Featured image: Houston Chronicle photo.
https://www.cfr.org/timeline/oil-dependence-and-us-foreign-policy
In 1880, the United States is responsible for 85 percent of the world’s crude oil production and refining, and kerosene is the fourth largest U.S. export. However, U.S. dominance of European and Asian oil markets is challenged by new oil finds controlled by Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia. Still, over the next two decades, major oil finds in states such as California, Oklahoma, and Texas help increase U.S. production from about twenty-six million barrels of oil annually to around sixty-four million barrels per year. By 1900, more than two hundred oil byproducts—including fuel for stoves and internal combustion engines, as well as lubricants for industrial machinery—begin to enter daily life.
The History of U.S. Wars Fought over Oil in the Middle East.
The 1901 Spindletop gusher—the largest to date—fuels a major oil rush in Texas, and U.S. oil production nearly triples in a decade.
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