The Petroleum Review (November 12, 1904, p. 387): “Visitors to the Campina Spouter – Sixty engineers, members of the Roumanian Polytechnical Society, recently paid a visit to the Campina oil fields and inspected the celebrated well No. 65 of the Steaua Romana.  They were cordially welcomed and entertained by the management of the company.”

Campina is a city in Prahova County, Romania, 40 km north of the county seat Ploiesti, with a rich petroleum history. The Campina oilfields were known for many impressive oil gushers in the early 1900s, depicted on postcards. The city is noted for the first school for drilling and refining foremen (1904) and as a major early refining center.  The Steaua Romana Oil Refinery in Campina was a target of WW II Allied air strikes in 1943 (“Operation Tidal Wave”), as well as a target during WW I.

For more on the petroleum history of Romania, visit my friend and co-author Marius Furcuta’s excellent blog: http://furcuta.blogspot.com/.

Here are four postcard versions of the same oil gusher, identified in the black & white version, and the postcard far right, as the Steaua Romana No. 65.