Merkwiller-Pechelbronn () is a commune in the

Bas-Rhin Bas-Rhin () is a department in Alsace which is a part of the Grand Est region of France. The name means 'Lower Rhine', referring to its lower altitude among the two French Rhine departments: it is downstream of the Haut-Rhin (Upper Rhine) de ...

department in

Grand Est Grand Est (; ) is an Regions of France, administrative region in northeastern France. It superseded three former administrative regions, Alsace, Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine, on 1 January 2016 under the provisional name of Alsace-Champagne-A ...

in north-eastern

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. It is notable as the original home of

oil sands Oil sands are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. They are either loose sands, or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen (a dense and extremely viscous ...

mining. Oil sands were mined from 1745 in Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, initially under the direction of

Louis Pierre Ancillon de la Sablonnière In 1745 Louis Pierre Ancillon de la Sablonnière established the Pechelbronn bitumen mine at Merkwiller-Pechelbronn, Bas-Rhin, Alsace. He was an interpreter with the French ambassador to Switzerland, then the General Treasurer of the Ligues Suiss ...

, by special appointment of

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...

. The Pechelbronn oil field was active until 1970, and was the birthplace of companies such as Antar and

Schlumberger Schlumberger (), doing business as SLB, is a global multinational oilfield services company. Founded in France in 1926, the company is now incorporated as Schlumberger NV in Willemstad, Curaçao, with principal executive offices in Houston ...

. The first modern oil sands

refinery A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value. Types of refineries Different types of refineries ...

was built there in 1857; and it also had the first school of oil technology."History of Pechelbronn oil"

See also