But let's return to the 1860s in the region known as the "oil patch." From its inception, the oil industry experienced an acute shortage of containers for shipping the extracted oil. Edwin Drake himself scoured towns and villages around Titusville in search of barrels, since his well produced from one to two dozen barrels per day. He had to do this because there were no barrels left in Titusville, and the nearest place where he managed to buy about three dozen more barrels, before he placed regular large orders with coopers, was the town of Meadville, located 40 kilometers from Titusville.