May 14, 2004 – Oil and Natural Gas Museum Opens in Louisiana

In 1911, Gulf Refining Company built drilling platforms to reach the oil beneath Caddo Lake in Louisiana. This early "offshore" technology worked well and production continues today -- out of sight for most vacationers, water enthusiasts and young fishermen.

The first public museum in Louisiana dedicated to the oil and gas industry opens in Oil City, 30 miles northwest of Shreveport.

Chevron donated an oil derrick that stands beside the Louisiana State Oil Museum in Oil City, about a 20-minute drive from Shreveport.

The Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum, originally the Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Museum, includes the historic depot of the Kansas City Southern Railroad. The museum preserves the many Caddo Parish oil and natural gas discoveries – and the economic prosperity brought by a North Louisiana petroleum boom.

With the first oil wells drilled in the early 1900s, by 1910 almost 25,000 people are working in and around Oil City, which becomes the first “wildcat town” in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas region.

The museum documents the historical importance of the first oil discovery in 1905 – and the technology behind the May 1911 Ferry No. 1 well at Caddo Lake, one of the nation’s earliest over-water oil wells. Gulf Refining Company completed this early “offshore” oil well on Caddo Lake, where production continues today.

In 1955, the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce dedicated a 40-foot monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of oil in Caddo Parish by the Texas Oil Company.

Natural gas was discovered in Shreveport in 1870 while drilling for water for the Shreveport Ice Factory. “A night watchman struck a match to see if the wind he heard blowing from the site would blow it out, but it ignited,” notes the Caddo Parish website (which includes a good collection of photos).

The 1870 Shreveport natural gas well was used to light the ice factory — the first documented use of natural gas in Louisiana.

The Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum tells these stories and others about the Oil City region’s history, starting with the culture of Caddo Indians. Visitors learn petroleum heritage from photographs and full-sized replicas of early Oil City homes.

Visitors also view scaled down, functional oil and natural gas equipment as it once operated in the most famous oilfield of Northwest Louisiana. Chevron donated a derrick and other oilfield equipment that help draw tourists to the museum, which is a 20-minute drive from Shreveport.

May 15, 1911 – Standard Oil Breakup

After reviewing 12,000 pages of court documents, Chief Justice Edward White issues the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion that mandates dissolution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.

The historic ruling, which will break Standard Oil into 34 separate companies, upholds an earlier Circuit Court decision that the John D. Rockefeller company’s practices violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The company is given six months to spin off its subsidiaries. Five years earlier, President Theodore Roosevelt’s Justice Department had launched 44 anti-trust suits, prosecuting railroad, beef, tobacco, and other trusts.

“Between 1897 and 1904, a total of 4,227 firms merged to form 257 corporations,” notes digitalhistory. “The largest merger combined nine steel companies to create U.S. Steel. By 1904, some 318 companies controlled nearly 40 percent of the nation’s manufacturing output. A single firm produced over half the output in 78 industries.”

May 16, 1934 – “Stripper Well” Association Founded

Marginally producing wells account for almost 20 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas production.

The National Stripper Well Association is organized in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Stripper wells – marginally producing wells – make up about 80 percent of all U.S. wells, almost 20 percent of domestic oil and natural gas production. A Stripper well produces 10 barrels of oil or 60 thousand cubic feet of natural gas per day or less.

America is the only country with significant stripper well production, the association notes. Although each individual well contributes a small amount, there are about 400,000 wells still producing – contributing more than 291 million barrels of oil in 2007, when oil production generated $728 million in tax revenue. NSWA says the tax revenue from natural gas reached more than $600 million.

Higher prices and new technologies for enhanced recovery methods could add up to 200 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the United States. Information about the latest stripper well technology — including a “Stripper Well Consortium” managed by the Pennsylvania State University — is posted at the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy. 

May 16, 1961 - Natural Gas Museum Opens in Southwestern Kansas

In southwestern Kansas, the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton is above a giant natural gas producing area that extends 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.

A small museum over a giant natural gas field opens today in southwestern Kansas.

The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton educates visitors about one of the largest natural gas fields in North America.

Operated by by Gladys Renfro, curator, and a few dedicated volunteers, the museum serves “as a memento of the Hugoton gas field and the progressive development of Stevens County.”

The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum includes the Santa Fe Train Depot in Hugoton, Kansas.

The 14-county Kansas gas field, part of a larger group extending 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles, has produced more than 29 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, notes the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS).

About 11,000 wells produce both oil and gas in the Kansas portion of the Hugoton area — and thousands of miles of pipeline carry Hugoton gas throughout the United States.

“Hugoton production is a major source of natural gas and oil for the state and the nation,” KGS says, adding that the economic value produced in 14 counties of southwest Kansas exceeds 50 percent of all gas and oil produced in the state. “The major gas fields of this area have produced enough gas to supply every household in Kansas for 364 years.”

"Hugoton-Panhandle gas provides the world's largest source of helium from which the U.S. Government has drawn a 40 year supply stockpile and spacecraft and other industries obtain current needs," notes a monument in Guymon, Oklahoma.

Although natural gas had been discovered as early as 1922, near Liberal, Kansas, that well did not produce oil – so it was considered of little value and remained unused for several years, explains KGS.

“In 1927, gas was discovered at the Independent Oil and Gas Company’s Crawford No. 1, about 2,600 feet below the surface southwest of Hugoton,” says KGS. ”In 1929, Argus Pipe Line Company started construction of a pipeline to furnish gas to Dodge City.”

A 2004 Hugoton Asset Management Project brought a collaboration between KGS and eight industry partners in the Hugoton field – to build a “knowledge and technical base required for intelligent stewardship, identification of new opportunities, and continued improvement in recovery strategies.”

The Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum, 905 S. Adams Street in Hugoton, today includes early oil patch equipment, restored buildings – including an historic Santa Fe Hugoton Train Depot – an 1887 school house and home, a grocery store, and a barber shop. A natural gas well drilled in 1945 is still producing at the museum. Hugoton hosts as an annual “Gas Capital Car Show” in August.

