© Yaroslav Golubinov, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004711815_006 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license. Chapter 4 Oil as a Resource and Element of Defence: the Cases of Galicia in 1915 and Romania in 1916 Yaroslav Golubinov 1 Introduction From the very beginning of the First World War, the Eastern Front had a num- ber of distinct aspects which were defined by the geographical, ethno-cultural, and socio-economic characteristics of the regions lying at the borders of three major empires: Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The most important of these aspects, in my opinion, was the striking variety of landscapes, ethnicities, and economic practices.1 The combatant armies had to adapt to methods of modern warfare, which were to be used both among the forests, mountains, swamps, and steppes nearly untouched by economic development and within landscapes already modified by industrial production, particularly in the oil-producing regions, including Austrian Galicia, with its high concentration of oil wells and refineries near Drohobych and Boryslav, and the Romanian judeţe2 (counties) Dâmbovița, Prahova, and Buzău. Access to oil reserves was particularly important for both the Alliance (Entente) and the Central Powers; however, oilfield exploitation was complicated by the fact that in 1914–15 and 1916, the oil-bearing regions found themselves on the front line of the Great War.3 As well as being a valua- ble economic resource, oil and petroleum products such as fuel and lubricants (F&L) were part of the military defence system against the advancing enemy. This chapter will focus on the problem of using non-military industrial facili- ties in the context of this system. The use of non-military industrial facilities for defence purposes involved both their regular exploitation (which, on the whole, was typical under military 1 The research for this chapter was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) within the framework of research project No 21–59-14003 “Great War and the Anthro- pocene: ‘Imperial Debris’ and Environmental Change in Central-Eastern Europe”. 2 A judeţ (plural judeţe) is an administrative division of Romania. 3 Oliver Gliech, “Petroleum,” in 1914–1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. Ute Daniel et al., issued by Freie Universität Berlin. Published online 7 January 2015, doi: 10.15463/ie1418.10532. Yaroslav Golubinov - 9789004711815 Downloaded from Brill.com 11/03/2024 03:12:00PM via Open Access. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/CC-BY/4.0