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This paper traces the history of oil being reined in by the British Raj, from the 1870s to the early 20th C. I argue that oil is not a self-evident object, but a category built by regimes of thought. Second I argue that oil became an infrastructure, used by the colonial state to elaborate itself. Nonetheless, neither the disciplining of petroleum, nor that of its popular use were straightforward because it involved several actors and was not driven by the Crown alone, presenting obstacles and surprises. Being a slippery substance, oil stealthily exposes the chinks in the armour of the colonial state. Being a networked system, it draws attention to distributed sovereignty within colonialism. By tracing the encounters between oil companies, the state and oil’s materiality, I chart a journey of oil as it became government but also escaped government.