Beginning in the 1930s, Phillips Petroleum company produced Hugoton natural gas from 3,000 feet deep in Texas County, Oklahoma. “This field with subsequent deeper discoveries of oil and gas has provided landowners with royalty revenue and cheap fuel,” the company explains on an historic marker in a Guymon, Oklahoma, park.

“There are nearly 8,000 producing oil or gas wells in Texas County today,” the historic marker notes. “For 75 years, the county has been one of the largest sources of revenue for the state of Oklahoma through taxes on oil and gas production.”

Editor’s Note – Recent natural gas shale discoveries (and advanced production technologies) have overtaken the Hugoton’s once dominant role. In 2009, the Hugoton gas area produced 328 billion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the ninth largest source of gas in America.

Significant natural gas shale discoveries in the Fayetteville, Arkansas, region (2004) and Haynesville, Louisiana, region (2008) have estimated production volumes of 517 billion cubic feet and 204 billion cubic feet respectively in 2009.

May 17, 1912 – First Liquefied “Bottled Gas”

America’s liquefied petroleum gas industry is born when gas cylinders are installed on the farm of John W. Gahring near Waterford, Pennsylvania. The American Gasol Company of West Virginia hires A. F. Young Hardware and Plumbing Company for this first installation of the cylinders of “bottled gas” to be used for cooking and heating.

May 18, 1882 – 646 Mystery Well production Revealed

"Come join us on June 24, 2012, for the 130th anniversary of the great 1882 Oil Excitement in Cherry Grove," says Walt Atwood.

The true – and at that time massive - oil production of the closely guarded secret discovery well in the Warren County, Pennsylvania, township is revealed today…with a devastating impact on oil prices.

As this oil patch community’s historians explain: “The hilltop settlement of Cherry Grove saw national history in the spring and summer of 1882 when the 646 Mystery Well ushered in a great oil boom.”

The sudden news about the mystery well, operated by the Jamestown Oil Company, sent shock waves through early oil market centers. “The excitement in the oil exchanges was indescribable,” notes an account of historian Paul H. Giddens. “Over 4,500,000 barrels of oil were sold in one day on the exchanges in Titusville, Oil City and Bradford.”

According to Giddens, the Cherry Grove discovery demoralized the market and drove the price down to less than 50 cents per barrel. Despite this, hundreds of derricks appeared around Cherry Grove and thousands of people moved there while the boom lasted. It was short lived, according to the dedicated volunteers of today’s Cherry Grove Old Home and Community Day Committee, which hosts special oil patch events on the last Sunday in June.

Vistors tour the actual "mystery well" site in Cherry Grove, Pennsylvania.

“Before the railroad could lay a new line to Cherry Grove, the boom went bust,” notes Walt Atwood, president of the Cherry Grove Old Home and Community Day. “Thousands of people moved on. Those who remained kept the memory of the Oil Excitement alive with reunions that became known as Old Home Day.”

In 1982 and again in 2007, a group of Cherry Grove Old Home Day regulars rebuilt a replica of the 646 Mystery Well. The volunteers worked with the township supervisors to secure grants and bring in a work crew from the Pennsylvania Conservation Corps.

“Come join us on June 24, 2012, for the 130th anniversary of the great 1882 Oil Excitement in Cherry Grove,” says Walt Atwood.

May 20, 1930 – Birth of Society of Exploration Geophysicists 

The Society of Economic Geophysicists adopts a constitution and bylaws in Houston, Texas. The organization soon becomes the Society of Petroleum Geophysicists.

In 1937 the society adopts the name by which it is known today, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. SEG fosters “the ethical practice of geophysics in the exploration and development of natural resources, in characterizing the near surface, and in mitigating earth hazards.”

May 7, 1920 – Halliburton Company begins in Oklahoma

Innovative oilfield technologies of the 1920s include Halliburton Company trucks with "jet cement" mixers. Photograph courtesy Hart’s E&P magazine.

The Halliburton Company is organized as an oil well “cementing” company in Wilson, Oklahoma, by Erle P. Halliburton (1892–1957), succeeding his New Method Oil Cementing Company formed a year earlier during the Burkburnett boom in Texas.

The use of cement in drilling oil wells remains integral to the industry, because its injection into the well seals off water formations from the oil, protects the casing, and minimizes the danger of blowouts.

Halliburton’s company, which will reach global dimensions within his lifetime, in 1922 patents a new “jet-cement” mixer that increases the speed and quality of the mixing process. By the end of the year, 17 Halliburton trucks are cementing wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas. In 1949, Halliburton and Stanolind Oil Company will make oilfield history with the first commercial application of hydraulic fracturing to increase oil and natural gas production.

Editor’s Note — Learn more about the history of well cementing technology by reading the May 2007 “Cementing is not for Sissies” article by William Pike, past editor-in-chief of Hart’s E&P magazine.

May 8, 1918 – Shreveport Gassers play 20 Innings

Walter Johnson, Hall of Fame pitcher for the Washington Senators, earlier played for a California semi-pro team: the Olinda Oil Wells.

As baseball becomes America’s favorite pastime, the Texas League’s Shreveport Gassers play 20 innings against the Fort Worth Panthers before the game is called a tie. Oilfield communities are fielding their own teams — with names often reflecting their oil patch roots.

Fourteen leagues of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (today known as Minor League Baseball) field 96 teams — including the Okmulgee Drillers, Tulsa Oilers, Independence Producers, Beaumont Exporters, Corsicana Oil Citys, Wichita Falls Spudders and the Iola Gasbags. See the September 2007 Petroleum Age article “Oilfields of Dreams.”

May 8, 1920 – Discovery of Oklahoma’s Burbank Oilfield

Drilling for natural gas on a lease 20 miles from Ponca City, Oklahoma, the Kay County Gas Company finds oil instead. As required by the lease agreement, Marland Refining Company assumes control of the Bertha Hickman No. 1 well, which produces 680 barrels of oil in its first day.

This discovery well opens the 20,000-acre Burbank oilfield. Producing companies agree to drill using 10 acre spacing for oil conservation purposes. The Burbank oilfield will produce between 20 million barrels and 31 million barrels annually for the next four years.

