Douglas Brunt

And we're going to start getting in the oil game.

This is 1873.

There's almost no technology down there.

People are digging up oil with shovels.

Standard Oil was founded three years before and Rockefeller had pioneered a number of techniques to use technology to drill.

So he's got sophisticated drilling rigs, he's built in pipelines, refining technology is really advanced.

So the Nobels already technically competent come down there and copy the American playbook initially.

And they're like, well, let's not reinvent the wheel.

Rockefeller's doing some really smart things already.

We can just copy that because we're pretty good as well.

But then they take it a step farther.

And at this time, even Rockefeller and certainly in Russia, when they transported the oil, they were putting into these wooden barrels and then loading that on the back of a trailer pulled by mules or onto the deck of a ship.

And constantly these barrels were leaking or they would just crumble.

There was a lot of breakage and waste.

in the transportation.

So Ludwig Nobel, Emmanuel's father, is naturally an engineer, having built all these engines and worked with metal.

He's like, let's build these steel cisterns inside the hull of a ship, and we can transport oil that way.

Because mostly, they were going over water.

Out of southern Russia, if you wanted to get to St.

Petersburg, there's this expression, the Volga, the Volga River.