The fall of 2026 is a moment of energy centrality, when geopolitics unfolding far away shows up in Americans’ everyday lives.

In Pennsylvania, the statewide diesel price averages US$6.50 per gallon. In Iowa, farmers are paying more than $6 a gallon for diesel. And in Alaska, unleaded gas runs more than $9 a gallon.

As a distinguished professor of history and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona, I write widely about oil and energy issues. This moment has me thinking about how the oil industry began nearly 170 years ago in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Setting crude prices in Oil City

In 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil along Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania. His well was funded by investors from New Bedford, Massachusetts, who were looking for a replacement for whale oil, which was expensive and challenging to acquire.

The first oil deals were struck on the streets of Oil City, about 90 miles north of Pittsburgh, while traders were still working out basic questions about “rock oil,” as crude was then called: What was it good for, and how much should it cost?

To create a more formal system, the oil traders developed a railroad car designed to be a rolling oil exchange on the Oil Creek Railway. It made 13 stops daily between Titusville and Oil City, and trading was conducted on the honor system, with no written certificates of purchase or sale.

As the industry quickly grew, an oil exchange office was set up in the Arlington Hotel in Oil........

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