The Marland Company will be absorbed by the Continental Oil Company – Conoco - in 1928. Learn more about E.W. Marland and his company at the Marland Estate Museum in Ponca City. Also visit the Conoco Museum.

May 9, 1863 — Confederate Cavalry attacks Burning Springs Oilfield

The Burning Springs oilfield (at bottom) was destroyed by Confederate raiders on May 9, 1863, "making it the first of many oilfields destroyed in war," notes historian David McKain. "After the Civil War, the industry was revived and over the next fifty years the booms spread over almost all the counties of the state. Drilling and producing of both oil and natural gas continues throughout the state to this day."

Confederates attack an early oil town in what will soon become West Virginia, destroying equipment and thousands of barrels of oil. The Burning Springs oilfield is destroyed by Confederate raiders led by General William “Grumble” Jones – “making it the first of many oilfields destroyed in war,” notes the founder of an oil and natural gas museum in Parkersburg.

Almost a century earlier, George Washington had acquired 250 acres in the region because it contained oil and natural gas seeps. ”This was in 1771, making the father of our country the first petroleum industry speculator,” notes David McKain, author of Where It All Began, a history of the West Virginia petroleum industry.

In May 1861, the Rathbone brothers use a spring-pole to dig a well at Burning Springs that reaches 303 feet and begins producing 100 barrels of oil a day. An oil boom soon follows.

As early as 1831, natural gas was moved in wooden pipes from wells to be used as a manufacturing heat source by the Kanawha salt manufacturers. A thriving commercial oil industry grew in Petroleum and California – towns near Parkersburg. Then in 1861 at Burning Springs, the Rathbone brothers’ spring-pole oil well reached 303 feet – and began producing 100 barrels of oil a day.

“These events truly mark the beginnings of the oil and gas industry in the United States,” says McKain. The wealth created by petroleum helped bring statehood for West Virginia during the Civil War, he adds. “Many of the founders and early politicians were oil men — governor, senator and congressman — who had made their fortunes at Burning Springs in 1860-1861.”

On May 9, 1863, Confederate cavalry Gen. William “Grumble” Jones and 1,300 troops attacked Burning Springs, destroying equipment and thousands of barrels of oil. Of his raid on this early oil boom town, Gen. Jones reported to Gen. Robert E. Lee:

Confederate cavalry Gen. William "Grumble" Jones

“The wells are owned mainly by Southern men, now driven from their homes, and their property appropriated either by the Federal Government or Northern men. All the oil, the tanks, barrels, engines for pumping, engine-houses, and wagons — in a word, everything used for raising, holding, or sending it off was burned. Men of experience estimated the oil destroyed at 150,000 barrels. It will be many months before a large supply can be had from this source, as it can only be boated down the Little Kanawha when the waters are high.”

The Oil and Gas Museum, founded and maintained by McKain, has opened a park at California, about 27 miles east of Parkersburg on West Virginia 47. He continues to lead efforts to promote the state’s petroleum and Civil War heritage.

“The Burning Springs oilfield was destroyed by Confederate raiders led by General Jones — making it the first of many oilfields destroyed in war,” McKain concludes. “After the Civil War, the industry was revived and over the next fifty years the booms spread over almost all the counties of the state. Drilling and producing of both oil and natural gas continues throughout the state to this day.”

May 12, 2007 – ConocoPhillips opens Two Petroleum Museums

Two oil museums open in Oklahoma as part of the state’s statehood centennial — thanks to ConocoPhillips. “These museums reaffirm our Oklahoma roots,” explains Jim Mulva, ConocoPhillips chairman and chief executive officer, who proclaims the Conoco Museum in Ponca City and the Phillips Museum in Bartlesville “gifts to the people of Oklahoma, visitors to the state, and our employee and retiree populations around the world.”

The Conoco Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma, tells the story of a major oil company that began as a small kerosene distributor serving 19th century pioneer America.

The Conoco Museum includes five areas exhibiting the evolution of the company’s business identity, marketing – and onshore and offshore technologies. One exhibit recreates a 1950s R&D laboratory; another depicts an outdoor scene of a “doodlebugger” at work; a third explains the technology behind the world’s first tension-leg offshore platform. These and other exhibits tell the story of a major oil company’s development from a small kerosene distributor serving 19th century pioneer America into a diversified global energy company.

Conoco was founded in 1875 as Continental Oil Company, delivering kerosene to retail stores in Ogden, Utah.

Conoco – founded in 1875 as Continental Oil Company in Utah – merged with Oklahoma’s Marland Oil Co. in 1929. Phillips Petroleum Co. incorporated in Bartlesville in 1917 and merged with Conoco in August 2002.

Conoco’s earliest roots reach to the 1870s when Isaac Elder Blake — a young speculator in Pennsylvania and West Virginia oilfields — moved to the Utah Territory. He found that residents of Ogden paid $5 a gallon for kerosene refined several hundred miles away in Florence, Colorado, and hauled in barrels by bull team to Ogden.

In 1875, Blake stared a venture that would purchase bulk kerosene in the cheaper eastern market, then ship it by rail to Ogden. There, it could be broken down into manageable containers and delivered to grocery stores, which could dispense it to customers by the gallon, profiting accordingly. The Continental Oil and Transportation Company soon purchased two railroad tank cars, — the first to be used west of the Missouri River.

One chapter in Bartlesville's rich petroleum history is exhibited at the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum, which opened May 12, 2007.

The Phillips Petroleum Company Museum in Bartlesville exhibits its company heritage in seven areas:

A Pioneering Attitude – showing how the company became an industry leader, transforming basic oil and gas resources into a large number of useful products. Growing Strong – about the evolution of Phillips Petroleum and how the company survived an intense series of corporate battles.

One Big Family – exhibit describes how Phillips became known for promoting the well-being of its employees. Bucking the Odds – what was it like in the rough and rowdy days of the Burbank oilfield? Energy Provider – from refined petroleum fuels to super-cooled natural gas, creating ways to deliver energy to consumers.

