February 20, 1959 – First LNG Tanker arrives in England

After a three-week voyage, the Methane Pioneer – the world’s first liquefied natural gas tanker – arrives at the world’s first LNG terminal at Canvey Island, England, from Lake Charles, Louisiana.

The world's first liquefied natural gas tanker is a converted World War II liberty freighter.

The vessel, a converted World War II liberty freighter, contains five, 7,000-barrel aluminum tanks supported by balsa wood and insulated with plywood and urethane, according to the Center for Energy Economics (CEE).

“This event demonstrated that large quantities of liquefied natural gas could be transported safely across the ocean,” notes CEE, a research arm of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas.

The 340-foot Methane Pioneer, owned by the Comstock Liquid Methane Corporation, refrigerates its cargo to minus 285 degrees Fahrenheit. When vaporized, the LNG expands by the ratio of 600 to one.

“German engineer Karl Von Linde built the first practical compressor refrigeration machine in Munich in 1873,” CEE explains. “The first LNG plant was built in West Virginia in 1912 and began operation in 1917. The first commercial liquefaction plant was built in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1941.”

February 20, 1993 — Oil Pipe Saxophone debuts in Houston

A Houston restaurant is home to a petroleum product -- a saxophone made from 48-inch steel oilfield pipe.

Petroleum pipelines become art when Texas artist Bob “Daddy-O” Wade debuts his landmark saxophone sculpture at Houston’s newly built Billy Blues Bar & Grill on Richmond Avenue.

Wade has transformed two 48-inch steel oilfield pipes into the free-standing sculpture and a supporting pylon sunk 25 feet deep. A Volkswagen, beer kegs, and assorted parts complete his 60-foot-tall blue creation.

When controversy ensures over the restaurant’s addition, the Houston City Council deems the saxophone to be art and therefore not subject to signage ordinances. The Fort Worth Star Telegram describes Wade as a “connoisseur of Southwestern kitsch.” His sculpture endures at now The Horn restaurant.

February 21, 1887 – New Refinery Process “sweetens” Ohio Oil

Herman Frasch – a former Standard Oil Company chemist – applies to patent his process for eliminating sulfur from “skunk-bearing oils.” Earlier discoveries near Lima, Ohio, have produced vast quantities of a thick, sulfurous oil of little practical value.

Herman Frasch

Seeing an opportunity overlooked by others, John D. Rockefeller has accumulated a 40 million barrel stockpile of the cheap, sour Lima oil. His Standard Oil company rehires Frasch – and buys his remarkable patent.

With Frasch’s copper-oxide refining process used to “sweeten” the Lima oil, the odorless result multiplies its value, adding substantially to the Rockefeller fortune.

February 22, 1898 – Painter will create Petroleum Industry Murals

Born in Memphis, Missouri, Alexandre Hogue will become known for his paintings of southwestern scenes during the Great Depression — including murals of the 1930s Texas petroleum industry.

Alexandre Hogue's 1939 "Oil Fields of Graham" (Texas) vanishes when the post office is repainted - but today is restored and displayed at the Old Post Office Museum & Art Center, which opened in 1993.

Hogue grows up in Denton, Texas, and works as an illustrator for the Dallas Morning News before traveling to New York, where he works in advertising and spends time in museums and galleries, notes the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA).

When President Franklin Roosevelt creates public relief projects, Hogue and other artists are commissioned to paint American history on the walls of public buildings. Hogue soon produces murals in Dallas, Houston – and the post office in Graham, Texas. Hogue’s popular “Dust Bowl” collection is featured in Life magazine in 1937.

This 1937 Hogue painting depicts the Pecos, Texas, oilfield with storage tanks in the foreground and the green-roofed quarters for workers in the background.

“His ideas are expressed mainly in landscape paintings but they can also be traced through abstract and even nonobjective works later in his career,” notes TSHA.

Hogue associates with other Dallas-area artists – Jerry Bywaters, Otis Dozier, Everett Spruce and others who become known as the Dallas Nine.

Bywaters will exhibit “Oil Field Girls” and “Roughnecks” on June 1, 1940, in San Francisco.

“Although the Dallas Nine ceased to operate as a group after its members scattered to pursue careers throughout the state and beyond, artists from that circle continued to do meaningful work and exerted a powerful influence over a new generation of artists,” TSHA concludes.

Hogue’s 1939 “Oil Fields of Graham,” oil on canvas, remains on display in the North Texas oil patch community – where early post offices moved around a lot. “Each new administration would choose its own place for a post office, renting the building from some individual party,” explains historian Nancy Lorance, who adds that in 1936 a U.S. Postal Service building was completed in the town square.

“Oilman’s Christmas Tree” -- artwork given to a local oilman who explained oilfield technologies and took the artist to drilling sites, notes an article in the Graham Leader.

According to Lorance, Hogue’s “Oil Fields of Graham,” which originally adorned the lobby’s east wall, depicts Colonel E.S. Graham on the left, standing in front of Standpipe Mountain, two laborers working on a pipe line, and two men in street clothes examining blueprints.

“Also in the picture are a large piece of machinery, some oil field boilers, and a truck,” Lorance adds. “This meaningful picture of Graham deteriorated as the years passed and when the post office was repainted the mural was covered.”

Fortunately, in 1993 the Graham Post Office moves to a new site – and the building is purchased by the city.

Today, the Old Post Office Museum & Art Center educates the public – and preserves the restored Hogue mural, which technically is still on loan from the U.S. Postal Service.

A January 2012 article in the Graham Leader interviews a petroleum geologist – the son of a local oilman who was a good friend of Hogue in the Depression era. ”The artist wanted someone to take him on a drilling location so he could create realistic, detailed oil field scenes,” explains Rob Roark.

“Dad told him how to design oil derricks,” he says. To show his appreciation, Hogue gave the elder Roark artwork. “Hogue wrote on the art titled, ‘Oilman’s Christmas Tree’ – If you and Mrs. Roark don’t like this one, we can exchange it for another print when you are in Dallas.”

Editor’s note – On June 28, 1967, a 13-foot by 56-foot mural “Panorama of Petroleum” by Oklahoma artist Delbert Jackson greeted visitors at the opening of the Smithsonian Institution “Hall of Petroleum” in Washington, D.C. Today, the giant mural is a permanent exhibit at Tulsa International Airport.

February 22, 1923 – First Carbon Black Factory in Texas

Texas grants its first permit for a carbon black factory to J.W. Hassel & Associates in Stephens County. It has been discovered that carbon black dramatically increases the durability of rubber used in tires.

Automobile tires are white until B.F. Goodrich Company finds that adding carbon black improves strength and durability.

Modern carbon black products are descendants of early “lamp blacks” first produced by the Chinese over 3,500 years ago, according to the International Carbon Black Association (ICBA). Carbon black, which looks like soot, is produced by controlled combustion of petroleum products, both oil and natural gas.

“Its physical appearance is that of a black, finely divided pellet or powder,” ICBA explains. “Its use in tires, rubber and plastic products, printing inks and coatings is related to properties of specific surface area, particle size and structure, conductivity and color. Approximately 90 percent of carbon black is used in rubber applications.”

In 1910, the B.F. Goodrich Company discovers that adding carbon black to the vulcanizing process dramatically improves strength and durability. Its use in tires creates an immense market – initially consuming one pound of carbon black for each two pounds of rubber.

As the automobile industry grows, so does demand for tires and for carbon black. By 1931, Texas produces more than 200 million pounds of carbon black annually from just 31 plants – 75 percent of America’s total at the time. Today, most of America’s carbon black is still produced in Texas and Louisiana. Current worldwide production is about 18 billion pounds every year.

February 23, 1942 – Imperial Japanese Sub shells California Refinery

A panic but little damage results from the 1942 attack on a refinery in Ellwood City, California.

At 7:15 p.m., Commander Nishino Kozo of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s submarine I-17 begins firing armor-piercing shells at the Bankline Oil Company refinery in Ellwood City, California. The shelling continues for 20 minutes before I-17 escapes into the darkness. Damage is minimal – but the incident creates invasion hysteria along the West Coast.

A 1982 Parade magazine article suggests that Nishino targeted the Bankline Refinery because of a prewar affront. While serving as captain of an oil tanker docked near the refinery – and being given a courtesy tour of the facilities – Nishino reportedly slipped and fell into a cactus, prompting laughter from his hosts. The Parade article claims he gets his revenge by shelling the refinery.

February 25, 1897 – “Golden Rule” Jones elected in Ohio

An early advocate of eight-hour workdays, Acme Sucker Rod Company President Samuel Jones will be a popular Toledo, Ohio, mayor

On a progressive Republican ticket, oilfield equipment supplier Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones is elected mayor of Toledo, Ohio.

Jones – a 40-year veteran of oilfields in Pithole, Petrolia and Oil City, Pennsylvania – first earns his nickname in 1894 when he posts the biblical admonition at his newly formed Acme Sucker Rod Company. Jones introduces better wages, paid vacations and five-percent bonuses.

The Acme Sucker Rod Company president will become a leading advocate of eight-hour workdays. Above his factory entrance he posts: Every Man who is WILLING to work, Has a Right to Live. Divide the Day and Give Him a Chance. ”Golden Rule” Jones is elected mayor three more times and serves until dying on the job in 1904.

February 25, 1919 – Oregon enacts First State Tax on Gasoline

A gasoline filling station owner's sign, circa the 1930s.

A state taxes gasoline for the first time. Oil is selling for about $2 per barrel when Oregon enacts the one-cent gasoline tax to be used for road construction and maintenance. Less than two months later, Colorado and New Mexico have followed Oregon’s example. By 1929, every state has added a tax of up to three cents per gallon.

Faced with $2.1 billion federal deficit and declining revenue, President Herbert Hoover will add another one-cent per gallon federal excise tax in 1932.

Today, state taxes vary from less than 10 cents per gallon to about 40 cents. The average state tax is about 27 cents a gallon. Consumers pay an additional 18.4 cents for a federal excise tax (unchanged since October 1997), which mainly supports a highway trust fund.

February 25, 1926 – Wyatt Earp’s Petroleum Investment pays off

Wyatt Earp's investment in Kern County, California, results in a 1926 producing oil well.

Wyatt Earp’s oil well investment north of Bakersfield, California, pays off with a 150-barrel-a-day producer.

In his later years, long after his famous 1881 gunfiight in Tombstone, Arizona, the former lawman has invested in the Kern River and Kern Front oilfields. At age 75 – as Earp begins focusing on his biography and movie ambitions – he turns management of his oilfield properties over to “Hattie” Lehnhardt, sister to his wife Josie.

Disappointing results will later prompt Josie to write a family friend, “I was in hopes they would bring in a two or three hundred barrel well. But I must be satisfied as it could have been a duster, too.”

