Despite the fact that China's history books, written by Ban Gu of the Eastern Han Dynasty, have recorded the discovery of combustible water, also known as petroleum, in the area of Yan'an, the first scientifically exploited petroleum wells in China's history didn't appear until late in the Qing Dynasty, when Rockefeller had long since become a world-renowned oil tycoon and the world's richest man. After the Tongzhi, the West from the oil can be refined from burning lighting more cost-effective kerosene, a large number of dumped in China, can be sold millions of quintals per year, the Qing government every year to buy these kerosene will have to spend 15 million taels of silver, when the thinning of the Qing dynasty's national inventory of less than 30 million taels of silver, the solution to the problem of the people to burn the oil lighting has been imminent. The Qing Dynasty had to dig oil wells on Chinese soil.
The Treaty of Shimonoseki gave the Great Powers the power to mine in China, and they searched non-stop for oil in China. Until 1903, the German Shichang foreign bank detected oil in the area of Shaanxi Yanchang Shuyuan, they then privately with the local squire reached a cooperative mining agreement, and reported to the county governor. Knowing the importance of the matter, the governor of Yanchang reported the matter one level at a time, eventually reaching the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Qing court rejected the Shichang Foreign Bank's mining agreement. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be the right to exploit the oil in the area to Shaanxi Province contractors, but also set up the Mining Bureau Supervisor, and set up a plant in the extension of the county, and now the most important thing is to solve the problem of mining technology and equipment. The Qing court finally decided to turn to the Japanese.
Shaanxi Province specializes in sending some people to Japan to learn mining technology. Two years later, Cao Hongxun, governor of Shaanxi, formally petitioned Emperor Guangxu to establish the Yanchang oil mine, which became the first oil mine on land in China. Cao Hongxun sent samples from the Yanchang oil mine to the Japanese chemist, Abu Shojiro, in Hankou for testing, and the results were surprising, the quality of the oil from the mine was far superior to that of Japan, and comparable to that of the U.S. oil. Abu Shojiro also came to the extension of the field inspection, found that the oil mines in this area is very wide. Abu Shojiro commissioned by the Shaanxi governor to Japan to import a number of oil extraction machines.
Abu Shojiro also brought petroleum technician Sato Yonoro came to the extension of the county for oil exploration and mining preparations. 1907, in the close cooperation of the two sides, the extension of the county outside the West Gate drilled China's first oil well on land. The depth of the oil well was more than 240 feet, and the daily production of crude oil was close to 500 pounds. After the Sino-Japanese cooperation in oil exploration further increased, more and more Japanese oil technicians came to the extension of the county, in this place and dug out the second and third oil wells, daily oil production reached more than 700 barrels, the complete end of the old China has no oil history.