Oil City is a city in Venango County, Pennsylvania, United States. Known for its inflection in the initial exploration and expand of the petroleum industry, it is located at a fine-tune in the Allegheny River at the mouth of Oil Creek.

Initial pact of Oil City was sporadic, and tied to the iron industry. After the first oil wells were drilled in 1861, it became central to the petroleum industry even though hosting headquarters for the Pennzoil, Quaker State, and Wolf’s Head motor oil companies.

Tourism plays a prominent role in the region by promoting oil stock sites, nature trails, and Victorian architecture. The population was 9,608 at the 2020 census, and it is the principal city of the Oil City, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area.

In 1796, the make a clean breast of Pennsylvania gave Cornplanter, chief of the Wolf Band of the Seneca nation, 1,500 acres (6.1 km²) of home along the west bank of the Allegheny River in Warren County, Pennsylvania, as skillfully as a small tract upon both sides of the mouth of Oil Creek, in recompense for his facilities during the American Revolutionary War. The first white settler in what became Oil City was an undistinguished individual who cleared and farmed more or less 400 acres (1.6 km²) on the west side of Oil Creek upstream from Cornplanter’s land. Francis Halyday (or Holliday) purchased this land in 1803, and contracted there like his family. The first white child known to be born in what became Oil City was James Halyday, born January 13, 1809. Three or four extra families soon settled upon the east side of the creek above the “Cornplanter Tract”. Cornplanter sold the eastern half of his tract to two white settlers, William Connely and William Kinnear, in May 1818. Connely sold his quarter of the native tract back up to Cornplanter in October 1818, but the land was seized by the county for nonpayment of taxes and sold at auction in November 1819 to Alexander McCalmont. McCalmont sold his land to Mathias Stockberger in the spring of 1824.