Taking to the Skies – the Phillips Company actually produced its aviation fuels before its automotive fuels. Selling 66 – from street corners to sports stadiums, the Phillips 66 brand has been seen everywhere. How did Phillips 66 get its name?

In addition to the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum, Bartlesville is home to Frank Phillips' Woolaroc ranch -- which includes oil exhibits and the plane that won a 1927 air race across the Pacific.

The Phillips museum also tells the story of the company’s founders — brothers Frank and L.E. Phillips, who began their quest for oil in 1903, after hearing of vast oil deposits in Oklahoma.

“In 1905, the brothers hit the first of 81 wells in a row without a single dry hole. Twelve years later, they founded Phillips Petroleum Company, headquartered in Bartlesville,” notes a detailed history at posted at ConocoPhillips.

In 1927, the company entered the refining business and acquired its first refinery near Borger, Texas. Phillips Petroleum soon began to leave its mark on the aviation industry by designing the first aviation refueling trucks and developing a new, lighter, more efficient Phillips aviation fuel that powered the first flight between the United States and Hawaii.

Read more in the Petroleum Age article “Flight of the Woolaroc – Aviation Fuel.”

The American Association of Petroleum Landmen locates mineral owners and negotiates leases.

April 30, 1955 – “Landmen” form Trade Association

The American Association of Petroleum Landmen is organized in Fort Worth, Texas. Landmen research records to determine ownership, locate mineral and land owners and negotiate oil and natural gas leases, deals, trades and contracts as well as ensuring compliance with governmental regulations. The association has grown into an organization with about 12,000 members and 43 affiliated associations in the United States and Canada.

May 1, 1860 – Brothers Launch West Virginia Oil Industry

An early drilling technology -- the "spring-pole" -- was used to discover oil in what is now Burning Springs, West Virginia.

In the early 1800s, salt-makers in what is now West Virginia sometimes found oil or natural gas during their drilling. Using that frontier experience to search for oil in Wirt County, Virginia, the Rathbone brothers’ spring-pole oil well near a stream called Burning Springs Run reaches 303 feet – and begins producing 100 barrels of oil a day.

By the end of 1860, more than 600 oil leases are registered in the county courthouse. After Federal forces occupy most of western Virginia during the Civil War, residents in 39 counties, including Wirt, vote to separate from Virginia and join the Union. In 1863 West Virginia becomes a new, oil-producing state.

On May 9, Confederate Gen. William “Grumble” Jones and 1,300 troopers attack Burning Springs, destroying equipment and thousands of barrels of oil. Visit the Oil and Gas Museum in Parkersburg.

May 1, 1916 – Harry Sinclair starts a Company

Millions of young people have marveled at Sinclair's green “Dino" since its debut at the Chicago “Century of Progress” World’s Fair in 1934.

With $50 million in assets, Harry F. Sinclair borrows another $20 million and forms Sinclair Oil & Refining Corporation from a collection of depressed properties, five small refineries and many untested leases, all acquired at bargain prices. In its first 14 months, his New York company produces six million barrels of oil and 252 million gallons of petroleum products for a net income of almost $9 million.

Sinclair will become one of the oldest continuous names in the U.S. petroleum industry. Its famous Brontosaurus trademark makes its debut at the Chicago 1934 “Century of Progress” World’s Fair. Three decades later, ten million visitors marvel at an improved 70-foot Dino in Sinclair’s “Dinoland” exhibit at the New York World’s Fair. Read Dinosaur Fever — Sinclair’s Icon.

The East Texas Oil Museum explains the historic oilfield's economic significance.

May 1, 1931 – Commission regulates East Texas Production

The first proration order from the Texas Railroad Commission for the giant East Texas oilfield becomes effective. When the Daisy Bradford No. 3 discovery well first opened the field a year earlier, massive production quickly drove prices down.

Hundreds of wells produced almost one-million barrels per day — and the price of oil dropped to as low as 10 cents a barrel before the commission’s order limited production to preserve the field and stabilize prices. The “Black Giant” oilfield has yielded more than five billion barrels – and is still producing. Visit the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

May 1, 2001 – Plaza honors Oklahoma Petroleum Pioneers

“King of the Wildcatters” Tom Slick is among those honored.

The Conoco Oil Pioneers of Oklahoma Plaza – a special outdoor educational exhibit area – is dedicated at the Sam Noble Museum at the University of Oklahoma, Norman.

“The history of the state of Oklahoma is inextricably linked with the remarkable history of the oil industry,” noted then Conoco Chairman Archie W. Dunham. “The individuals identified here are true Oklahoma oil pioneers in that their endeavors were most significant in the development of the oil and gas industry in this very young state.”

Tom Slick, Oklahoma’s “King of the Wildcatters” is among those honored in the plaza. Slick, a self-taught geologist, discovered the giant Cushing oilfield in 1912.

May 2, 1797 – Birthday of Inventor of Kerosene

Gesner will invent kerosene in 1854.

Born today is Abraham Gesner (1797-1864), the Canadian chemist and geologist who pioneers the extraction of kerosene by the distillation of asphalt rock. Beginning in 1846, he conducts experiments for distilling “coal oil.”

Gesner coins the name kerosene in 1853. He patents his “Improvement in Kerosene Burning-Fluids” on June 27, 1854 — realizing the usefulness of kerosene as a cleaner-burning fuel in lamps to replace whale oil, notes one biographer. Gesner also will invent a wood preservative, an asphalt highway paving process, compressed coal dust briquettes, and a machine for insulating electric wire.

May 4, 1869 – Thomas Rowland patents the First Offshore Drilling Rig

Although it will never be constructed as originally designed, with its four telescoping legs and a working platform, Thomas Rowland's offshore drilling rig is a technological marvel for 1869.

The first U.S. patent for an offshore oil drilling rig is issued to Thomas Fitch Rowland (1831-1907), owner of Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, New York, for his “submarine drilling apparatus.”

Many believe this early patent (No. 89,794) is the beginning of the offshore oil and natural gas industry.

