Nord-Est Development Region
Romanian petroleum history is not limited to the past 1½ centuries, but rather has numerous connections to important industry discoveries. The first documented mention of crude oil in Romania dates back to the Middle Ages, where Romanian archives depict black oil exploitation as early as 4 October 1440. In 1857, Romania drilled its first commercial oil well in Lucăceşti, a small village in the Bacau county of Romania. The nation was the only country in the world recorded with crude oil production in 1857 and 1858, fuelled by the world's first industrial refinery built in 1856 by the Mehedinţeanu brothers. Romania ranked third among European oil producers in the mid-1850s through the year 1900 and fourth among world producers from 1935 to 1936.