Too late to the party with just that resource. Engines that most efficiently use oil came about only after the era of history when engines that need coal were dominant.

Fun bit of alt-history pondering - China was the most powerful single nation on Earth at the time of the dawn of the industrial revolution - it's quite plausible that they missed out on that lead just because of a couple of shallow whitewater sections of the Yangtze river that made bringing their coal by barge to the coastal cities impractical.