World's first oil well still bubbling up black gold in Poland

The smell of money hangs thick in the air as black crude oil bubbles up from what is billed as the world's oldest oil well, but this is not Texas or Saudi Arabia.

The sleepy village of Bobrka in southern Poland lays claim to the planet's first oil well and rig, one that is still pumping up enough black gold to be profitable.

It was dug and built by hand in 1860 under the watchful gaze of Polish pharmacist and inventor Ignacy Lukasiewicz, a humble man who pioneered the now ubiquitous use of petroleum by creating the kerosene lamp.

Thanks to him, "Bobrka became the birthplace of the world's oil industry", says Barbara Olejarz, who runs a local museum devoted to the origins of the sector and whose last name by coincidence means "oilman" in Polish.

"It all began there," she tells AFP while pointing a finger at an obelisk built by Lukasiewicz and his circle to mark the launch of the oil field in 1854 and the founding of the world's first oil company.

Despite giving birth to the sector, it turned out that Poland did not have much oil.

It now produces around 20,000 barrels a day, or 7.3 million per year, worth some $584 million (466 million euros) at current prices -- a trickle by global standards. Refined locally, Polish crude covers just four to five percent of domestic demand, according to oil and gas expert Andrzej Szczesniak.

The five remaining wells at the Bobkra museum pump out a combined 423 barrels of crude per year, which is also locally refined and consumed.

And though he pioneered the oil industry, few outside the country know about Lukasiewicz, due in part to his own humility.

"His modesty worked against him. He remained less known than other Polish scientists: Copernicus or Marie Sklodowska-Curie," says Olejarz.

"He didn't want to be the talk of the town, he didn't like to stand out, he did everything during his lifetime so that he'd be forgotten and his wish has been fulfilled."

Born in 1822 in the southern village of Zaduszniki -- then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire -- Lukasiewicz acquired a pharmacist's diploma and an interest in the petroleum found in the eastern Carpathian Mountains.