While petroleum products had become important first in the 19th century, with the hub of production and innovation being tristate Pennsylvania-Ohio-Ontario triangle of the United States of America, with the arising of electrification for lighting at the turn of the century, production became less critical for a brief moment in time. However, with new internal combustion engines being developed nearly at the same time, this lull in the importance of petroleum was a brief one. However, petroleum production in the 20th century would be dominated not by the United States, but by the British Dominion of Southern America, and Britain's ally, the Ottoman Empire.
In 1901, the long suspected productivity of the area of another triangle, this time the Dominion tri-provincial area of Lousiana-Texas-Arkansas was proven dramatically with the discovery of the large petroleum well at the
Simcoe Swell, named for
John Graves Simcoe, as so many features in the Dominon were, though before the discovery of petroleum there, the Swell may have been among the least impressive of his namesakes. This started the Southern Petrol Bonanza and gave birth to the Southern Petroleum Company (it's major rival, the Anglo-Texas Petroleum Company, would be born later with the exploitation of the rich
East Texas Fields. By the 1920s, Dominion industry was dominated by the triumvirate of cotton, sugar, and above all, petroleum.