No single person “discovered” oil, because humans have known and used natural oil seeps for thousands of years in different places. However, a few key figures are usually highlighted when people ask who discovered oil:

Ancient and early uses

  • By around 600 B.C., the Chinese were already using crude oil and transporting it in bamboo pipelines.
  • In the 13th–14th centuries, the explorer Marco Polo described people near Baku (in present‑day Azerbaijan) collecting oil from natural seeps for lighting and medicine.

First drilled oil wells

  • In 1846, on the Absheron Peninsula near Baku, a well drilled under Russian authority by Major Nikolai Alekseev is often cited as one of the first true oil wells, though it still relied on human and animal power to lift the oil.
  • In 1859, Edwin Drake drilled a well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, for the Seneca Oil Company, creating the first commercially successful oil well and effectively launching the modern petroleum industry.

Short answer

So, if the question is “who discovered oil?” in the broad historical sense, there is no single discoverer, since many ancient civilizations knew and used oil. If the question is “who started the modern oil industry?”, most historians point to Edwin Drake’s 1859 well in Pennsylvania as the key milestone.