Rowland’s patent for a fixed, working platform for drilling offshore to a depth of almost 50 feet — just ten years after Edwin Drake made the nation’s first commercial oil discovery in Titusville, Pennsylvania — pioneers modern offshore drilling technology. Although his rig is designed to operate in shallow water, the anchored, four-legged tower resembles modern offshore rigs.

“My invention consists — First, in novel construction of drill frame, or stand, or, as it may be termed, working-platform, by providing or forming it with telescopic legs made up of tubes and plungers, and connected with suitable hydraulic attachments or devices for forcing water into the legs for the proper support of the platform at different elevations, according to the depth of the water, and to adjust the legs or their plungers to a firm bearing on the rock to be drilled.”

Rowland and his Continental Iron Works also will become a leader in petroleum storage tank design and construction. The Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize is instituted by the American Society of Civil Engineers at its annual meeting of 1882.

The earliest true offshore wells — completely out of sight from land — will not be drilled until 1947 in the Gulf of Mexico, as technologies advance after Rowland’s patent. As early as 1891, the first submerged oil wells are drilled from platforms built on piles in Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio, notes historian Judith L. Sneed in “The First Over Water Drilling: The Lost History Of Ohio’s Grand Reservoir Oil Boom.” Read more in “Ohio Offshore Wells.”

Modern offshore petroleum platforms include (left to right): 1 and 2 are conventional fixed platforms; 3 is a compliant tower; 4 and 5 are vertically moored tension leg and mini-tension leg platforms; 6 is a spar platform; 7 and 8 are semi-submersibles; 9 is a floating production, storage, and offloading facility; 10) sub-sea completion and tie-back to host facility. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The first submerged oil wells in salt water are drilled in 1896 from piers in a part of the Summerland oilfield that extends under the Santa Barbara Channel in California. Wells also are drilled from platforms on Caddo Lake, Louisiana, in 1911. Read more at “Offshore Oil History” – and visit the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum in Galveston, Texas, to explore a retired jack-up drilling rig.

Another technological marvel is constructed by Thomas Rowland's Continental Iron Works.

Editor’s Note — In addition to his offshore rig patent, Thomas Rowland also is part of U.S. naval history. During the Civil War, he is hired by John Ericsson, who has received a Union Navy contract to build an “iron-clad battery.” In October 1861, Rowland’s Continental Iron Works begins construction of the USS Monitor.

Experts predict the vessel will “turn turtle” when launched, but “I had made my calculations, and was perfectly certain that the device would operate according to my expectations,” Rowland says in an 1890 New York Times article.

May 5, 1889 – Construction begins on World’s Largest Refinery

The refinery in Whiting, Indiana, ships its first petroleum product in November 1890 -- 125 railroad tank cars of kerosene.

Seventeen miles east of downtown Chicago, Standard Oil Company begins construction on a 235-acre refinery complex. It will be the world’s largest.

The Whiting, Indiana, refinery processes sulfurous “sour crude” from the Lima, Ohio, oilfields — producing high-quality kerosene to meet the skyrocketing demand for use in home lamps. Gasoline is a minor by-product. The Duryea brothers will build a gasoline-powered horseless carriage two years after the Whiting Refinery ships its first finished petroleum product: 125 railroad tank cars of kerosene in November 1890.

The city of Whiting incorporated in 1903. In 1923, Standard Oil Company provided land and funding for its Memorial Community Center, which became the hub of city life with its social and athletic facilities. The Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society, organized in 1976, helps preserve this history.

A neon reminder of its petroleum heritage rotates high above Dallas.

In Dallas, Texas, atop the historic Magnolia Petroleum Building (now the Magnolia Hotel), a restored 35-by-40-foot rotating Pegasus sign welcomes downtown visitors - as it first did in 1934.

Preserved atop a former oil company headquarters building, now a luxury hotel, rotates a neon sign with twin flying red horses (one on each side). The Mobil Oil Company’s Pegasus trademark was once the most distinguishing feature of the Dallas skyline.

On display in the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History & Culture is a 70-year-old Pegasus from a Mobil gas station in Casa Linda in East Dallas. It was first displayed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Pegasus remains among the most recognized corporate symbols in American petroleum history.

When the Magnolia Petroleum Building opened in 1922, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. With 29 floors and seven elevators, the skyscraper towered over the nearby Adolphus Hotel, built in 1913. A local reporter described the Magnolia as “a great peg driven into the ground holding Dallas in its place.”

In 1925, when Standard Oil of New York (Socony) acquired Magnolia Petroleum Co., the Dallas headquarters building was included. Nine years later Pegasus would land on the roof.

The flying red horses began their journey in 1911, when a Vacuum Oil Co. subsidiary in Cape Town, South Africa, first trademarked the Pegasus logo.

The certificate from the Registrar of Deeds of Cape Town, South Africa, notes that on March 16, 1911, the “Vacuum Oil Company of South Africa Limited” was named “as proprietor of the Trade Mark represented above.” Pegasus began rotating atop the Magnolia Building in 1934. Vacuum Oil Co. products used a gargoyle prior to adopting the winged horse of mythology.

Based in Rochester, N.Y., Vacuum Oil had built a successful petroleum lubricants business around an 1869 patent by its founder, Hiram Everest, long before gasoline was even a branded product. At first, a stylized red gargoyle advertised the company.

The Pegasus trademark would prove to be a more enduring image. In Greek mythology, Pegasus – a winged horse – carried thunderbolts for Zeus.

By 1931, growth of the automobile industry had expanded the Vacuum Oil product lineup to include Pegasus Motor Spirits, Mobiloil and Mobilegas. When Standard Oil of New York and Vacuum Oil Co. combined to form Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., the new company adopted the red Pegasus trademark.

It took a year to build the rotating 35-foot by 40-foot Pegasus sign. It first beamed its red neon glow in 1934, welcoming the first annual meeting to be held in Dallas by the American Petroleum Institute.

For decades the emblem slowly rotated above the growing city as corporate consolidations and mergers changed Socony-Vacuum ownership. In 1955 the name of the company changed to Socony Mobil Oil; in 1966 it was simplified to Mobil Oil.

