Settlers in the fertile valleys of Pennsylvania in the early years of the 19th century were sometimes unpleasantly surprised to find their spring waters contaminated with a thick, black oily substance.
It was found to be inflammable and, when separated from the water, could be used as a fuel for domestic lamps.
As the usefulness of this volatile commodity became apparent, a railway worker called Edwin Drake decided that it was worth prospecting in its own right. He drilled a hole to a depth of 69 feet at Titusville, Pennsylvania, and in August 1859, he became the first person to strike oil.
The demand initially was modest, but with the invention of the internal combustion engine, it increased dramatically. New and richer oilfields were discovered in Texas, then in the Middle East, and more recently in the North Sea and other offshore regions of the world.
The origins of oil are related to variations in the global climate over the millenniums.
Its existence can be traced to tiny organisms, rich in animal oil, whose remains mingled with the primeval mud and were buried under layers and layers of sediment. Their availability was highly dependant on the climate of the era, their numbers waxing and waning as conditions changed throughout geologic time from arid desert to steamy jungle and back again.
Slow chemical change over the millenniums has converted these organisms into the complex mixture of hydrocarbons we know today as petroleum.
It is to be found locked in reservoirs of thick, porous and permeable rock, its escape prevented in the vertical by a thick impermeable cap and in the horizontal by geologic faults or by anticlines - large folds in the rocks which fortuitously provide containing walls to inhibit lateral seepage of the accumulated fluid.
Petroleum was to become both a catalyst for the development of 20th century civilisation and an agent for environmental disaster on a catastrophic scale.
Its potential in the latter context became dramatically evident for the first time 33 years ago today, when the 60,000tonne tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground in bad weather on the Seven Stones Reef between Land's End and the Scilly Isles on March 18th, 1967.
More than 100 miles of Cornish coastline were polluted by the 100,000 tonnes of oil which spilled into the sea when the vessel broke its back, and the damage was contained only when the ship was bombed from the air to set fire to its remaining cargo.
It was the first of a long list of tankers that have caused environmental crises of this kind in the intervening years.