February 26, 1960 – First “Deep” Offshore Lease Sale

The Bureau of Land Management of the Department of the Interior offers 1.17 million acres for lease offshore Louisiana and 437,000 acres offshore Texas and receives $285 million in bids, more than double the amount of any previous sale. These leases open oil and natural gas exploration to what is then considered “deepwater.”

February 13, 1924 – Forest Oil incorporates

Forest Oil's logo features the "Yellow Dog" -- a two-wicked lantern once used on derricks.

A corporate logo with a lantern burning two wicks? An oil company originally founded in 1916 consolidates with four other independent petroleum companies — the January Oil, Brown Seal Oil, Andrews Petroleum and Boyd Oil — to form the Forest Oil Corporation, an early leader in secondary recovery technology.

Originally based in Bradford, Pennsylvania — site of the “first billion dollar oilfield” in the United States — the Forest Oil logo features the lantern often seen on early wooden derricks. Some believe the lantern’s name, “yellow dog,” comes from the two burning wicks resembling a dog’s glowing eyes at night.

Read the American Oil & Gas Historical Society’s “Yellow Dog – Oilfield Lantern” article by Contributing Editor Kris Wells that appeared in the February 2009 issue of Hart’s E&P magazine.

Today headquartered in Denver, Forest Oil (publicly held since 1969) and its subsidiaries engage in petroleum exploration, production and marketing, with principal reserves and producing properties in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Visit the Penn-Brad Historical Oil Park and Museum near Bradford, Pennsylvania — where a modern natural gas shale boom has renewed the historic oil patch economy.

February 13, 1977 – Texas Ranger  “El Lobo Solo” dies

Texas Ranger Manuel Gonzaullas will help bring order to 1930s East Texas boom towns.

Texas Ranger Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas dies in Dallas at the age of 85. During much of the 1920s, Ranger Gonzaullas enforced the law in booming oilfield towns and along the Mexican border.

By 1930 — the year the massive East Texas oilfield is discovered near Kilgore — Gonzaullas already is known as “El Lobo Solo,” the Lone Wolf. “He was a soft-spoken man and his trigger finger was slightly bent,” famed oilman Watson W. Wise characterizes the lawman in a 1985 interview.

Gonzaullas is credited with bringing order to the town of Kilgore, once known as “the most lawless town in Texas.” He said at the time, “Crime may expect no quarter in Kilgore. Gambling houses, slot machines, whiskey rings and dope peddlers might as well save the trouble of opening, because they will not be tolerated in any degree.”

See “El Lobo Solo” article on page 13 of the June 2005 Petroleum Age. Also visit the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

February 17, 1902 – Lufkin Industries founded in East Texas

In Lufkin, Texas, the Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company is founded as a repair shop for railroad and sawmill machinery.

The founding of Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company of Lufkin, Texas, in 1902 will lead to a modern oilfield icon known by many names -- donkey, grasshopper, horse-head, thirsty bird, and pump jack, among others.

When the timber supplies in East Texas begin to dwindle and the sawmill business declines, the Lufkin Foundry & Machine Company discovers new opportunities in the newly burgeoning oilfields. As more petroleum discoveries are made, the company prospers.

Inventor Walter C. Trout will be working for Lufkin in 1925 when he sketches out his idea for what will become an icon of oilfield success known by many names — nodding donkey, grasshopper, horse-head, thirsty bird, and pump jack, among others. Before the end of the year, a prototype is installed on a Humble Oil Company well near Hull, Texas.

An engine turns gears that move a counter weight connected to the walking beam, which moves the sucker rod up and down to draw oil from the well. The oil is pumped into nearby holding tanks.

“The well was perfectly balanced, but even with this result, it was such a funny looking, odd thing that it was subject to ridicule and criticism, and it took a long time, nearly a year, before we could convince many the idea was a good one,” Trout explains.

Since Trout’s invention — the now familiar counterbalanced oilfield pumping unit — the Lufkin company has sold more than 200,000 units. Basics of the technology remain the dominant way to lift oil from reservoirs. Key to pumping the oil to the surface, an engine (often set to run on a timer) turns gears that move a counter weight that connects to a walking beam, which moves the sucker rod to draw oil from the well.

Today’s Lufkin Industries, the largest employer in Lufkin, designs and manufactures oilfield equipment and power transmission products. The company also operates a foundry producing up to 300 tons a day of castings for machine tools.

With a population approaching 40,000, Lufkin — once known for its extensive lumber industry — now has developed a growing tourism and convention economy, thanks to its proximity to Sam Rayburn Reservoir and the Davy Crockett National Forest.

Read more about the evolution of ways for getting oil out of the ground in “All Pumped Up — Production Technology.“

February 17, 1944 – Oil discovered in Alabama

Alabama’s first oilfield is discovered in Choctaw County when Texas oilman H.L. Hunt drills the No. 1 Jackson well — and discovers the Gilbertown oilfield. Prior to finding this oilfield, an incredible 350 noncommercial wells have been drilled in Alabama.

Alabama's major producing regions are in the west, including a coalbed methane region underlying Tuscaloosa and Jefferson counties.

“Traces of petroleum, in the form of natural gas were first discovered in Alabama in Morgan and Blount counties in the late 1880s, and by 1902, natural gas was being supplied to the cities of Huntsville and Hazel Green,” notes one historian. “In 1909, a small discovery by Eureka Oil and Gas at Fayette fueled that city’s streetlights for a time, but no natural gas was recovered anywhere in the state for several decades afterward.”

Hunt drilled in Choctaw County and discovered the Gilbertown oilfield in the Eutaw Sand at a depth of 3,700 feet, explains Alan Cockrell in an article for the Encyclopedia of Alabama. The field produces 15 million barrels of oil, “not a lot by modern standards but enough to make ‘oil fever’ spread rapidly.”

However, the search for another oilfield will lead to 11 years of “dry holes,” Cockrell notes. The 1955 oil discovery at Citronelle, a town above a geologic salt dome, finally launches a new drilling boom; five new Alabama oilfields are discovered by 1967.

In 1981, Mobil Oil Company drills Alabama’s first successful offshore natural gas well in Mobile Bay.

Oil and natural gas are still being found in Alabama, especially in the western part of the state,” Cockrell concludes. “Geologists believe new opportunities exist in the hard shales of the deep Black Warrior Basin beneath Pickens and Tuscaloosa counties and in the thick fractured shales of St. Clair and neighboring counties.” The Choctaw County Historical Museum in Gilbertown features bottles of oil from Alabama’s 1944 first oil well.

February 19, 1889 – Ohio acts to conserve Natural Gas

The Ohio House of Representatives enacts the state’s first petroleum conservation measure. House Resolution 813 is “an Act to prevent the wasting of Natural Gas and to Provide for the plugging of all abandoned wells.”

The Ohio Oil and Gas Association documents wells drilled/completed by County in 2010.

The state’s first commercial petroleum production begins in 1860 in Macksburg, Washington County, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. As of 2010, more than 275,700 wells have been drilled — yielding more than 1.1 billion barrels of oil and more than 8.52 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

“Ohio remains a leading producer of oil and gas, ranking in the top half of all producing states in the nation,” the agency notes, adding that modern production technologies are bringing success in eastern Ohio – the Marcellus and Utica shales. In 2010, the state’s deepest well reaches a depth of 13,727 feet in Belmont County — more than 5,000 feet deeper than the previous drilling record.

Ohio also claims the first oil discovery from a drilled well, according to the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program. “In 1814, two men drilled 475 feet in search of salt in Olive Township of Noble County. They cursed when a black liquid oozed into the pit,” explains Executive Director Rhonda Reda.

Oil patch lore says “yellow dog” lanterns were so named because their two burning wicks resembled a dog’s glowing eyes at night. Others say the lamps cast a dog’s head shadow on the derrick floor.

Rare is the community oil and natural gas museum that doesn’t have a “yellow dog” in its collection. The two-wicked lamp is an oilfield icon. Some say that the unusual design originated with whaling ships – but neither the Nantucket nor New Bedford whaling museums can find any such evidence.

Inventor Jonathan Dillen’s lantern was designed to “obviate explosion, and is especially adapted for use in the oil regions, to give light in and about the derricks and other machinery of oil wells, where the explosion of a lamp is attended with great danger by causing destructive conflagration and consequent loss of life and property.”

Railroad museums have collections of cast iron smudge pots, but nothing quite like the oilfields’ yellow dogs. Although many companies manufactured the iron or steel lamps, the yellow dog’s origins remain in the dark.

Oil patch lore says these lanterns were so named because their two burning wicks resembled a dog’s glowing eyes at night. Others say the lamps cast a dog’s head shadow on the derrick floor.

Inventor Jonathan Dillen of Petroleum Centre, Pennsylvania, was first to patent what became the yellow dog in 1870, “for illuminating places out of doors, especially in and about derricks, and machinery in the oil regions, whereby explosions are more dangerous and destructive to life and property than in most other places.”

Dillen’s patent was improved and reissued in 1872 and again in 1877, when it was assigned to John Eaton and E. H. Cole.

“My improved lamp is intended to burn crude petroleum as it comes from the wells fresh and gassy,” Dillen proclaimed  It is to be used, mainly, around oil wells, and its construction is such as to make it very strong, so that it cannot be easily broken or exploded.”

The “yellow dog,” a two-wicked cast iron lamp invented by Jonathan Dillen of Petroleum Centre, Pennsylvania, in 1870.

Eaton, Cole & Burnham Company grew from John Eaton’s 1861 business trip to the booming oil region of western Pennsylvania. Within a few years, he set up his own business with Edward Cole.

With the addition of Edward Burnham, the company grew to become a preeminent supplier of oilfield equipment. It became Oil Well Supply Company in 1878.

At its 45-acre Imperial Works alongside the Allegheny River in Oil City, Oil Well Supply produced oilfield engines and “cast and malleable iron goods” – including yellow dogs. The 1884 catalog listed yellow dog lamps at a price of $1.50 each.

Forest Oil's logo features the "Yellow Dog" -- the two-wicked oilfield lantern.

Oil Well Supply became part of United States Steel Corporation in 1929. Today, along with their shadowy origins, yellow dogs are relegated to museums, antique shops and collectors.

Forest Oil Corporate Logo

A producer of oil and natural gas, Forest Oil Corporation is credited with developing secondary recovery of oil technique (waterflooding) in the early 1900s – a revolutionary event for the oil and gas industry at that time.

Forest Oil adopted an image of the yellow dog derrick lantern as its corporate logo in 1916, when Forest Dale Dorn and Clayton Glenville Dorn founded an oilfield service company in northern Pennsylvania. The company’s roots can be traced to the nation’s first giant oilfield in Bradford, discovered in 1871.