Project Pegasus

In 1974 the petroleum icon’s motor ground to a halt. Mobile Oil moved out of the Magnolia building three years later and gave the aging structure and glowing but unmoving sign to the city of Dallas. Twenty-years later, Pegasus’ neon lights finally went out.

Mobilgas products added the Pegasus logo in 1911. It became an official trademark in 1931.

As a Denver-based developer restored and transformed the deteriorating Magnolia building into a luxurious 330 room hotel in the late 1990s, a group of patrons and corporate partners joined in to bring the broken and rusty Pegasus sign back to life. They raised more than $600,000 for the project.

Project Pegasus targeted New Year’s Eve of 1999 and dawn of the new millennium to reintroduce Dallas citizens to their petroleum heritage landmark. Restoration of the 8,000-pound sign proved challenging.

The derrick-like tower structure was reparable and the old mechanical rotation system could be updated with new technology. But time and weather had damaged the porcelain coated steel signage and neon tubing. New 16-gauge steel panels had to be cut, using the originals as templates.

Only two facilities in the United States were large enough to accommodate baking the emblematic red porcelain onto the new panels; fortunately, both were in Dallas. More than 1,000 feet of new neon tubing was required to trace the familiar outlines as craftsmen and technicians remained faithful to the original.

The efforts of all were rewarded at midnight on December 31, 1999, when fireworks and millennium celebrations welcomed Pegasus back to the Dallas skyline, where it remains today.

Editor’s Note – The Magnolia building features elevator doors with the Pegasus logo. Mobil Oil Corp. merged with Exxon Corp. in 1999, creating today’s ExxonMobil, headquartered in Irving, Texas.

Nottinghamshire school children watch a video about drilling in Sherwood Forest at the Duke Woods Oil Museum.

Editor’s Note — For those planning a summer 2012 visit to the Dukes Wood Oil Museum, please note that the Oil Patch Warrior, a bronze statue honoring American oilmen, has been temporarily removed. The Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust reports that the seven-foot statute was damaged during an attempted theft. It is being repaired.

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By the summer of 1942, the situation was desperate. The future of Great Britain – and the outcome of World War II – depended on petroleum supplies. By the end of that year, demand for 100-octane fuel would grow to more than 150,000 barrels every day.

In August 1942, British Secretary of Petroleum, Geoffrey Lloyd called an emergency meeting of the Oil Control Board to assess the “impending crisis in oil.” This is the story of the “little-known, or at least seldom recognized, all-important role oil and oilmen played in the prosecution of the war,” note the authors of The Secret of Sherwood Forest – Oil production in England during World War II.

In 1942, England's vital petroleum supplies, including high-octane aviation fuel, came by convoy -- and continued to be subjected to relentless U-Boat attacks.

“The amazing and hitherto untold story, born in secrecy, has remained buried in the private diaries, corporate files and official records of government agencies,” explain Guy Woodward and Grace Steele Woodward in their 1973 book. “In the final analysis, oil was indeed the key to victory of the Allies over the Axis powers.”

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Two bronze statues separated by the Atlantic Ocean commemorate the achievements of World War II American roughnecks. The first stands in Dukes Wood near the village of Eakring in Nottinghamshire, England. Its twin greets visitors at Memorial Square in Ardmore, Oklahoma.

Dedicated in 2001, an Oil Patch Warrior stands in Memorial Square in Ardmore, Oklahoma. It is a duplicate of the statue at right, erected 10 years earlier in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham, England. The seven-foot bronze statues honor American oilmen who drilled more than 100 wells in Sherwood Forest during World War II.

The seven-foot bronze statues, separated by more than 2,400 miles, commemorate 44 Americans who – during a critical time during the war – produced oil. They drilled in Sherwood Forest.

This once top-secret story begins in August of 1942, when Britain’s wartime Secretary of Petroleum, Geoffrey Lloyd, called an emergency meeting of the country’s Oil Control Board.

U-Boat attacks and the bombing of dockside storage facilities had brought the British Admiralty two million barrels below their minimum safety reserves. The outlook was bleak.

The Unsinkable Tanker

A photograph of the 42 volunteers from Noble Drilling and Fain-Porter Drilling companies before they embark for England on the troopship H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth in 1943.

England’s principal fuel supplies came by convoy from Trinidad and America and were subjected to relentless Nazi submarine attacks. Meanwhile, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s rampaging North African campaign threatened England’s access to Middle East oilfield sources.

Many at the Oil Control Board meeting were surprised to learn that England had a productive oilfield of its own, first discovered in 1939 by D’Arcy Exploration. The company was a subsidiary of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company — predecessor to British Petroleum.

Noble Drilling Corporation financed a May 1991 trip for 14 survivors of the original crew to return to Duke's Wood in Sherwood Forest.

This obscure oilfield was in Sherwood Forest, near Eakring and Dukes Wood. It produced modestly — about 700 barrels per day in 1942 — from 50 shallow wells. Extreme shortages of drilling equipment and personnel kept Britain from further exploiting the field. Perhaps America might help.

Following the meeting — under great secrecy — C.A.P. Southwell, a D’Arcy representative, was sent to the Petroleum Administration for War (PAW) in Washington, D.C.

Southwell’s secret mission was to secure American assistance in expanding production from the Eakring field, regarded as an “unsinkable tanker.”

Derrickman Herman Douthit fell to his death.

Pressing his case in America, Southwell pursued the widely respected independent oilman Lloyd Noble, president of Tulsa-based Noble Drilling Corporation. They met in Noble’s hometown of Ardmore, Oklahoma, to negotiate a deal.

American oil companies were already heavily committed to wartime production. Noble nonetheless joined with Fain-Porter Drilling Company of Oklahoma City on a one-year contract to drill 100 new wells in the Eakring field. Noble and Fain-Porter volunteered to execute the contract for cost and expenses only. PAW approved their deal and the contract was signed in early February 1943.

On March 12, a 42-man team of newly recruited drillers, derrickmen, motormen and roustabouts embarked on the troopship H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth.

