THIS week I look at oil and how it influenced Thurrock.

The first reference I can find is the arrival at Thameshaven on November 19, 1861, of the brig Elizabeth Watts carrying 901 barrels of rock oil and 428 barrels of coal oil from Philadelphia.

In 1888, the sailing ship Odessa discharged 5,500 barrels of petroleum from Russia. There are varied accounts of how much was in these wooden barrels, but 35 imperial gallons was common in Britain.

The Russian petroleum is likely t o have been from the Caspian Sea town of Baku, in Azerbaijan, where mechanically-drilled oil wellsstarted in 1846. Large-scale oil exploration increased from 1872, when Russian imperial authorities auctioned the parcels of oil-rich land aroundBaku to private investors .

Soon, Swiss, British, French, Belgian, German, Swedish and American investors appeared in Baku. Among them were the firm s of the Nobel brothers, together with the family von Bortzell-Szuch and the Rothschild family. The field wa s the largest known oil strike in the world. Oil blowouts made up the main part of all oil production in the early days, although this was very uneconomical, environmentall y harmful and dangerous to the drilling crews.

The production engineering leve l of the crude oil industry in Baku was astoundingly low.

The transport of crude oil to the harbour for export took place in barrels, pulled by donkeys. The industrial use of oil for engines in factories, for powering ships and fo r lighting increased the exportation from America and Russia.

Oilstorage in large tanks was soon to be seen at Thameshaven, with London & Thames Haven Oil Wharfs and Cory Brothers, which purchased the disused Kynoch’ s explosives factory.

At Purfleet, the Anglo-American Oil Company, part of Standard Oil of America, built storage tanks east of Thames Board Mills, in 1888.

Kerosene, and later petrol, wa s unloaded at a new wharf.

The later development was to set up refineries using catalytic converters to break down the crude oil into refined petrol to asphalt products, at the Shell, BP and Mobil refineries.

Now all gone!

DOWN MEMORY LANE is written by JONATHAN CATTON, Thurrock Heritage and Museum Office. Memories, photographs or objects relating to Thurrock’s past will be gratefully received for the Thurrock Museum collections. Contact by letter at Thurrock Museum, Thameside Complex, Orsett Road, Grays, RM17 5DX, call 01375 413965, make a personal visit or e-mail jcatton@thurrock.gov.uk