A museum near Bradford, Pennsylvania educates visitors using a 72-foot standard cable-tool derrick -- 1880s technology that once helped the region produce 74 percent of all the oil in America

By 1916, oil production in the Bradford field had declined to just under 40 barrels a day. The reserve was considered by many to be dry. Undeterred, Dorn applied his new waterflooding technique to initiate secondary recovery of oil.

The success of Dorn’s method prompted him to create his own water-flooding company. Within five years, Forest Oil was recognized as a leader in secondary oil recovery systems. This enhanced recovery technology was soon being applied throughout the industry — aiding in the extension of oil wells’ lives by as much as 10 years.

The keystone shape in the center of the lantern symbolizes the state of Pennsylvania – where the first commercial U.S. oil was drilled in 1859 and where Forest Oil was founded in 1916. The company is now headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

Bradford’s Petroleum Museum

Visit the Penn-Brad Historical Oil Park and Museum near Bradford, Pennsylvania — where a modern natural gas shale boom has renewed the historic oil patch economy.

Located in Custer City, three miles south of Bradford, the museum (which now is being renovated by volunteers) “preserves the philosophy, the spirit, and the accomplishments of an oil country community – taking visitors back to early oil boom days of the first billion dollar oil field.”

A main attraction is the 72-foot standard cable-tool derrick, a replica of the technology that in the 1880s helped Bradford once produce an incredible 74 percent of all the oil in America. It was the nation’s  ”first billion-dollar oilfield.”

The founding of the Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company on February 17, 1902, will lead to creation of an oilfield icon known by many names -- nodding donkey, grasshopper, horse-head, thirsty bird, etc.

When an oilman’s work pays off with a producing well, much remains to be done before the oil can make it to market.

In 1859, Edwin Drake — discoverer of America’s first commercial oil well – used a common water well hand pump to retrieve the highly prized new resource from 69.5 feet.

It wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient for producing oil.

The evolution of technology for pumping oil from the ground is reflected in thousands of small, marginally producing oil wells reaching deep into often stubborn reserves.

Invented in 1925 in Lufkin, Texas, the counterbalanced pumping unit -- or pump jack -- brings greater efficiency to the oil patch.

Oil wells will run dry, but advances in “artificial lift systems” technology can put off the inevitable. But even with today’s best technologies, more than half of the oil can remain trapped underground.

Low-volume “stripper” wells produce no more than 15 barrels a day. The average stripper well produces only about 2.2 barrels per day. These wells comprise 84 percent of U.S. oil wells and produce more than 20 percent of all domestic oil – an amount roughly equal to imports from Saudi Arabia.

Marginal oil and natural gas wells number about 650,000 of the nation’s 876,000 wells. Once shutdown, they are lost forever. Keeping them in production has long been a challenge for a special breed of oilman.

“This is an occupation where most of your work is done in all types of weather while working alone, with few thanks, and possibly only a small herd of cattle as company,” notes the Oklahoma Commission on Marginally Producing Oil and Gas Wells. It was the same in the industry’s earliest days.

Early Technology: Eccentric Wheels and Jerk-Lines

Marginal quantities of oil always need help leaving the well. In the early days of the industry, oilmen adapted water-well technology to the problem and used steam-driven walking beam pump systems. At each well, a steam engine rhythmically raised and lowered one end of a sturdy wooden beam, which pivoted on a Samson post.

An 1875 patent drawing shows how oil is pumped from four wells using multiple "walking beams" from a single power source.

The walking beam’s other end cranked a long string of sucker rods up and down to pump oil to the surface. The beam walked and the oil surfaced, but a more efficient system was needed. One of the early oil pumping innovations came from an 1875 patent:

“Heretofore it has been necessary to have a separate engine for each well, although often several such engines are supplied with steam from the same boiler. The object of our invention is to enable the pumping of two or more wells with one engine. By it the walking-beams of the different wells are made to move in different directions at the same time, thereby counterbalancing each other, and equalizing the strain upon the engine.”

Oilmen adopted the 1913 "Simplex Pumping Jack."

However, it was not long before a more compact and efficient mechanism replaced the multiple wooden Samson post and walking beam arrangement.

The 1913 Simplex Pumping Jack was a widely popular offering from Oil Well Supply Co. of Oil City, Pennsylvania. A central power source could connect and operate several of these dispersed Simplex units by way of steel rod lines (also called jerk-lines).

Roger Riddle, a local resident and field guide for the Oil & Gas Museum in Parkersburg, West Virginia, was raised around central power units and the rhythmic clanking of rod lines. Today, he guides visitors through the nearby woods where remnants of these elaborate systems quietly rust.

“They pumped with just these steel rods, just dangling through the woods,” says Riddle. “You could hear them banging along – it was really something to see those work. The cost of pumping wells was pretty cheap.”

Machinery at an oilfield "jack plant" included an engine -- often a single-cylinder horizontal gas engine powered by natural gas from a nearby well -- that rotated one eccentric wheel (wheel with the axle not in the center) that alternately pushed and pulled steel cables -- known as jack-lines or jerk-lines) attached to pump jacks at oil wells.

Steam power initially drove many of these eccentric power units, but some engines were converted to burn the natural gas or other inflammables often found with oil.

Examples of supports for jack-lines from the 1925 "Surface Machinery and Methods for Oil-Well Pumping" by H.C. George.

Single-cylinder steam engines converted to gasoline power were called “half-breeds” and remained beloved among collectors of oilfield antiques. The conversions usually replaced the steam cylinder with a jacketed cylinder and piston assembly, keeping the original frame and flywheel. The new engine was half steam and half internal combustion, hence the name.

Early internal combustion engines produced only a few horsepower and could not replace steam engines in most applications, but by 1890 they were powerful enough for most portable or remote operations. Electrification arrived and the heyday of central power units passed, but not entirely.

Today, a few miles from Flat Rock, two of Illinois’ once abundant central power units still operate in Crawford County. Ninety-five-year-old Herman Tohill still remembers when Ohio Oil Company installed the units and rod lines on his grandfather’s land. Two sturdy 35 horsepower Superior gasoline engines provide the power.

As efficient as central these power units were, time and technology changed the oilfield again.

Walter Trout’s Revolutionary Prototype

Sketched by Walter Trout in 1925, a prototype of his counterbalanced pump jack was in an oilfield before the end of the year.

A new icon of oilfield success appeared and was soon known by many names: Donkey, Grasshopper, Horse-head, Thirsty Bird, and Pump Jack, among others. As East Texas timber supplies dwindled and the sawmill business declined, the long-established Lufkin Foundry & Machine Company discovered new opportunities in the oilfield. As more oilfield discoveries were made, the company — in Lufkin, Texas — not only survived, but prospered.

Walter Trout was working in Texas for Lufkin Foundry & Machine in 1925 when he sketched out his idea for the now familiar counterbalanced oilfield pump jack. Before the end of the year, the prototype was installed and working near Hull, Texas, in a Humble Oil Company oilfield.

“The well was perfectly balanced, but even with this result, it was such a funny looking, odd thing that it was subject to ridicule and criticism, and it took a long time, nearly a year, before we could convince many the idea was a good one,” Trout explained.

Key to pumping the oil (and often set to run on a timer), an engine turns gears that move a counter weight connected to the walking beam, which moves the sucker rod up and down to draw oil from the well. The oil is pumped into nearby holding tanks.

Modern stripper wells still look much like Walter Trout’s original, but they enjoy the reliability and efficiency that 85 more years of evolving technology have produced. Lufkin Industries produces a variety of oilfield pumping units designed to meet worldwide needs. More than 200,000 units have been sold.

Advancements in Efficiency

As with nearly every segment of the petroleum industry, artificial lift systems — including the venerable pump jack — are also benefiting from inclusion of “smart” technology, notes a representative from another leading oilfield supply company.

“The computer-based technology is used to monitor and analyze pump systems in realtime from miles away, quickly and with minimal human interference,” says Paul Nelson of Weatherford International Ltd., Houston. “On pump jacks that means constant monitoring of well production and the lift unit in order to optimize energy usage while maximizing the amount of oil recovered from reluctant zones.”

Smart well technology is of particular importance to the United States, where a very large portion oil is produced from thousands of stripper wells producing less than 10 barrels a day, Nelson adds. Many of these wells have reached such a depleted pressure state that once they are shut in they can never be economically restarted. The majority of them are being kept alive by pump jacks.

“By improving pump efficiencies without adding significantly to operating costs, smart well technology stands to extend by years the economic life of many of these wells and, by extension, add millions of barrels of oil to U.S. reserves,” he concludes.

Editor’s Note – In 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled an oilfield on the California coast, resulting in mass panic but little damage. The only casualty was a Lufkin pumping unit.

——————————————

The Hughes 1909 roller bit.

Also see “Making Hole — Drilling Technology.”

For more articles about the evolution of modern petroleum production technologies, read “Shooters – A ‘Fracking’ History” and “Downhole Bazooka.”

Another innovative advance came in 1933 with the use of slant drilling to solve a major oilfield crisis – see “Technology and the “Conroe Crater.”

February 8, 1836 – Natural Gas lights Philadelphia

Philadelphia Gas Works lamp.

Forty-six natural gas lights along Philadelphia’s Second Street are lit for the first time by employees of the newly formed Gas Works — the first municipally owned natural gas distribution company.

Today there are more than 900 public natural gas systems; the Philadelphia Gas Works is the largest. There are more than 70 million residential, commercial and industrial natural gas customers in the United States. America’s first commercial gas lighting company, the Gas Light Company of Baltimore, Maryland (now Baltimore Gas and Electric Company), incorporated in 1817. It distributed gas manufactured from tar and later coal.

Learn more about the early natural gas industry in “Indiana Natural Gas Boom.”

February 10, 1910 – California’s Buena Vista Oilfield

Buena Vista oilfield will become Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2.

The Buena Vista field is discovered in Kern County, California, by Honolulu Oil Corporation. The well is originally known as “Honolulu’s great gasser” until drilled deeper into oil-producing sands.

Oil production averages between 3,000 barrels and 4,000 barrels per day. As the U.S. Navy converts its vessels from coal to oil, the Buena Vista field will become Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2 in 1912. Steam injection operations help produce much of the “heavy” (high viscosity) oil in California, the nation’s third largest producing state.

According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, 2008 production from federal lands in California totaled more than 20.8 million barrels of oil and 5.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas, yielding more than $169 million in oil and $5.35 million in gas royalties to the federal Treasury.

Learn more petroleum history by visiting the West Kern Oil Museum and the “Black Gold: The Oil Experience” exhibit at the Kern County Museum in Taft. Also see “Petroleum & Sea Power.”

February 10, 1917  – Geologists organize an Association of Professionals

Demand for oil is worldwide — but the science for finding it obscure — when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) organizes as the Southwestern Association of Petroleum Geologists in Tulsa, Oklahoma. About 90 geologists meet at Henry Kendall College, now Tulsa University, and form an association “to which only reputable and recognized petroleum geologists are admitted.”

