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Human labor and knowledge has been central to the ability of companies and states to extract and produce energy. Workers, engineers, technocrats, and managers have played a central role in the development of the hydrocarbon industry. Overshadowed by the images of oil rigs, pipelines, and refineries which dominate the modern petro-imaginary, the men and women who have built the industry are often made invisible or reduced to stereotypes and characters promoted by the industry itself. Following the recent turn in the scholarship towards the study of what has been termed variously an ‘oil complex’ or ‘oil assemblage’, studies emphasizing the material structures and technical organization of the oil and gas industry are increasingly drawing attention to the social and labor histories of oil. This special issue of the Journal of Energy History presents recent research which places the human element at the heart of analyses of the history of the hydrocarbon industry in the 19th and 20th centuries. Drawing on materials in corporate archives and other collections and adopting the approaches of social and cultural history makes it possible to reconstruct and analyze the lived experiences of men and women in the hydrocarbon industry. By bringing together research addressing a variety of geographical areas and time periods, this special issue highlights different organizations, individuals, and social groups and critically analyzes their role in the extraction, production, distribution, and consumption of carbon energy. In particular, it demonstrates how the material structures and organizational forms that make up the oil and gas industry have both shaped and been shaped by processes of identity formation and professionalization, the entrenchment of structural inequalities, social activism and mobilization, the circulation of economic and technical expertise, and socio-environmental interactions.