ABSTRACT
Petroleum has long been known in many parts of Asia: the walls of Babylon were cemented with bitumen, crude oil was produced in Japan in the seventh century, and from hand-dug wells in Burma by the thirteenth century. But the modern industry dates only from the nineteenth century, when a series of technological changes following from the use of the drill to dig oil wells made possible the very rapid development of the oil resources of both the USSR and the us. 1