AAPG embraces a code that assures "the integrity, business ethics, personal honor, and professional conduct" of its worldwide membership.

The new association’s mission is “to promote the science of geology, especially as it relates to petroleum and natural gas; to promote the technology of petroleum and natural gas and to encourage improvements in the methods of exploring for and exploiting these substances; to foster the spirit of scientific research among its members; to disseminate facts relating to the geology and technology of petroleum and natural gas.”

The association adopts its present name a year later and soon begins publishing a bimonthly journal. AAPG’s peer-reviewed Bulletin includes papers written by leading geologists of the day. With a subscription price of five dollars, the journal is distributed to members, university libraries, and other industry professionals.

AAPG was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at Henry Kendall College -- today's Tulsa University.

By 1920, one petroleum trade magazine notes that the “Association Grows in Membership and Influence; Combats the Fakers.” An article praises AAPG professionalism and warns of “the large number of unscrupulous and inadequately prepared men who are attempting to do geological work.”

Similarly, the Oil Trade Journal praises AAPG for its efforts “to censor the great mass of inadequately prepared and sometimes unscrupulous reports on geological problems, which are wholly misleading to the industry.”

Perhaps the best known such fabrication is related to the men behind the 1930 East Texas oilfield discovery — a report entitled  ”Geological, Topographical And Petroliferous Survey, Portion of Rusk County, Texas, Made for C.M. Joiner by A.D. Lloyd, Geologist And Petroleum Engineer.” Using very scientific terminology, A. D. Lloyd’s document describes Rusk County geology — its anticlines, faults, and a salt dome — all features associated with substantial oil deposits…and all completely fictitious. The fabrications nevertheless attract investors, allowing Joiner and Lloyd to drill a well that will uncover a massive oilfield.

AAPG's peer-reviewed journal will bring an end to "unscrupulous and inadequately prepared men who are attempting to do geological work."

Equally imaginary is “Doc” Lloyd’s earlier descriptions of the “Yegua and Cook Mountain formations” and the thousands of seismographic registrations he ostensibly recorded. Lloyd, a former patent medicine salesman, and other self-proclaimed geologists will risk public exposure since such geological flim-flam is the antithesis of AAPG’s professional ethic.

By 1953 the AAPG membership has grown to more than 10,000 and a permanent headquarters building opens Tulsa. Today, the association is the world’s largest professional geological society with more than 31,000 members in 116 countries. It still embraces a code that assures “the integrity, business ethics, personal honor, and professional conduct” of its membership.

Learn more about “Doc” Lloyd in “H.L. Hunt and the East Texas Oilfield.”

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Join the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. AOGHS is a 501(c)-3 nonprofit program dedicated to preserving the history of U.S. petroleum exploration by providing advocacy for museums and other organizations that work to preserve that history.

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January 30, 1916 – Standard Oil promotes Petroleum Product “Nujol”

Standard Oil Company of New Jersey takes out a full-page advertisement in the New York Sun extolling the virtues of “Nujol,” one of the company’s many petroleum-based products.

A 1916 Standard Oil advertisement joins much earlier patent medicine promoters of petroleum's medicinal value.

Nujol offers “Internal Lubrication As A Means To Health,” the ad proclaims. One historian will later note that “physicians disagree with the sales department of Standard Oil on this point.”

Standard promises to send a pint of Nujol anywhere in the United States for 75 cents in stamps or coin.

Since primitive people first found medicinal solutions in natural oil seeps, petroleum has been used with greater or lesser success to heal a variety of ailments. By  the 19th century, patent medicines and their “miraculous” curative claims have become part of American culture. In the 1840s, one such cure-all was American Medicinal Oil. It came from naturally occurring petroleum seeps in Kentucky.

Nancy Kier of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will treat her consumption (tuberculosis) with oil. Her enterprising husband Samuel then begins packaging eight-ounce bottles and selling them for 50 cents through traveling salesmen and pharmacies.

He proclaims: ”KIER’S GENUINE PETROLEUM! OR ROCK OIL! A NATURAL REMEDY, Procured from a Well 400 feet deep, and possessing wonderful Curative Powers in diseases…”

A label from Samuel Kier's patent medicine shows cable-tool rigs used for drilling brine wells -- and soon for oil wells to launch the U.S. petroleum industry.

Kier’s patent medicine advertisement featuring brine-well wooden derricks is remembered for inspiring industrialist George Bissell to wonder if the same apparatus could be adapted to extract quantities of rock oil — from which highly prized kerosene could be distilled.

Bissell’s insight will ultimately lead to formation of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company — and birth of the American petroleum industry on August 27, 1859.

New products like “petroleum jelly” patented in 1872 as “Vaseline” — will prove superior in preventing infections for common abrasions. Its inventor, Robert Chesebrough, consumed a spoonful of Vaseline every day and lived to be 96 years old. Read “A Crude Story: Mabel’s Eyelashes.”

January 31, 1888 – Famous Oil Scout and Publisher dies

Oil scouts like Justus McMullen debunked rumors and “demystified” reports about oil wells producing in early oilfields.

Famed 37-year-old oil scout Justus C. McMullen succumbs to pneumonia contracted while scouting an oil well’s production.

During an era when information and misinformation from oil speculators pushed oil exchange prices erratically, oilfield detectives like McMullen debunked rumors, “demystified” reports about oil wells and secured accurate information on production — or lack thereof – sometimes despite armed guards at drilling sites.

McMullen, who also published Bradford, Pennsylvania’s “Petroleum Age” newspaper, caught pneumonia while investigating the Pittsburgh Manufacturers Gas Company’s well near Cannonsburg.  Even with such hard-earned information as McMullen’s, speculation in oil certificates destabilizes early oil markets — creating a burden for both oil producers and refiners. Standard Oil Company will put an end to the era on January 23, 1895, when it directs subordinate National Transit Company in Oil City to cease issuing oil certificates.

Standard will set oil prices based on its view of supply and demand – ending the wildly fluctuating speculation at oil exchanges. Read “Oil Scouts — Oil Patch Detectives.”

February 1, 1868 – Oil Prices Weighed

The Titusville Oil Exchange building.

For the first time, oil price quotations are based on specific gravity  – the heaviness of a substance compared to that of water – in Titusville, Pennsylvania. In the new oil regions, independent producers frequently meet to discuss business, sell shares of stock, argue prices, and enter into refining contracts.

Before the Titusville Oil Exchange is established in 1871, producers would gather in convenient establishments, such as Titusville’s American Hotel or along Centre Street in Oil City — known as the “Curbside Exchange.” A permanent three-story brick building is built in Titusville in 1881.

February 3, 1868 – Oil Producers seek End of Civil War Tax

Oil Creek refiners meet in Petroleum Center, Pennsylvania, where they pass a resolution demanding that the Civil War’s one dollar a barrel “war tax” on refined petroleum products be repealed.

Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase will create federal paper money known as "greenbacks" during the Civil War -- and charge petroleum producers a "war tax."

As early as 1862, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase advocated a $10.50 per barrel tax on refined petroleum products,  the equivalent in 2010 dollars of $145. Chase, responsible for the introduction of federal paper money — printed on green paper  – during the Civil War, will not succeed, despite the need for revenue. Instead, a one-dollar excise tax is imposed in 1864.

In 1868, with the war over and Pennsylvania’s oil region production greatly in excess of demand, the price refiners get for kerosene falls to new lows. The Civil War tax further reduces profits. Oil Creek refiners will achieve their goal within six months after the Petroleum Center meeting when Congress passes a bill exempting petroleum and its products from taxation.

Today, the federal excise tax on a 42-gallon barrel “refined petroleum product” – is about $8. Chase is pictured on the $10,000 bill.

February 2, 1923 – First Anti-Knock Gas goes on Sale

"Ethyl" gasoline goes for the first time at this Dayton, Ohio, gas station.

Discovered just two years earlier by General Motors scientists, “Ethyl,” the world’s first anti-knock gasoline containing a tetra-ethyl lead compound, goes on sale at the Refiners Oil Company service station on South Main Street in Dayton, Ohio.

In early internal combustion engines, “knocking” was the name applied to the out-of-sequence detonation of the gasoline-air mixture in a cylinder. This shock was called a ping or a knock and caused damage to the engine.

In the 1950s, geochemist Clair Patterson will discover the toxicity of tetra-ethyl lead. Phase out of its use in gasoline begins in 1976. EPA Administrator Carol Browner in 1996 declares, “The elimination of lead from gas is one of the great environmental achievements of all time.”
See the related article, “Cantankerous Combustion — First U.S. Auto Show.”

February 5, 1873 – Moonlighter shoots Last Well

Nitroglycerine could prove fatal to illegal oil well shooters..."moonlighters."

Andrew J. Dalrymple is killed with his wife in a nitroglycerin explosion at his home on Dennis Run, Pennsylvania. He is alleged to have been “moonlighting” — an illegal oil well shooter — in the Tidioute oilfield.

“The Dalrymple torpedo accident at Tidioute brings to light the fact that nitroglycerine, or other dangerous explosives, are used, stored and manipulated secretly in places little suspected by the general public,” reports the Titusville Morning Herald.

“A large amount of this dangerous material has lately been stolen from the various magazines throughout the country, ” the newspaper adds. “This species of theft is winked at by some parties, who are opposed to the Roberts torpedo patent.”

The modern term moonlighting comes from this practice of surreptitious avoidance of licensing fees imposed on the use of Civil War veteran Col. E.A.L. Roberts’ patented fracking technique to increase production. Read the “Shooters — A Fracking History.”

For more than 100 years, nitroglycerin detonations increased a well’s production from petroleum bearing formations. Modern hydraulic fracturing technology can trace its roots to April 25, 1865, when Civil War veteran Col. Edward A. L. Roberts received the first of his many patents for an “exploding torpedo.”

More effective -- and far safer -- than nitroglycerin, hydraulic fracturing has been used since 1949. Today, about 30 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas reserves are accessible through "fracking."

In May 1990, Pennsylvania’s Otto Cupler Torpedo Company “shot” its last oil well using liquid nitroglycerin – abandoning nitro but continuing to pursue a fundamental oilfield technology.

Although President Rick Tallini remains in the business of improving oil wells’ production, today’s fracturing systems are much advanced from Lt. Col. Edward A. L. Roberts’ original 1865-1866 patents.

In February 1865, Col. Roberts formed the Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company. His many patents will give him a monopoly on all types of torpedo used in the oil industry. The company stock certificate, which includes early oilfield vignettes, today is worth almost $300 to collectors.

“Our business since Colonel Roberts’ day has concerned lowering high explosives charges into oil wells in the Appalachian area to blast fractures into the oil bearing sand,” says Tallini.

