The first oil well was drilled by Edwin Drake in Titusville, Pennsylvania. At a depth of only 69 feet (21 meters), Drake struck oil, and his well began to produce about thirty barrels of oil a day. In the years that followed, hundreds of wells were drilled in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Indiana. The honest answer will be: “We don’t know”, because people used oil for non-industrial purposes from very ancient times. Some of it seeped through the cracks to to ground, and to get more of it, people would dig a hole, where oil would accumulate. Around the same time, the first really successful oil well in the world was drilled in Pennsylvania in the USA. But whether Trinidad with its failed attempt or the USA with its more successful one - it was a technological breakthrough in terms of availability of a new energy source.