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Historic place

Ignacy Łukasiewicz Museum of Oil and Gas Industry (Muzeum Przemysłu Naftowego i Gazowniczego)

ul. Kopalniana 35, Bóbrka, Podkarpackie

The world's oldest oil field is still pumping crude, 170 years after a Polish pharmacist lit the first kerosene lamp.

📅 1854–present🏛️ MuseumStill hereBuilt 1854
Open on the mapSlide back to 1854
Ignacy Łukasiewicz Museum of Oil and Gas Industry (Muzeum Przemysłu Naftowego i Gazowniczego), ul. Kopalniana 35, Bóbrka, Podkarpackie
Museum of Oil and Gas Industry, Bóbrka · Stanislaw Szydlo, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The story

Opened in 1854 by the pharmacist Ignacy Łukasiewicz, the landowner Tytus Trzecieski and Karol Klobassa-Zrencki, this is documented as the world's first oil mine. Łukasiewicz had already distilled kerosene and built the first practical kerosene lamp; Bóbrka proved the idea at industrial scale. The earliest shafts were hand-dug — "Franek," from around 1860, reaches roughly 50 m, and "Janina," begun at 132 m and later deepened to about 156 m by rotary drilling, is still in service. A museum was established on the site in 1961 across about 20 hectares of the oldest sector, preserving original wooden rig houses, a smithy, pumping equipment and Łukasiewicz's memorial obelisk. It is not a reconstruction: oil is still extracted from the same field, so the place is a working industrial site and a museum simultaneously. In December 2018 it was designated a Polish Monument of History. About 12 km west-northwest of Rymanów.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Oil is still commercially extracted here, and an 1860s shaft is still in use.
Łukasiewicz invented the kerosene lamp, but the first street lighting using it went up in Gorlice.
Monument of History status came only in 2018, over 150 years after the field opened.

Connected places

Museum of Folk Architecture, Sanok (Muzeum Budownictwa Ludowego)

Sanok, Podkarpackie
Bóbrka

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

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An oil company built it as worker housing, went bankrupt, and sold it to the town doctor — who then practised in Rymanów

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Sourceshttps://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopalnia_ropy_naftowej_w_B%C3%B3brce