Edgar Van Dant

Edgar Van Dant.

Edgar Van Dant was a North American chemical engineer who studied petroleum, working out a process for distilling various useful products, including lubricating oil, grease, kerosene, and vulcazine. Van Dant obtained financing from John Rockefeller to form the Pennsylvania Petroleum Corporation in 1870, the largest company in the C.N.A.'s oil industry. Five years later, Rockefeller created a petroleum consortium, Consolidated Petroleum of North America, that included Pennsylvania Petroleum. By 1880, Consolidated Petroleum controlled over ninety percent of the C.N.A.'s petroleum supply.