Chinese developed drilling techniques for oil a long time ago
Summary
Around 200 BCE, Chinese of hte Han dynasty were using percussion drilling to drill oil.
Details
The method was used to extract natural gas to burn brine and produce salt.
It used iron bits, iron pole and levers.
The bits were repeated raised and dropped and was quite effective - by the 10th century percussion wells deeper than 100m were common, and the deepest was in 1835 of 1km below the surface (though the deeper wells might take generations to sink)