From cannel coal to offshore production – Wales has a colourful history of resource exploration and success.

From the 16th-century Spanish conquistadors to modern times, Mexico has been bound to oil. Although no longer in the top ten of the world’s leading producers, shale gas may change this picture in the future.

The 20th century American explorer Dr Wendell Phillips is best known for his colorful exploits in archaeology, and for being an independent oilman who broke into the Middle East at a time when it was dominated by the major international oil companies.

Geopolitically important as an oil producer for a century, Romania remains one of Europe’s largest producers.

As ever, international interests were at the heart of the intrigue around the awarding and operating of oil and gas concessions in the north of Iran.

Israeli premier Golda Meir once said, “Moses took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil”. We look at the history of oil exploration in this region.

Sir Thomas Boverton Redwood, arguably the father of petroleum engineering in Britain and a giant in the history of the petroleum industry, died 100 years ago in 1919. We take a brief look at his life and his contributions to oil and gas.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by American journalist David Grann

Intensely secretive, for more than half a century Gulbenkian personally controlled five per cent of Middle East oil production and shaped the firms we know as Shell and Total.

In the 1930s, Chief geologist at Casoc and Aramco expat, Max Steineke revolutionised hydrocarbon exploration in the Middle East using structure drilling - which led to some of the first discoveries of oil in Saudi Arabia.

The Barnett Shale gas discovery, like ‘Spindletop’ nearly 100 years prior, changed an industry by unlocking huge new volumes of oil and gas, this time from shales.

A Brief History of Booms and Busts: Part II

A Brief History of Booms and Busts: Part I

Born in Northampton in 1873 and known simply as ‘Beeby-Thompson’, his achievements were such that the foreword to his auto-biography was written by Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the USA

Enigmatic businessman, linked with oil companies and foreign governments, whose exploits offer a glimpse into the struggle for the control of oil.