Stanisław Szczepanowski was born in Kościan, Wielkopolska, and died in Nauheim. He studied at the Vienna Institute of Technology, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris and studied chemical technology and economics in London. In 1877, he received British Citizenship and was invited on a business trip to India with the Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne and future British King Edward VII. Szczepanowski refused. He chose Galicia instead, where he arrived in 1879 to explore oil and with a social and economic mission. In 1879 he went to Galicia.He founded an oil mine in Słoboda Rungurska, which produced 60 percent of Galician oil. While he grew his business, Szczepanowski also developed social and political activity in Galicia. He built houses for workers, opened cooperative stores and community houses, organised vocational training, and promoted the concept of cooperativeness as the publisher of the Self-Help weekly and president of the Union of Gainful and Economic Associations.
William McGarvey was born in Huntingdon, Quebec, Canada and died in Vienna. The 1866 Canadian breakthrough discovery of oil deposits was also important to McGarvey. The young man first worked as a drilling intern and then opened his own extraction company. In 1881, he travelled to Europe. He opened the most innovative refinery of the time and the famous drilling machinery factory in Glinik Mariampolski. With time, he transformed his company into the Galician-Carpathian Oil Association. McGarvey held shares in numerous Galician companies, which opened successive wells. After 1905, he moved to Vienna and controlled his continuously growing oil empire from there.
Jan Rączkowski was born in Siary near Gorlice to a peasant family. He never graduated from any schools. His career can be described as from rags to riches. He was quickly promoted to qualified worker and subsequently to master. In 1888, he took a job at the mine owned by Władysław Długosz. The mine went bankrupt and both men were hired by McGarvey, the founder of the machinery factory and refinery in Gorlice, who sent them to look for oil in Boryslav.
Over the first four years, the drillings were unsuccessful and McGarvey made a decision to cease exploration. However, Rączkowski did not give up and kept drilling. When the auger broke through 12m of rock at a depth of almost 1,000m, he struck top quality oil. This is how Jaś Rączkowski discovered the Borislav deposits. From then on, he had behind-the-scenes influence in the Galician-Carpathian Oil Association. No one knew how to drill below 1,000m as well as him and no one made better decisions when it came to malfunctions. He was a well-known and popular figure in Boryslav and was always eager to help others with advice or money.