This article seeks to contribute with the state of the art related to the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) tool and its application in petroleum engineering, which has the purpose of evaluating relative efficiency of productive unities, therefore a methodology that helps on planning and decision making. The aforementioned research quantifies the number of publications along the periods and tries to identify research development areas using DEA in petroleum engineering. One of the objectives is highlight the efficiency or inefficiency assessed from conflicts of variables (inputs/outputs). DEA methodology started in works developed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes, in 1978, which had Farrel’s work as a ground for their own (1957). DEA’s modeling evolution, whether in theoretical aspects or applications, can be proven by its large number of published works. However, in petroleum engineering, academic research deserves to be the most disseminated.