following summary draws from that in Vassiliou (2018). Edwin Drake's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, discussed more fully below, is popularly considered the first modern well. Drake's well is probably singled out because it was drilled, not dug; because it used a steam engine; because there was a company associated with it; and because it touched off a major boom. Additionally, there was considerable activity before Drake in various parts of the world in the mid-19th century. In 1846, another candidate for consideration as the first modern oil well in the world was drilled in the South Caucasus region of the Russian Empire, (Azerbaijan now) on the Absheron Peninsula north-east of Baku (in the settlement Bibi-Eibat), by Russian Major Alekseev based on the ideas and vision of Nikoly Voskoboinikov. Unlike Drake's well, though, the 1846 Baku well was drilled using human and animal power, not an engine. There were engine-drilled wells in West Virginia in the same year as Drake's well. An early commercial well was hand dug in Poland in 1853, and another in nearby Romania in 1857. Also, a well was drilled in 1857 to a depth of 280 ft by the American Merrimac Company in La Brea (Spanish for “Pitch”) in southeast Trinidad in the Caribbean. Refineries Distillation of oil started halfway the 18th Century in small refinaries (called "distillaries") in the Ural, Galicia (now NE Ukraine), and in the Russian district of Mozdovsky. During the first half of the 19th Century small refinaries were opened in Moravia (now Czechia), Galicia, France, and Poland. The first larger scale oil refineries were opened at Jasło, in Poland, with the largest one being opened at Ploiești, in Romania. Built in 1856 and inaugurated in 1857 by the brothers Teodor and Marin Mehedinţeanu, the Rafov Refinery, a refinery built at Ploiesti, had a surface area of four hectares, and the daily production reached over seven tons, obtained in cylindrical iron and iron casts that were heated by fire from wood; it was then called "the world's first systematic oil distillery," setting the record for being the world's first oil refinery, according to the Academy Of World Records. This refinery obtained, on the basis of a contract concluded in October 1856 between Teodor Mehedinţeanu and the City Hall of Bucharest, the exclusive right to supply the illumination of the Wallachian capital with oil lamp. The contract began to be executed on