This refinery obtained, on the basis of a contract concluded in October 1856 between Teodor Mehedinţeanu and the City Hall of Bucharest, the exclusive right to supply the illumination of the Wallachian capital with lamp lamp.
The contract began to be executed on April 1, 1857, when, by replacing the kidnapped oil with the products supplied by the Rafov refinery, "Bucharest became the first city in the world illuminated entirely with distilled crude oil."
In 1857, the total production of Romanian countries amounted to 275 tons of crude oil. With this figure, Romania was registered as the first country in world oil production statistics , before other large oil producing states such as the United States of America (1860), Russia (1863), Mexico (1901) or Persia (1913 ).