Peklenica – the first oil field in the world

“Pekel, pekel!” – the local children would shout, running happily around the wooden well shafts.

Peklenica is a village in the far north of Croatia, in Međimurje. It takes its name from “pekel”, the local word for crude oil. Children in this area know about oil before they can walk. To people from elsewhere, that is curious and unusual.

Oil has been used since ancient times. It is impossible to establish who first began using it, or where. We know the Chinese were using it 2,000 years ago, and from Marco Polo’s writings we know of the abundance of oil in the Caucasus, where it was also used for medicinal purposes.

Although there is no official consensus on the matter, the field near the town of Titusville in Pennsylvania (USA) is generally taken to be the first commercial oil field. It was from there, in 1859, that the famous oil rush began.

The year taken as the start of intensive exploitation of the Peklenica field is 1856, which is three years before the Pennsylvania wells – and so Peklenica acquired the unofficial title of the first oil field in the world!

The Peklenica field has always been used. It is known that in the time of the Zrinski family the oil was used for greasing tools and cart axles, but people in these parts were using it well before that too.

In the former state (Yugoslavia), of the 5,884 tonnes of oil produced, 4,098 tonnes came from Peklenica. Extraction stopped in 1967, and in memory of those “glorious days” an interesting memorial park has been laid out.

What surprised us most is that the oil here is still bubbling up!!! We had never seen an oil seep in real life before, so after walking round the park we stood in silence for a while, hypnotised, watching and listening to the oil bubbling. There is something inexplicably relaxing about it 🙂 Anyone who has not experienced it certainly should!