This proposal was born from the remark that oil historians rarely have the opportunity to present their works in thematic sessions hosted in international symposia. At the end of the XIX century the oil industry was like a Leviathan, a powerful system managed by companies that in few years acquired the status of the world’s biggest multinational corporations. Despite of this, Petroleum Geologist, Engineer and Chemist were categories still unknown in universities and oil companies. Among oil technologists of the first years of XX century a specific association aimed at promoting an international dialogue did not exist. A century later, even petroleum historians lack a global group for discussion of their interests.

Internationality is an element that characterized modern oil industry since it took its first steps in the middle of XIX century. The mobility of technologists and technologies, the international economic interests of mining many companies, the worldwide demand of refined oil, are all components that contributed to the rapid expansion of the oil sector. Started as a craft mining activity with few means and workers, the oil industry between the thirties and the sixties of 19th century benefited from the contribution of scientist and technologist from several countries. Know-how, competence, and the development of new artifacts changed the old petroleum sector into a complex production system in which geology, engineering, chemistry, and logistics began to work in symbiosis. The starting point of this new way of working in the oil industry was Pennsylvania, USA; this experience represented a model for all the countries in which were active oil operations. To understand the meaning of the technological development in oil, it’s necessary analyze the national oil case of big producers, small producers and consumer countries. Cross the boundaries of national’s oil industry history studies through international dialogue means opening a current of comparative investigations that can allow oil historians to continue the line of research marked by one of the founders of the discipline, the Dutch oil technologist R. J. Forbes.