The American workers stayed at Kelham Hall. The Anglican Monastery was the ideal base for the year-long operation -- it was isolated from the community, enabling relative secrecy. During their stay the roughnecks adhered to monastery rules.

Four drilling rigs for “The English Project” would be transported to England on four different ships. Although one ship was lost to a German submarine, another rig was subsequently shipped safely.

Top Secret: The English Project

The American oilmen joined project managers Eugene Rosser and Don Walker at billets prepared in an Anglican monastery at historic Kelham Hall, near Eakring.

The sudden influx of Americans was rumored to be for “making a movie.” It was said that John Wayne would arrive soon.

Within a month, sufficient equipment had arrived to enable spudding the first well. Two others quickly followed. Four crews worked 12-hour tours with “National 50″ rigs equipped with 87-foot jackknife masts. The roughnecks amazed their British counterparts with their drilling speed.

The roughneck workers left to return to America on March 3, 1944. They had added more than 1.2 million barrels of oil to the total output of the Eakring oilfield.

Using innovative methods, the Americans drilled an average of one well per week in Duke’s Wood, while the British took at least five weeks per well. The British crews made it a practice to change bits at 30-foot intervals. The Americans kept using the same bit as long as it was “making hole.”

By August, the Yanks of Sherwood Forest had completed 36 new wells, despite the challenges of wartime rationing of fuel, food, and other shortages.

By January of 1944, the oilmen were credited with 94 completions and 76 producers. But not without cost. While working Rig No. 148, derrickman Herman Douthit was killed when he fell from a drilling mast. He was buried with full military honors. Today, he remains the only civilian ever buried at the American Military Cemetery in Cambridge.

"The oil drilling work ended with the creation of 106 wells by the 'roughneck' crews over 365 drilling days," the BBC would later note. "Ninety four wells produced high quality oil, an amazing achievement."

The English Project contract was completed in March 1944 with the Americans logging 106 completions and 94 producers. England’s oil production had shot from 300 barrels a day to more than 3,000 barrels per day. “Ninety four wells produced high quality oil, an amazing achievement,” a BBC historian would later note.

Without fanfare, the roughnecks returned to the United States and the families they had left a year before. Their mission and success remained secret until November 1944, when the Chicago Daily Tribune ran a back-page feature entitled “England’s Oil Boom.” Few took notice.

By the end of the war, more than 3,500,000 barrels of crude had been pumped from England’s “unsinkable tanker” oilfields. Petroleum industry expertise would again come into action — solving the challenge of oil pipelines across the English Channel – see “Secret Pipeline of World War II.” British Petroleum continued to produce oil from Dukes Wood until the field’s depletion in 1965.

Oil Patch Warrior Statue — A Wrench instead of a Rifle

Visiting Tulsa in 1989, a British member of Parliament was fascinated by this book by Guy and Grace Woodward. Thus began the effort to commemorate the Sherwood Forest roughnecks.

The story remained largely unknown until the 1973 University of Oklahoma Press publication of The Secret of Sherwood Forest – Oil production in England during World War II by Guy and Grace Woodward. Then in 1989, British member of Parliament Tony Speller visited Tulsa for a speaking engagement — and was given a copy of the book.

Surprised and intrigued by the story it told, Speller joined with the International Society of Energy Advocates, Noble Drilling Company and others who believed that the singular accomplishment of this handful of Americans should be remembered. Well-known artist Jay O’Meilia was chosen to create a bronze tribute to these men.

O’Meilia, born in 1927 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he resides today, was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1999. Interviewed for this article, he recalls, that the statue’s designed quickly evolved. ”The notion of an ‘oil patch warrior’ soon developed…at parade rest with a roughneck’s best weapon — a Stillson wrench — instead of a rifle,” he says.

O’Meilia also remembers how authenticity was critical, down to period gloves and hard hat. “They even sent me a pair of original overalls so I would get it exactly right,” he explains.

Those who look very closely will see the tell-tale impression of a pack of cigarettes in the oil patch warrior’s pocket. “Lucky Strike,” O’Meilia laughs — “because Lucky Strike Green Goes to War” was a contemporary advertising campaign.

Artist Jay O´Meilia of Tulsa, Oklahoma, traveled to England for the May 1991 dedication of his Oil Patch Warrior statue.

In May 1991, Noble Drilling Corporation funded the return of 14 surviving oilmen to the dedication of O’Meilia’s seven-foot bronze Oil Patch Warrior in Sherwood Forest. The statue was placed on the grounds of England’s Dukes Wood Oil Museum on land donated by British Petroleum.

In 2001, ten years after the ceremony in England, the citizens of Ardmore, Oklahoma, determined to honor veterans with a downtown Memorial Square. They discovered that the original molds remained in O’Meilia’s Colorado foundry.

“Our mission was to create a memorial park that would honor those who sacrificed their lives, those who served in the military during times of war and peace, and the oil drillers and energy industry that came to England’s rescue in World War II,” explains Jack Riley, chairman of the Memorial Square committee.

O’Meilia recast the Sherwood Forest Oil Patch Warrior for Ardmore from the original molds. The statue was dedicated on November 10, 2001, with representatives from Noble Oil and Fain-Porter joining veterans at the ceremony. A brick walkway through Memorial Square displays the names of Ardmore area veterans.

“Memorial Square honors veterans who are responsible for the freedom we enjoy today — and the energy industry, which is responsible for the economic strength of our community,” declared Wes Stucky, president of the Ardmore Development Authority.

Special thanks to historical society member Adam Sieminski and his wife, Laurie, who visited the Sherwood Forest statue on a rainy day in 2005.

Time has taken away many of those on both sides of the Atlantic who struggled in wartime to preserve democracy. As many as 1,100 die every day, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Fortunately, in these two imposing bronze Oil Patch Warriors, separated by an ocean of history, the story of the roughnecks of Sherwood Forest can always be remembered.

Editor’s Note — Visit the Dukes Wood Oil Museum in Nottinghamshire, England. Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank, Washington, D.C., visited the Sherwood Forest statue in 2005. He provided the historical society with photos and a copy of The Secret of Sherwood Forest – Oil production in England during World War II.