Tallini’s company is based in Titusville — where the American petroleum industry began on August 27, 1859.

Today, about 30 percent of U.S. recoverable oil and natural gas reserves are accessible through hydraulic “fracking” — about seven billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Civil War Veteran invents an Oil Well “Exploding Torpedo”

Civil War veteran Col. Edward Roberts had fought with a New Jersey Regiment at the 1862 battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Amidst the chaos of the battle, he had seen the results of explosive Confederate artillery rounds plunging into the narrow millrace (canal) that obstructed the battlefield.

The Virginia battlefield observation gave him an idea that would evolve into what he described as “superincumbent fluid tamping.” His revolutionary invention will greatly increase the oil and natural gas production of America’s early petroleum industry.

Torpedoes filled with gunpowder (later nitroglycerin) were lowered into wells and ignited by a weight dropped along a suspension wire onto a percussion cap.

Roberts was awarded U.S. Patent (No. 59,936) in November 1866 for what would become known as the Roberts Torpedo. The new technology would revolutionize the young oil and natural gas industry by vastly increasing production from individual wells.

The Titusville Morning Herald newspaper reported:

Our attention has been called to a series of experiments that have been made in the wells of various localities by Col. Roberts, with his newly patented torpedo. The results have in many cases been astonishing.

The torpedo, which is an iron case, containing an amount of powder varying from fifteen to twenty pounds, is lowered into the well, down to the spot, as near as can be ascertained, where it is necessary to explode it.

It is then exploded by means of a cap on the torpedo, connected with the top of the shell by a wire.

Filling the borehole with water provided Roberts his “fluid tamping” to concentrate concussion and more efficiently fracture surrounding oil strata. The technique had an immediate impact — production from some wells increased 1,200 percent within a week of being shot – and the Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company flourished. Roberts charged $100 to $200 per torpedo and a royalty of one-fifteenth of the increased flow of oil.

Attempting to avoid Roberts’ fees, some oilmen hired unlicensed practitioners who operated by “moonlight” with their own devices. The inventor was outraged.

Roberts hired Pinkerton detectives and lawyers to protect his patent — and is said to have been responsible for more civil litigation in defense of a patent than anyone in U. S. history. He spent more than $250,000 to stop the unlawful “torpedoists” or “moonlighters.”

On February 5, 1873, one "moonlighter" shot his last well. Andrew J. Dalrymple died in a nitroglycerin explosion near Dennis Run, Pennsylvania. He is alleged to have been "moonlighting" -- conducting an illegal well "shot."

The term moonlighting comes from the practice of surreptitious avoidance of Roberts’ licensing fees when using his patented fracturing technique to increase production.

Applied legally or illegally, by 1868 nitroglycerin was preferred to black powder, despite its frequently fatal tendency to detonate accidentally.

“A flame or a spark would not explode Nitro-Glycerin readily, but the chap who struck it a hard rap might as well avoid trouble among his heirs by having had his will written and a cigar-box ordered to hold such fragments as his weeping relatives could pick from the surrounding district,” noted John J. McLauren in 1896 in his book Sketches in Crude Oil — Some Accidents and Incidents of the Petroleum Development in all parts of the Globe.

The Otto Cupler Torpedo Company

Roberts died a wealthy man on March 25, 1881, in Titusville. His heirs sold Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company to its employees, who continued in business as the Independent Explosives Company.

Rick Tallini relates that the Otto Cupler Torpedo Company split off and produced its own nitroglycerin in plants near Titusville until the last plant exploded in 1978. Tallini’s company continued using liquid nitroglycerin until 1989 – when the last of the nitroglycerine supplier’s plant exploded in Moosic, Pennsylvania.

The well shooting on May 5, 1990, used up the last of Otto Cupler Company’s liquid nitro reserves.

Today, Tallini and Otto Cupler Torpedo Company continue shooting wells, but with modern explosives and rigorous safety procedures. With the advent of hydraulic and other fracking technology, shaped-charge jet perforation has become common, in which a cone-shaped charge penetrates the wells casing and cement at high velocity. Hydraulic or gas fracturing of oil-bearing formations follows.

Tallini’s historic company maintains a museum on Dottyville Road in East Titusville — preserving for future generations remarkable artifacts and documents from more than 100 years of nitroglycerin in the oilfields. The Logwell.com website also offers Tallini’s collection of historical stories that chronicle shooting wells from the Roberts day down to the present.

Editor’s Note — On April 18, 1939, Ira J. McCullough of Los Angeles received two patents for his multiple bullet-shot casing perforator “to provide a device for perforating casing after it has been installed in a well in which projectiles or perforating elements are shot through the casing and into the formation.” McCullough’s revolutionary innovation of firing at several levels through a borehole’s  protective casing greatly enhanced the flow of oil. Read more in “Downhole Bazzoka.”

The Science of Hydraulic Fracturing Technology

First Commercial Application of Hydraulic Fracturing

The first commercial "Frack" takes place in 1949 about 12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma. By 1988, the technology will have been applied nearly one million times.

On March 17, 1949, a team of petroleum production experts converges on an oil well about 12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma – to perform the first commercial application of hydraulic fracturing.

Later that same day, Halliburton and Stanolind company personnel successfully fractured another well near Holliday, Texas. Another experimental well fractured two years earlier in Hugoton, Kansas – home of a massive natural gas field – had proven the possibility of increased productivity.

By 1988, the technology will have been applied nearly one million times. The technique had been developed and patented by Stanolind (later known as Pan American Oil Company) and an exclusive license issued to Halliburton to perform the process. In 1953, the license was extended to all qualified service companies.

To complete a new well, explosive charges are lowered by a wire line to perforate the steel casing, cement and producing formation. After the charges are electronically fired, hydraulic fracturing greatly enhances oil and natural gas production.

An Erle Halliburton statue was dedicated in 1993 in Duncan, Oklahoma.

According to Pinnacle, a Halliburton service company, “Since that fateful day in 1949, hydraulic fracturing has done more to increase recoverable reserves than any other technique, and Halliburton has led the industry in developing and applying fracturing technology. In the more than 60 years following those first treatments, more than two million frac(turing) treatments have been pumped with no documented case of any treatment polluting an aquifer — not one.”

Energy in Depth – Petroleum Industry defends Fracturing

“There is no shortage of questions about domestic energy production—what technologies are used? What does it mean for our environment? How does it create jobs? What is hydraulic fracturing, anyway?”

The petroleum industry has established outreach websites to educate the public about fracturing technologies. One is Energy in Depth, which includes links to the latest research studies and fact sheets. While the first commercial fracturing job was conducted in the 1940s, “the technique quickly became the most commonly used method of stimulating” wells worldwide.

“Today, hydraulic fracturing is applied to the majority of U.S. oil and natural gas wells to enhance well performance, minimize drilling, and recover otherwise inaccessible resources. In fact, roughly 90 percent of the wells in operation have been fractured — and the process continues to be applied in innovative ways to boost production of American energy in unconventional formations, such as “tight” gas sands, shale deposits and coal-beds.”

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Col. Edward Roberts and the Battle of Fredericksburg

 

“We went into action under a most galling and deadly fire of shot and shell," reported Col. Edward Roberts. An 1888 lithograph depicts the Army of the Potomac crossing the Rappahannock at the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862.

The oilfield’s  torpedo inventor Col. Edward A. L. Roberts is buried in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

A simple headstone at Woodlawn Cemetery is marked only by his name and the military rank he held at the Battle of Fredericksburg 19 years earlier.

For four months during the Civil War, the man who would someday revolutionize oil and natural gas production technology served as Lt. Colonel with the 28th New Jersey Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

Below are little-known details from service records at the National Archives, Washington, D.C.

Lt. Col. Roberts fought in the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862 – while awaiting results from his court martial, which had convened just weeks earlier. As the military court deliberated specifications of “intoxication on dress parade,” Roberts’ regiment marched into Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Col. Edward A. L. Roberts is buried in Titusville, Pennsylvania -- where the U.S. petroleum industry began in 1859.

On December 13, the 28th New Jersey was the center of Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s first doomed assault on the fiercely defended Marye’s Heights. Fourteen more doomed assaults would follow. The 28th charged into Gen. Robert E. Lee’s carefully positioned cannons. Confederate artillerist Col. Edward Porter Alexander had declared to Lee: “A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it.”

Alexander was right. No Union soldiers would reach Marye’s Heights that cold December day. Crossing a canal and open ground, brigade after brigade could not dislodge the Confederates from their defenses behind a sunken road and stone wall. Union casualties exceeded 12,000. When his commander was shot in the face during the 28th’s charge, Roberts assumed command.

In his after action report, Roberts wrote, “We went into action under a most galling and deadly fire of shot and shell, and continued in action until near dark. Officers and men conducted themselves well.”

A month later, Roberts’ court martial verdict was published under General Order No. 2.

Despite his actions during the battle, he was found guilty and ordered to be cashiered, effective January 12, 1863. Prior to the court’s verdict, Roberts had attempted to resign but this was strangely characterized as “tendering resignation in face of enemy.”

Roberts’ service as a Union officer was over in 1883. He would soon make history in oilfields.

January 23, 1895 – Standard Oil seals Fate of Oil Exchanges

The Oil City, Pennsylvania, Oil Exchange incorporated in 1874 and moved into this building four years later. In 1877, it was the third largest financial exchange of any kind in America, behind New York and San Francisco.

The Standard Oil Company purchasing agency in Oil City, Pennsylvania, notifies independent producers it will only buy their oil at a price “as high as the markets of the world will justify” — and not necessarily “the price bid on the oil exchange for certificate oil.”

Standard Oil’s action will bring an end to a popular “paper oil” market of brokers and buyers.

Before the 1870s, oil buyers took on-site delivery in wooden barrels they provided. Soon a rapidly growing pipeline infrastructure spawned “oil certificates” or “pipeline certificates” — negotiable instruments based on the number of barrels in a pipeline issued for delivery in kind. Since these certificates could be bought and sold, trading flourished in oil exchanges at Titusville, Petroleum Center, and Oil City.

Prior to the Titusville Oil Exchange (above), established in 1871, producers gathered in any convenient place, such as a Titusville hotel or along Centre Street in nearby Oil City -- known as the "Curbside Exchange."

“The necessity of a suitable place in which to trade oil certificates was one that followed the improved method of transportation, and was in fact apparent from the early stages of oil commerce,” explains an Oil City 1896 Derrick Souvenir Book.

As many as 40 million barrels of oil are represented by certificates. But with Standard Oil buying 90 percent of production and setting its own price independent of oil certificates, the company’s edict will end oil exchanges. Marginalized by Standard Oil pricing strategy, they close one by one. The petroleum industry’s oldest exchange, established in 1871 in Titusville, is dissolved in 1897.

