as the sole owner. Petroecuador continues drilling in the area.
Petroleum
Drake's well is probably singled out because it was drilled, not dug; because it used a steam engine; because there was a company associated with it; and because it touched off a major boom. However, there was considerable activity before Drake in various parts of the world in the mid-19th century. A group directed by Major Alexeyev of the Bakinskii Corps of Mining Engineers hand-drilled a well in the Baku region in 1848. There were engine-drilled wells in West Virginia in the same year as Drake's well. An early commercial well was hand dug in Poland in 1853, and another in nearby Romania in 1857. At around the same time the world's first, small, oil refinery was opened at Jasło in Poland, with a larger one opened at Ploiești in Romania shortly after. Romania is the first country in the world to have had its annual crude oil output officially recorded in international statistics: 275 tonnes for 1857.
Nationalization of oil supplies
The first country to act was Venezuela, which had the most favorable concession agreement. In 1943, the country increased the total royalties and tax paid by the companies to 50% of their total profits. However, true equal profit sharing was not accomplished until 1948. Because oil companies were able to deduct the tax from their income tax, profits acquired by the oil companies did not change significantly and, as a result, the oil companies did not have any major problems with the change imposed by Venezuela. Even with increased oil prices, the companies still held a dominant position over Venezuela.
William Myron Keck
In 1933, under Keck the company was the first to use a reflection seismograph to help with finding hydrocarbons. Keck was a "pioneer" in deep offshore drilling, and in 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the coast of Louisiana. The first independent to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, he was the first to find commercial deposits in the Gulf of Mexico, where he set consecutive records for the deepest-drilled well. Running his company like a "one-man machine," he kept control of the company's stock after it went public. The company also became the largest independent oil producer in the United States. According to author Kevin Krajick, Keck also "practically ran the oil-rich nation of Venezuela." Keck was an active stalwart of the oil lobby politically, in part through his attorney Harold Morton and lobbyist Monroe Butler. Upon his death in 1964, his son William M. Keck Jr. became Superior's chief executive officer, followed by leadership from his second son Howard. He served as chairman of Superior. At one point, his fortune was estimated at $160 million, and at the time of his death, he and his family owned 51 per cent of Superior's shares.
Caracas
Businesses that are located here include service companies, banks, and malls, among others. It has a largely service-based economy, apart from some industrial activity in its metropolitan area. The Caracas Stock Exchange and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) are headquartered here. The PDVSA is the largest company in Venezuela, and negotiates all the international agreements for the distribution and export of petroleum. When the company existed, the airline Viasa had its headquarters in the Torre Viasa.
Mining in Venezuela
With of proven oil reserves in 2004, Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in South America and the sixth largest in the world—more than Canada, Mexico, and the United States combined. Venezuela’s 2002 production of (bbl/d) of crude was a drop of 8.3 percent over 2001 and the country’s lowest production figure since 1994. In 2003, a year in which production was halted for a couple of months by a general strike and further disrupted by the firing of nearly half of the state oil company’s work force, Venezuela's total oil production was an estimated . In 2004 oil production totaled about , according to the government’s estimate. Prior to President Chávez's December 1998 election, Venezuela regularly exceeded its Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)-agreed oil production targets. Hugo Chávez maintained a policy of strict adherence to OPEC quotas and played a leading role in shifting OPEC from a volume-oriented strategy to one of controlling prices. With planned investments of US$26 billion in oil and natural gas exploration and production between 2004 and 2009, Venezuelan Petroleum expects oil production to reach by 2009.
History of Venezuela (1908–1958)
Between 1908 and 1958, the Republic of Venezuela saw several changes in leadership, including a coup d'etat in 1948. The period also found the country discover its petroleum deposits, which has had a major effect on the economy of Venezuela
Petroleum industry in Syria
Syrian oil exploration first began in 1933 during the French Mandate by the Iraq Petroleum Company (a consortium made up of Shell, BP, Exxon-Mobil, Total, and Gulbekian), which after unsuccessfully drilling eleven wells, gave up hope of finding any oil in Syria. In 1949, James W. Menhall (1881-1974), an independent oil producer from Illinois, United States, was approached by Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli to come to Syria to prospect for oil. His James W. Menhall Drilling Company was awarded a concession on 17 May 1955 by unanimous vote of the Syrian parliament and started drilling in April 1956. In September 1956, Menhall discovered the Karatchok oil field with over 1 billion barrels of reserves. Six consecutive wells were drilled, each producing in excess of . Menhall was just commencing preparations to drill the adjoining Rumeilan oil field (with over 500 million barrels of reserves) when, on 5 October 1958, President Nasser of Egypt, as President of the United Arab Republic, expropriated Menhall's concession and confiscated his equipment and three drilling rigs without compensation. The Syrian government, under the Baath Party leadership, has since refused to consider any compensation. The Syrian oil industry took off in 1968, when the Karatchok oil field began production after a pipeline connecting it to the Homs refinery was completed, although Syria did not begin exporting oil until the mid-1980s.
Empresas Polar
Empresas Polar, also known as “La Polar” or “La Po” for short, is a Venezuelan corporation, that started as a brewery founded in 1941 by Lorenzo Alejandro Mendoza Fleury, Rafael Lujan and Karl Eggers in Antímano "La Planta de Antimano", Caracas. It is the largest and best known brewery in Venezuela, but has since long diversified to an array of industries, mostly related to food processing and packaging, also covering markets abroad.