The presence and exploitation of oil in Italy is certainly very ancient and dates back at least to Roman times, because natural events in the Apennines oil were used as fuel and waterproofing. The draw held at the end of a regular production of oil began in 1860 using a number of wells in the vicinity of the natural manifestations of leakage in the Northern Apennines.
But the complex stratigraphy and geology of this area of the Apennines had not yet been fully studied and many issues were still unresolved, then the search for oil, concentrated Emiliano Apennines, where they appear in the scaly clays (Liguride), did not great advances in productivity and modest increases were obtained with improved extraction technique rather than with the identification and exploitation of new deposits. In fact there is an increase in tons of oil extracted by passing 1000 tons in 1891 to 10,000 in 1911 and 20,000 in '31. The first important conceptual breakthrough in structural geological situation occurred with Cesare Porro, even if the techniques did not allow an objective exploration of his theories. In fact, speculated that the scaly clays could be the "rock" but they had needed to be a good permeability reservoir (see oil) from which to extract the petrolio.a.