“During the later years the excitement of speculation has been greatly eliminated from the oil business, and this has so reduced the business as to make it a shadow of its former greatness,” the 1896 Derrick concludes about the Oil City exchange. “Its members are scattered far and wide, but the glory of the days when fortunes were made and lost in hours and minutes, will ever be a memory with them and thousands of others.”

Learn more about the role of pipelines, oil exchanges and certificate speculators in “Oil Scouts — Oil Patch Detectives.”

January 24, 1895 – Pure Oil Company founded by Independent Producers

Pure Oil Company begins in 1895 when Pennsylvania oilmen unite to fight Standard Oil. In 1926 -- six years after the Ohio Cities Gas Company has changed its name to Pure Oil -- it moves into new headquarters in this Chicago skyscraper. Today the majestic building remains at 35 East Wacker Drive.

The Pure Oil Company is formed by Pennsylvania oil region independent producers, refiners and pipeline operators.

With its headquarters in Pittsburgh, the company is organized to counter Standard Oil Company’s dominance. It is the second vertically integrated oil company — after Standard — in the region, according to historian Neil McElwee.

Beginning in March 1896, Pure Oil markets illuminating oil by tank wagon on the streets of Philadelphia and New York in direct competition with Standard Oil. “The organizers of the firm were politically savvy and connected. They used a committee of the Congress, the Industrial Commission, to advance their competitive position,” McElwee explains in an article for Oil150.

In 1914 in Columbus, Ohio, oilmen Fletcher Heath and Beman Dawes start the Ohio Cities Gas Company. Dawes believes Pure Oil’s pipelines and producing properties compliment his company’s growing oil production. His company acquires Pure Oil. “The Pennsylvania Pure Oil firm in 1917 passed into history,” McElwee notes.

“Aware of a pressing need to establish a brand and corporate identity more competitive in the marketplace, Dawes renamed Ohio Cities Gas in 1920,” McElwee concludes. The Ohio firm adopts the old Pennsylvania name, Pure Oil. Union Oil Company of California purchases Pure Oil in 1965. Chevron Corporation purchases Union Oil in 2005.

January 26, 1931 – Third Well reveals Giant East Texas Oilfield

The East Texas oilfield has produced more than five billion barrels of oil. It remains the largest and most prolific oil reservoir ever discovered in the contiguous United States.

In Gregg County, Texas, John Farrell, W. A. Moncrief, and Eddie Showers bring in the Lathrop No. 1 with a flow of 320 barrels of oil per hour from a depth of 3,587 feet.

The Lathrop No. 1 well is located 25 miles north of Rusk County’s Daisy Bradford No. 3 and 15-miles north of the Lou Della Crim No. 1.  At first, the great distance between these discoveries convinces geologists, petroleum engineers – and all of the major oil companies – that the wildcat wells are separate oilfields.

However, to the delight of many small, struggling  farmers, it will become apparent the wells are part of  a massive oil-producing field. Further development reveals the 130,000-acre East Texas oilfield stretching 42 miles long and four to eight miles wide.

At the end of 1933 there are 11,875 producing wells owned by 1,715 different operators, all drawing on the Woodbine Sand Formation. Over production drives the price of oil from $1.25 per barrel to as low as 25¢ per barrel. The region’s unique history is exhibited at the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

This remains the largest and most prolific oil reservoir ever discovered in the contiguous United States. Learn more at “H.L. Hunt and the East Texas Oilfield.”

January 29, 1850 – Canadian brings New Resources to Light

Abraham Gessner also will invent -- and name -- Kerosene.

Canadian Abraham Gessner is issued a patent for “obtaining of illuminating gas from compact and fluid bitumen (crude oil), asphaltum, chapapote, or mineral pitch as found in mines, quarries and springs in the earth.”

Gessner licenses his “coal gas” distillation apparatus to manufacturers for about $1 per burner, declaring his gas “affords the cleanest, safest, and most agreeable light ever used.”

The manufactured gas industry will survive into the mid-20th century. Gessner’s research will lead him four years later to “a new and useful manufacture or composition of matter, being a new liquid hydrocarbon, which I denominate Kerosene.”

January 29,  1886 – Birth of Internal Combustion Automobile

German mechanical engineer Karl Benz applies for a patent for his Benz Patent Motorwagen — a three-wheeler with a one-cylinder, four-stroke gasoline engine. His “Fahrzeug mit Gasmotorenbetrieb” (vehicle with gas engine) patent is recognized as the world’s first patent for a practical internal combustion engine powered automobile.

January 29, 1969 – Santa Barbara Spill leads to Modern Environmental Movement

After drilling 3,500 below the ocean floor, a Union Oil Company drilling platform six miles off Santa Barbara, California, suffers a blowout — spilling between 80,000 barrels and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific Ocean and onto surrounding beaches.

Earth Day is born in the spring following the January 1969 offshore spill at Santa Barbara, California, according to the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Many consider the publicity surrounding the oil spill a major impetus to the environmental movement."

“Riggers began to retrieve the pipe in order to replace a drill bit when the ‘mud’ used to maintain pressure became dangerously low,” explains a report by the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

“A natural gas blowout occurred. An initial attempt to cap the hole was successful but led to a tremendous buildup of pressure. The expanding mass created five breaks in an east-west fault on the ocean floor, releasing oil and gas from deep beneath the earth.”

It takes skilled oilfield workers 12 days to control the well by pumping chemical mud down the bore hole at a rate of 1,500 barrels an hour.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be established in 1970.

“In the spring following the oil spill, Earth Day was born nationwide,” the UCSB report explains. “Many consider the publicity surrounding the oil spill a major impetus to the environmental movement.”

Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is established the following year — joining several other federal agencies regulating the industry — public opinion turns against offshore exploration.

“Images of spilled oil bubbling to the ocean’s surface and covering birds and other wildlife have firmly cemented in much of the public mind that offshore drilling is dangerous, that it inflicts tremendous environmental harm, and that its costs are not worth its benefits,” notes Drew Thornley in Energy & the Environment: Myths & Facts.

“Thus the means by which the U.S. obtains about 25 percent of the nation’s natural gas production and about 24 percent of its oil production have become, understandably, linked to environmental degradation,” he adds. But according to the National Research Council, natural processes are responsible for more than 60 percent of the petroleum that enters North American ocean waters — and more than 45 percent of the petroleum that enters ocean waters worldwide.

Researchers have found that natural offshore seeps near Goleta, California, alone have leaked up to 25 tons of oil each day — for the last several hundred thousand years.

A 2009 study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of California, Santa Barbara, was "the first to quantify the amount of oil residue in seafloor sediments that result from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara, California." This graphic depicts what happens to the oil from a natural seep.

“Ironically, research shows that drilling can actually reduce natural seepage, as it relieves the pressure that drives oil and gas up from ocean floors and into ocean waters,” says Thornley.

In 1999, two peer-reviewed studies found that natural seepage in the northern Santa Barbara Channel “was significantly reduced by oil production,” he concludes. Researchers found that seepages declined 50 percent over two decades because, “as oil was pumped from the reservoir, the pressure that drives natural seepage dropped.”

The Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum in Galveston, Texas, offers resources about modern exploration technologies.

A May 2009 study by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and UCSB was the first to quantify the amount of oil residue in seafloor sediments that result from natural petroleum seeps off Santa Barbara. It shows the oil content of sediments is highest closest to the seeps and tails off with distance, creating an oil fallout shadow. The next step for the research team involves investigating why microbes consume most, but not all, of the compounds in the oil.

Exhibits at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum today educate young people about California’s offshore industries, including the diving technologies used in the Santa Barbara Channel. Other exhibits explain the continuing process of oil emerging from natural seeps in the channel — today visited by tourists in boats.

Learn more about exploration and production technologies at the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum.

The East Texas oilfield remains the largest and most prolific oil reservoir ever discovered in the contiguous United States. Here is the story of Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt – and “Dad” Joiner and “Doc” Lloyd – the Great Depression, and one of the U.S. petroleum industry’s greatest discoveries.

"Thousands crowded their way to the site of Daisy Bradford No. 3, hoping to be there when and if oil gushed from the well to wash away the misery of the Great Depression," notes one Kilgore, Texas, historian. Independent oilman Columbus "Dad" Joiner will discover the East Texas oilfield, which remains the largest in the lower-48 states.

With a crowd of more than 4,000 landowners, leaseholders, stockholders, creditors and spectators watching – the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well erupts. It is on October 3, 1930, that a production test is done — resulting in a gusher of oil. Incredible to most geologists, another wildcat well 10 miles to the north – the Lou Della Crim No. 1 – will begin flowing on December 28, 1930. A month later and 15 miles still farther north, the Lathrop No. 1 wildcat well comes in.

At first, the great distance between these discoveries convinced geologists, petroleum engineers – and virtually all of the major oil companies – that the wildcat wells had found separate oilfields. However, and to the delight of many small, struggling  farmers, it will become apparent the wells are part of a massive oil-producing field.

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The story of H.L. Hunt in oil booms of the 1920s and 1930s in Arkansas and East Texas spans much of the petroleum industry's colorful history, notes the Hunt Oil Company website. Photo circa 1911.

In 1905, when Haroldson Lafayette “H.L.” Hunt was just 16 years old, he left his Illinois farm family and headed  west. Along the way, he worked as a dishwasher, mule team driver, logger, farmhand, and even tried out for semi-pro baseball. In his travels, he learned to gamble and played cards in bunkhouses, hobo jungles and saloons.

Stories of H.L. Hunt’s prowess as a poker player — he was known as “Arizona Slim” — abound and continue to this  day. When his father died in 1911, he returned from Saskatchewan, Canada, for his $5,000 inheritance. He bought  40 acres near Lake River, Arkansas, for $1,050 and entered the cotton farming business on land his father had  always described as abundantly fertile.

Despite floods and other setbacks, Hunt prospered. When World War I prompted a boom in cotton prices, he  expanded his holdings and speculated in land, only to lose everything in 1921 when the price of cotton dropped to  $50 a bale.

By now a family man with wife Lyda (Bunker) Hunt and two children, Hunt was just able to borrow $50  from a local bank, and then only after finding three co-signers for the loan.

Arkansas Oil Boom

Eighty miles to the west of Lake River, in El Dorado, Arkansas, the bleak cotton market was ignored by a flood of new arrivals  looking for a way to cash in on the recently discovered El Dorado oilfield.

Surrounded by 20 acres of woodlands, the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources, seven miles north of El Dorado in Smackover, exhibits the state's petroleum -- and brine -- industrial history.

The Busey-Armstrong No. 1 well came in  on January 10, 1921, and quickly catapulted the population of El Dorado from 4,000 to over 25,000.

