f Hydrocarbons in Austria: Past - Present - Future

The first hydrocarbon find on the territory of present Austria was made by accident, while drilling for water, in 1892 in shallow Miocene sands of the Molasse Zone in Wels, a district town in the province of Upper, Austria. Very small scale production from this field, for private use, continues to this day! In 1906 the small Leoprechting-oilfield, also in Upper Austria, was discovered - again by waterdrilling. These early finds were, however, insignificant compared with the prolific oilfields of Galicia (today Poland and Ukrainia), developed since 1860, which made the Austro-Hungarian empire a prominent oil producing country at that time.