text: Oil wells What constitutes the first commercial oil well is not entirely clear and there is no general consensus. The following summary draws from that in Vassiliou (2018). 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.
  Additionally, there was considerable activity before Drake in various parts of the world in the mid-19th century. In 1846, another candidate for consideration as the first modern oil well in the world was drilled in the South Caucasus region of the Russian Empire, (Azerbaijan now) on the Absheron Peninsula north-east of Baku (in the settlement Bibi-Eibat), by Russian Major Nikoly Matveevich Alekseev based on the ideas and vision of Nikoly Ivanovich Voskoboinikov. Unlike Drake's well, though, the 1846 Baku well was drilled using human and animal power, not an engine. 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. Also, a well was drilled in 1857 to a depth of 280 ft by the American Merrimac Company in La Brea (Spanish for “Pitch”) in southeast Trinidad in the Caribbean.