H.L. Hunt  arrived with his borrowed $50 and joined the other lease traders, speculators, and gamblers at a popular hotel.

“A person literally had to shoulder his way through the lobby from early in the morning until late at night,” notes one  account of El Dorado’s Garret Hotel. “The people, for the most part, were trying to make a fast dollar. It was a  seething mass of humanity. More wells were drilled in its lobby than in the field.”

Hunt’s expertise at the poker table earned him a stake and he eventually purchased a one-half acre parcel lease.  There he drilled his Hunt-Pickering No. 1 well, which after coming in as a producer, was ultimately not profitable.

Hunt persevered and in four years had acquired substantial El Dorado and Smackover oilfield holdings. By 1925, he  was a successful 36-year-old oilman with wife Lyda and three young children living comfortably in a fine three-story El Dorado home.

While Hunt was pursuing oil in Arkansas, an unlikely pair was doing the same in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Wildcatters

Sixty-five-year-old Columbus Marion Joiner was a former lawyer and Tennessee legislator who had spent years  making a living as an oil lease broker in Oklahoma. He had lost a $200,000 fortune in the financial  panic of 1907 — and began pursuing the wealth a successful wildcatter and promoter might find.

Columbus Marion Joiner, above, believed in geologist A.D. Lloyd -- especially after Lloyd located wells in the rich Seminole, Oklahoma, oilfield.

A  friend of Joiner, Joseph Idelbert Durham, had studied medicine and worked as a government chemist in the Idaho  gold rush. Durham had also prospected for gold in the Yukon and Mexico before peddling patent oil medicines in  “Dr. Alonzo Durham’s Great Medicine Show.”

Taking the name “A.D. Lloyd,” Durham proclaimed, “I’m not a professional geologist…but I’ve studied the earth  more, and know more about it, than any professional geologist now alive will ever know.”

Joiner believed in “Doc” Lloyd and his confidence was reinforced when Lloyd accurately located the rich Seminole  oilfield. Joiner drilled to within 200 feet of discovering this previously untapped reserve — but stopped short when his  money ran out. Empire Gas & Fuel Company brought in the field’s discovery well on a nearby lease.

After a similar near miss in Oklahoma’s Cement field and a stretch of bad luck, the broke but optimistic Joiner headed to Dallas, where oilmen and oil money were plentiful. Meanwhile, A.D. Lloyd was off to Mexico, promoting  new oil ventures.

H.L. Hunt, Inc.

Dedicated in 1955, a 40-foot monument in Shreveport, Louisiana, commemorates the state's rich petroleum heritage.

H.L. Hunt’s success in Arkansas enabled him to investigate other investment possibilities, and with El Dorado oilfield production diminishing, he was lured to Florida real estate. He sold his interests to the Louisiana Oil and  Refining Company, retaining a few wells in the El Dorado and Smackover fields.

Hunt ultimately abandoned the Florida real estate market and returned to Arkansas, where he formed H.L. Hunt, Inc., in 1934. He was back in the oil business. It was a fierce no-limit game with quarter neither asked nor given.

Hunt traveled to the Shreveport, Louisiana, Washington-Youree Hotel, where the marble lobby perpetually hosted  crowds of competing oilmen, promoters, and “lease hounds” — all looking for an edge in the high-risk world of  petroleum exploration.

Speculators and promoters often profited where true oilmen and wildcatters could not. Not far to the west of Shreveport, Rusk County in northeast Texas had seen its share of lease trading — despite the widely held conviction that there was no oil to be found there.

Geologists from major oil companies found no petroleum-rich salt domes (as in Beaumont to the south), anticlines, or other indications of oil. Seventeen wildcat wells had been dry holes.

“Dad” and “Doc” in Rusk County, Texas

Columbus Marion Joiner was undeterred. In 1927, he was 66 years old. He had just $45 in his pocket when he left Dallas to pursue opportunities in Rusk County.

To poor farmers scratching out a living on drought-tormented land, Joiner seemed larger than life – a Bible quoting genuine oil entrepreneur from Dallas who neither drank, smoked, nor cursed. Within a few months, the affable but  shrewd Joiner had acquired leases on several thousand acres and resumed his collaboration with A.D. “Doc” Lloyd.

Small investments from hopeful Rusk County, Texas, farmers and merchants will bring historic results -- and make Kilgore, Longview and Tyler boom towns during the Great Depression. Kilgore today celebrates its petroleum heritage by decorating derricks that once dominated its skyline.

Joiner formed a “Syndicate” from 500 of his lease block acres and began selling one-acre interest certificates to  anyone who could scrape together $25. Joiner could be quite charming to the ladies and persuasive to gentlemen.

Small investments from hopeful Rusk County farmers and merchants provided Joiner just enough month-to-month money to get by and sometimes pay on his considerable lease rental debt. Promoting oil certificates in an area  largely dismissed by professionals called for a slick pitch, and Joiner’s self-taught geologist friend, “Doc” Lloyd,  could help.

While Humble Oil Company geologists and geophysicists were reporting that Rusk County offered no possibilities, Joiner was mailing his own report to potential investors: “Geological, Topographical and Petroliferous Survey, Portion of Rusk County, Texas, Made for C.M. Joiner by A.D. Lloyd, Geologist and Petroleum Engineer.”

The East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore is "a tribute to the men and women who dared to dream as they pursued the fruits of free enterprise," according to Joe White, who founded the museum in 1980 -- the 50th anniversary of the oilfield's discovery. His exhibits include a complete, indoor boom town recreation -- and the many of the oil patch technologies of the 1930s.

Using clear and correct scientific terminology, “Doc” Lloyd’s document described Rusk County anticlines, faults, and a salt dome — all geologic features associated with substantial oil deposits and all completely fictitious. Equally imaginary were the “Yegua and Cook Mountain formations” and the thousands of seismographic registrations ostensibly recorded.

The impressive looking but fabricated report was accompanied by a map depicting a “salt dome” and a fault running  squarely through the widow Daisy Bradford’s farm, the exact site of the 500 acre Syndicate lease block that “Dad”  Joiner was promoting.

Dry Hole, Dry Hole..Woodbine sand formation

“Doc” Lloyd’s assessment had the desired effect and the increased sales of certificates enabled Joiner to patch together a rusty, worn-out rig and begin drilling the Daisy Bradford No. 1 in August 1927.

To sustain operations and in pursuit of new investors, Joiner created more Syndicates and sold far more certificates than he could possibly redeem, in one case selling the same certificate to eleven different investors. This didn’t present a problem unless Joiner actually brought in a producing well, but if he did, finding oil was the kind of “problem” wildcatters wished for.

In February 1928, the Daisy Bradford No. 1 well failed at 1,098 feet when the drill pipe became irretrievably stuck. Joiner continued overselling certificates to finance drilling. In March 1929, his Daisy Bradford No. 2 suffered a like fate at 2,518 feet — far deeper than the hodgepodge of old equipment was thought capable.

Haroldson Lafayette “H. L.” Hunt (third from right) is a former dishwasher, mule team driver, logger, farmhand, and semi-pro baseball try-out. C. M. “Dad” Joiner (third from left) shakes the hand of geologist A. D. “Doc” Lloyd at the 1930 discovery well of the East Texas oilfield. Recognizing the significance of the discovery before his competitors, H. L. Hunt will move quickly -- and take significant risk -- by purchasing the discovery well and nearby leases from Joiner.

Daisy Bradford No. 3 was spudded just 375 feet from the failed second attempt at a site determined when broken equipment prevented moving any farther. Before long, Joiner’s “poor boy” operation was down to burning used tires in the old boiler to gain a few pounds of steam pressure and drill a few feet at a time.

In September 1930, Hunt and Joiner met for the first time when Daisy Bradford’s brother invited Hunt to observe a drill stem test at Joiner’s third well (drill stem tests can determine if oil is present in a formation and the rate at which it can be produced). Hunt was always on the lookout for new opportunities and drove to the site with his friend from El Dorado, merchant and clothier P.G. “Pete” Lake.

The test was done on September 3, 1930. When the drill stem test brought a surge of mud, oil, and natural gas, Hunt was impressed. He raised enough money to lease three tracts to the east and one to the south of Joiner’s well as the news spread and the scramble for a piece of the action began. The Woodbine sand formation will make petroleum history.

In legal trouble, Columbus "Dad" Joiner, discoverer of the giant East Texas oilfield, will meet with H.L. Hunt at the Baker Hotel in Dallas -- and sell 5,580 acres for $1.34 million.

In two weeks, more than 2,000 land deals were recorded; two weeks later, Daisy Bradford No. 3 blew in as a gusher in front of about 5,000 spectators who cheered madly, celebrated their newfound fortunes, and congratulated “Dad” Joiner. It wasn’t long however, before the greatly oversold Syndicate certificates created a convoluted legal nightmare of immense proportions for the now famous “Dad” Joiner.

On the 31st of October, a Dallas court put Joiner’s holdings into receivership. Seventy-year-old Columbus Marion Joiner took refuge in a Dallas hotel as swarms of claimants and creditors looked for him.

Following the drill stem test and aware of previous dry holes drilled to the east, H.L. Hunt became convinced that a substantial oilfield lay to the west. His conviction was reinforced when dry holes were drilled both southeast and northeast of Daisy Bradford No. 3, abruptly chilling the lease market.

Meanwhile, just a mile west of Joiner’s find and surrounded by his leases, Deep Rock Oil Company was drilling a test well on the Claude Ashby farm. Hunt believed that if this well came in, it would confirm that Daisy Bradford No. 3 was part of a much larger oilfield. A dry hole would prove the major oil companies’ belief that Joiner’s Woodbine sand reservoir was a fluke.

Hunt assigned three scouts to closely monitor and report to him on progress of the Ashby No. 1 well. Since his own credit was exhausted, he tried to interest Deep Rock and others in deals to buy out Joiner, but Daisy Bradford No. 3 was by then flowing intermittently. It would yield only about 200 barrels or so and then stop altogether for an agonizing 18-20 hours before resuming.

Hunt nonetheless remained convinced that Joiner’s contested leases set atop an oilfield, but just how big an oilfield was well beyond Hunt’s or anybody else’s imagination. He later wrote, “Joiner was a true wildcatter and was much more interested in drilling wildcat wells than developing proven or semi-proven oil acreage. He was becoming weary of all the carrying on which was being made against him.”

H.L. Hunt’s “Business Coup”

By the summer of 1931 about 900,000 barrels of oil per day are being produced from 1,200 wells in Rusk County. H. L. Hunt's purchase of Daisy Bradford No. 3, above, provides the financial base for the founding of Hunt Oil Company.

Hunt borrowed $30,000 from his old El Dorado clothier friend, P.G. Lake, and set about to convince the harried and hiding out “Dad” Joiner to sell. They met in Dallas’ Baker Hotel on November 25-26, 1930, while Hunt’s scouts continued to watch the Deep Rock well’s progress.

