The January 1969 offshore oil spill at Santa Barbara, California, presages creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and helps launch the modern environmental movement. Scientific studies have since found that even greater amounts of oil seepage occur naturally on the channel’s seafloor. Read More
This 1965 patent and others will lead to remotely operated underwater vehicles — vital for modern offshore oil and natural gas production. The “underwater manipulator with suction support device,” invented by a Shell Oil engineer, represents the many technologies needed to reach deep undersea resources. Read More
The modern petroleum industry begins in Texas with a giant oil strike on Spindletop Hill. The 1901 discovery near Beaumont will change the future of American industry and transportation. The Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum preserves this history. Read More
Some say Ferne Houseknecht had been told by a fortune teller that there was “a black river of oil” under her farm in southwestern Michigan. After drilling for more than two years, her discovery well will uncover the state’s largest oilfield – the 29-mile-long “Golden Gulch.” Read More
The history of the U.S. petroleum industry provides a context for teaching the modern business of meeting America’s energy needs.
Presented since 1955, the Chief Roughneck Award acknowledges the best representative of the U.S. petroleum industry. The bronze “Joe Roughneck” statue is “recognized as one of the most meaningful honors in the industry.” Read More
The Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas, has opened an exhibit of oil company stock certificates on loan from the Western Heritage Museum at New Mexico Junior College in Hobbs. The collection includes stocks from as early as 1902. Read More
Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler has the greatest number of panoramic or “Birds-Eye View” maps in the collection of the Library of Congress. Many of what Fowler called “aero views” captured the small cities near our earliest oilfields. Read More
A neon reminder of its petroleum heritage rotates high above Dallas. Preserved atop a former oil company headquarters building, now a luxury hotel, rotates a neon sign with Mobil Oil Company’s Pegasus trademark.
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ENERGY EDUCATION RESOURCES
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