This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The fall of 2026 is a moment when energy takes center stage, as geopolitics unfolding far away shows up in Americans' everyday lives. In Pennsylvania, the statewide diesel price averages $6.50 per gallon.
In Iowa, farmers are paying more than $6 a gallon for diesel. And in Alaska, unleaded gas runs more than $9 a gallon. As a distinguished professor of history and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona, I write widely about oil and energy issues.
This moment has me thinking about how the oil industry began nearly 170 years ago in northwestern Pennsylvania. In 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil along Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania. His well was funded by investors from New Bedford, Massachusetts, who were looking for a replacement for whale oil, which was expensive and challenging to acquire.
The first oil deals were struck on the streets of Oil City, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Pittsburgh, while traders were still working out basic questions about "rock oil," as crude was then called: What was it good for, and how much should it cost? To create a more formal system, the oil traders developed a railroad car designed to be a rolling oil exchange on the Oil Creek Railway. It made 13 stops daily between Titusville and Oil City, and trading was conducted on the honor system, with no written certificates of purchase or sale.
As the industry quickly grew, an oil exchange office was set up in the Arlington Hotel in Oil City. Traders pushed for a building of their own, arguing that a growing industry needed a more formal market. By 1874, Pennsylvania's Oil Valley was producing roughly 30,000 barrels of crude oil a day, which sold for an average of about $1.15 a barrel.
Rather than physically moving barrels around, traders had moved from handshakes to paper. Pipelines issued certificates representing the oil in their lines. Traders bought and sold the paper certificates representing oil, often trading the same barrels many times in a single day.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