At about 8:30 p.m. on November 26, Hunt’s scouts reported that the Deep Rock well had found the oil-rich Woodbine sand, confirming his belief in the oilfield. Four hours later Joiner sold all his holdings (including about 5,000 leased acres) to Hunt for $1,335,000 including all the $30,000 in cash Hunt had borrowed. It was far more money that Joiner had ever seen and provided him a way out of the legal mess of oversold certificates and competing claims.

It was for Hunt, as he later described, his “greatest business coup,” despite the 300 lawsuits that followed. As presiding District Judge R.T. Brown once said, “If you want a successful gathering of long-lost kinfolks, just manage to find oil on the old homestead. They will come out from under logs, down trees, from out of the blue and down every road and byway, but they’ll get there — even some nobody ever suspected were kinfolks.”

The East Texas oilfield has produced more than five billion barrels of oil -- and continues to produce. The 1930 discovery well revealed a field 43 miles long and 12.5 miles wide. It remains the largest and most prolific oil reservoir ever discovered in the contiguous United States.

The Black Giant

In the 10 years of litigation that followed, Hunt sustained every title. Eighteen days after his deal with Joiner, Deep Rock’s Ashby No. 1 came in at 3,000 barrels a day of rich 40.5 gravity crude. On a Sunday two-weeks later, Lou Della Crim No. 1 came in 13 miles to the north, near Kilgore, Texas, flowing at over 22,000 barrels a day.

In January 1931, the similarly rich Lathrop No. 1 well came in about 15 miles farther north, in Gregg County. Remarkably, the Ashby, Lou Della Crim, and Lathrop wells were all part of the same gigantic field, covering over 140,000 acres!

Hunt’s deal had put him in the midst of the unprecedented “Black Giant” known as the East Texas oilfield. To date, this remarkable oilfield has yielded over five billion barrels and is still producing. More than 30,340 wells have been drilled in the field since that historic day in 1930.

In 1972, James A. Clark and Michel T. Halbouty published a extensively researched book, The Last Boom. “The fortune Hunt built in East Texas served as the foundation for one much larger, for he could no more stop hunting for oil than could Joiner — and he seemed to find it as often as not,” noted the authors.

Since those early days in East Texas, Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company has prospered.

January 17, 1911 – North Texas Discovery will lead to Oil Boom

Named after a local rancher's daughter, Electra annually celebrates its petroleum heritage. In 2001, Texas legislators designated it the "Pump Jack Capital" of Texas.

The Electra oilfield is revealed in Texas with the first commercial oil discovery in Wichita County. The Producers Oil Company well Waggoner No. 5 comes in at 50 barrels per day from a depth of 1,825 feet on land owned by rancher William T. Waggoner.

Oil previously had been found by Waggoner, who often drilled for water to supply his horse and cattle operations. “At first, there weren’t any cars, and about the only thing oil was good for was to help repel chicken house mites,” notes one historian. The discovery well, although a small producer, will bring new drilling to the county — led by Producers Oil, Clayco, and Magnolia Petroleum Company.

A true oil boom will begin when the Clayco No. 1 well erupts as a gusher on April 1. By September the Electra oilfield is producing 6,000 barrels of oil each day. The Texas Company (later Texaco) builds a pipeline to its Dallas refinery. At the end of 1911, the “Electra Arch” is producing almost 900,000 barrels of oil a year.

The 1911 Electra discovery is soon followed by major strikes in Burkburnett. North Texas petroleum will bring prosperity to Wichita Falls.

“Detailed geological and geophysical prospecting using the vast amount of information collected through the years, supplemented with new exploration technology, will lead to the discovery and economical production of oil reserves that have been overlooked,” exclaims the Waggoner Ranch website. The Electra Arch area is productive from just below the surface (the Permian age) down to about 5,500 feet (Ordovician).

The Wichita County town — named after Waggoner’s daughter — annually celebrates its oil and natural gas heritage. In 2001, Texas legislators designated Electra as the “Pump Jack Capital” of Texas.

Learn more North Texas petroleum history in the historical society’s article, the “Felty Outdoor Oil Museum,” about a multigenerational oil family in Burkburnett. Wichita Falls is headquarters of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.

January 19, 1922 – Geological Survey predicts End of Oil

The U.S. Geological Survey predicts America’s oil supply will run out in 20 years. Warnings of oil shortages have been made for most of the 20th century, according to geologist and geophysicist David Deming of the University of Oklahoma.

In a January 2000 paper, “Oil: Are We Running Out?,” Deming cites a 1950 monograph, “A Case History of Oil-Shortage Scare” that includes six claims prior to 1950: “The Model T Scare — 1916; the Gasless Sunday Scare — 1918; the John Bull Scare — 1920-23; the Ickes Petroleum Reserves Scare — 1943-44; the Cold War Scare — 1946-47; and the Cold Winter Scare — 1947-48.”

January 19, 1965 – Swimming Socket Wrenches

Howard L. Shatto Jr. patents an “underwater manipulator with suction support device” — precursor to today’s modern remotely operated underwater vehicles.

Howard Shatto patents an "underwater manipulator with suction support device" in 1965. He will help make Shell Oil an early leader in offshore oilfield development thanks to new technologies, including remotely operated underwater vehicles.

Howard L. Shatto Jr.

Shatto and others help make Shell Oil Company an early leader in offshore oilfield development thanks to new technologies. Their early underwater robot technology can trace its roots to the late 1950s, when Hughes Aircraft Company developed a Manipulator Operated Robot – MOBOT – for the Atomic Energy Commission. Working on land, the robot performed tasks in environments too radioactive for humans.

Beginning in 1960, Shell began transforming the landlocked MOBOT into a marine robot — “basically a swimming socket wrench,” according to one engineer. In his 1965 patent description (patent no. 3,165,899), Shatto explains how his underwater device particularly relates to the offshore petroleum industry.

“A recent development at offshore locations is the installation of large amount of underwater equipment used in producing oil fields and gas fields situated many miles from shore,” he says. “Many of the wells are being drilled in water up to 600 feet deep, a depth greater than divers can safely work.”

Offshore remotely operated vehicles can trace their roots to the Manipulator Operated Robot or MOBOT, above, built for the Atomic Energy Commission to work in environments too radioactive for humans.

The inventor adds that a primary objective of his design is to provide a “manipulator device” with articulated arms that can secure itself to a wellhead on the ocean floor. “Each of the arms is provided at its outer end with a suitable suction means in the form of a suction cup.”

Modern offshore remotely operated vehicles can lift more 1,000 pounds and operate at more than 10,000-foot depths. The petroleum industry remains the principle user of this space-age, underwater technology. Shatto — inducted into the Houston-based Offshore Energy Center’s Industry Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2000 — receives other patents for his offshore inventions.

“A world-respected innovator in the areas of dynamic positioning and remotely-operated vehicles (ROV), Howard Shatto led in the design of the first subsea wellheads for drilling and production using an ROV,” the Offshore Energy Center notes.

“He conceived the world’s first automatic control for dynamic positioning on Shell’s Eureka core drillship in 1960. It controlled surge, sway and yaw independently and resolved thruster commands, a procedure followed on the more than 1,300 dynamic positioning systems built since then.”

"Work Class" ROVs are used most widely in the offshore petroleum industry -- including this Hydra Magnum, which includes five cameras and two seven-function manipulators.

Shatto will also led in the development of the Sedco-445 – “the world’s first dynamic positioning oil exploration drillship.”

Today, offshore exploration is prompting a new generation of marine robotics – the autonomous underwater vehicle, which abandons the use of a cable connection to the mother ship. Defined as “a crewless, non-tethered submersible which operates independent of direct human control,” these vessels can also make detailed maps of seabed topography and hazards.

Learn more at “ROVs — Swimming Socket Wrenches” and “Deep Sea Roughnecks.”

January 20, 1886 – Ohio Natural Gas

A plaque dedicated in 1937 commemorates Ohio's giant natural gas discovery of January 20, 1886.

The spectacular natural gas well — the “Great Karg Well” of Findlay, Ohio — comes in with an initial flow of 12 million cubic feet per day. The pressure is so great it cannot be controlled by the technology of the time. Its flame becomes a tourist attraction that burns for four months.

Ohio’s first natural gas well was drilled in Findlay two years earlier by the Findlay Natural Gas Company, formed by Dr. Charles Oesterle. However, the Karg well, then the largest in the world, launches the state’s first major natural gas boom — and brings many new industries.

Glass companies especially are “lured by free or cheap gas for fuel,” notes an historical marker at the Richardson Glass Works in Finlay. “They included eight window, two bottle, two chimney lamp, one light bulb, one novelty, and five tableware glass factories.”

By 1887, Findlay will become known as the “City of Light,” adds another nearby historical marker at the first field office for the Ohio Oil Company — established the same year by five independent oil producers. After becoming an international exploration and production company, in 1962 Ohio Oil Company will change its name to today’s Marathon Oil Company.

The Hancock Historical Museum of Findlay includes natural gas exhibits from the region and is less than two miles from the site of the famous well. Also learn how natural gas discoveries bring industries to neighboring Indiana in “Indiana Natural Gas Boom.”

January 21, 1865 - Civil War Veteran tests an Oil Well “Exploding Torpedo”

Col. Edward A. L. Roberts will patent his “exploding torpedo” in April 1865. He is buried in Titusville, Pennsylvania -- where the U.S. petroleum industry began in 1859.

Civil War veteran Col. Edward A. L. Roberts (1829-1881) conducts his first experiment to increase oil production by using an explosive charge deep in the well. He twice detonates eight pounds of black powder 465 feet deep in the wellbore of the Ladies Well on Watson’s Flats south of Titusville, Pennsylvania.

The “shooting” of the well increases daily production from a few barrels to more than 40 barrels. Col. Roberts — who had fought at the 1862 battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia — says his idea came watching explosive Confederate artillery rounds plunging into a canal on the battlefield. His observations gave him an idea that would evolve into what he described as “superincumbent fluid tamping.”

In 1866, the Titusville Morning Herald reports: “Our attention has been called to a series of experiments that have been made in the wells of various localities by Col. Roberts, with his newly patented torpedo. The results have in many cases been astonishing. The torpedo, which is an iron case, containing an amount of powder varying from 15 pounds to 20 pounds, is lowered into the well, down to the spot, as near as can be ascertained, where it is necessary to explode it. It is then exploded by means of a cap on the torpedo, connected with the top of the shell by a wire.”

Modern well fracturing — or “fracking” — will evolve from Col. Roberts’ success. He will received the first of his many patents for an “exploding torpedo” on  April 25, 1865. Read more about his revolutionary invention in “Shooters – A “Fracking” History.”

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