text: Refineries Distillation of oil started halfway through the 18th Century in small refinaries (called "distillaries") in the Ural, Galicia (now NE Ukraine), and in the Russian district of Mozdovsky. During the first half of the 19th Century small refineries were opened in Moravia (now Czechia), Galicia, France, and Poland. The first larger scale oil refineries were opened at Jasło, in Poland, with the largest one being opened at Ploiești, in Romania. Built in 1856 and inaugurated in 1857 by the brothers Teodor and Marin Mehedinţeanu, the Rafov Refinery, a refinery built at  Ploiesti, had a surface area of four hectares, and the daily production reached over seven tons, obtained in cylindrical iron and iron casts that were heated by fire from wood; it was then called "the world's first systematic oil distillery," setting the record for being the world's first oil refinery, according to the Academy Of World Records.
  This refinery obtained, on the basis of a contract concluded in October 1856 between Teodor Mehedinţeanu and the City Hall of Bucharest, the exclusive right to supply the illumination of the Wallachian capital with oil lamp. The contract began to be executed on April 1, 1857, when, by replacing the kidnapped oil with the products supplied by the Rafov refinery, "Bucharest became the first city in the world illuminated entirely with distilled crude oil."
  In 1857, the total production of Romania was amounted to 275 tons of crude oil. With this figure, Romania was registered as the first country in world oil production statistics, before other large oil producing states such as the United States of America (1860), Russia (1863), Mexico (1901) or Persia (1913).
  United States
  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.