Adam also was instrumental in sponsoring this society’s participation in a two-day “rock oil tour” to Titusville, Pennsylvania. Read the “Energy Economists Rock Oil Tour” of August 2009.

April 24, 1911 – Magnolia Petroleum Company founded

Magnolia Petroleum will adopt a "Flying Pegasus" logo in the 1930s.

The Magnolia Petroleum Company is founded as an unincorporated joint-stock association – a consolidation of several earlier companies, the first of which began by operating a small refinery in Corsicana, Texas, in 1898.

The Standard Oil Company of New York will begin acquiring Magnolia in 1925, notes the Texas State Historical Association. In 1931, when Standard Oil of New York and the Vacuum Oil Company merge to form Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, Magnolia becomes an affiliate of the new nationwide company.

Headquartered in its iconic Dallas skyscraper by the early 1930s, Magnolia operates in 20 states and employ 12,500 people. The company will adopt Socony-Vacuum Oil Company’s red Pegasus logo, which  begins rotating atop the Magnolia Building in 1934. See “Mobil’s High-Flying Trademark.”

April 25, 1865 – Civil War Veteran patents Explosive Technology

Established in 1865, The Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company would have a lengthy a monopoly on all types of torpedoes used in the petroleum industry. The company stock certificate is worth almost $300 to collectors.

Civil War veteran Col. Edward A.L. Roberts of New York City receives the first of his many patents for an “Improvement in Exploding Torpedoes in Artesian Wells” – to fracture oil-bearing formations and increase oil production.

A year later, Roberts will receive a patent for what becomes known as the “Roberts Torpedo,” which uses nitroglycerin detonations as the “fracking” technology for increasing well production.

Before the well torpedo’s invention, many early wells in Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia produce only small amounts of oil – and for a short time. Torpedoes are filled with gunpowder, lowered into wells, and ignited by a weight dropped along a suspension wire to percussion caps. In later models, nitroglycerin replaces gunpowder.

The invention – patent no. 47,458 – is among the major technological achievements of the U.S. petroleum industry. This early oil patch fracking method also leads to coining of the term “moonlighter.”

With its exclusive patent licenses, the Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company charges up to $200 per torpedo “shoot” and a one-fifteenth royalty of the increased flow of oil. Seeking to avoid the fee, some oilmen secretly hire unlicensed practitioners who operate at night with their own devices – and the term moonlighter enters the American lexicon.

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

For enhancing modern petroleum production, Halliburton and Stanolind companies will complete the first commercial hydraulic frack in March 1949 a few miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma. Oil and natural gas production today rely on the technology.

“Since that fateful day in 1949, hydraulic fracturing has done more to increase recoverable reserves than any other technique,” says a Halliburton service company spokesman.

Learn more about Col. Roberts – including leading a charge at the Battle of Fredericksburg – and production technologies in “Shooters – A ‘Fracking’ History.”

April 26, 1947 – Petroleum Industry begins Radio Campaign

Founded in 1919 in New York City, the American Petroleum Institute will move its headquarters to Washington, D.C., a decade later.

For the first time since its establishment in 1919, the American Petroleum Institute launches a national advertising campaign.

“The theme of the drive is that the petroleum industry is a modern and progressive one, and is now turning out the best products in its history,” notes Billboard magazine. ”Radio this week struck real pay dirt as a ‘Gusher’ will come mainly from expansion of current air time on spot local or regional levels by the thousands of petroleum and related corporations.”

API, representing the largest U.S. petroleum companies, issues “recommended practices to promote the use of safe equipment and proven engineering.”

“Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time. Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother, can you spare a dime?” – Bing Crosby

Primitive diesel engines had been used in railroad yards since about 1925. Four-stroke diesel and distillate engines were heavy, often producing only a single horsepower from 80 pounds of engine weight.

In the early 1930s America’s passenger railroad business was in trouble. In addition to the Great Depression, the once dominant industry faced growing competition from automobiles.

It had been just 60 years since coal-burning steam locomotives and the transcontinental railroad had linked America’s east and west coasts. Now, more than 30 million cars, trucks, and buses were on U.S. roads.

Although railroad steam engine technology had advanced since the “golden spike” of 1869 in Promontory Point, Utah, locomotives still “belched steam, smoke, and cinders,” notes one railroad historian. “Passengers often felt like they had been on a tour of a coal mine.”

The powerful and efficient diesel-electric Zephyr arrived in 1934 -- a result of the U.S. Navy's search for a new engine for its submarines.

The railroads’ distillate-burning internal combustion engines of the day were heavy and troublesome. Primitive diesels had been used in switch engines from about 1925, but they were slow, explains Richard Cleghorn Overton in Burlington Route: A History of the Burlington Lines.

Burning fuels ranged from a low-grade gasoline to painter’s naphtha and diesel. Distillate railroad engines emitted an oily smoke and often produced only a single horsepower from 80 pounds of engine weight. These common four-stroke engines fouled easily and required multiple spark plugs per cylinder.

Even Bing Crosby lamented the fate of railroads in his popular song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

But help was on the way for America’s failing passenger railroads. It would come from the U.S. Navy in the form of a diesel-electric engine…wrapped in a stainless steel Art Deco locomotive.

America’s first diesel-electric train set a speed record and changed railroad history.

Petroleum’s Silver Streak

“Wings to the Iron Horse,” the passenger line’s advertisement proclaimed in the 1930s. “Burlington pioneers again — the first diesel streamline train.”

New diesel-electric engines generated power for the "Making of a Motor Car" exhibit at the 1933 Century of Progress fair in Chicago. The Chevrolet assembly line fascinated thousands of visitors who watched from overhead galleries.

With the threat of war on the horizon, the U.S. Navy needed a lighter weight, more powerful diesel engine for its submarine fleet. General Motors joined the nationwide competition to develop a new diesel engine.

Seeking engineering and production expertise, in 1930 GM acquired the Winton Engine Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Winton, established in 1896 as Winton Bicycle Company, was an early automobile manufacturer.

Winton 600-horsepower diesel engines with GE generators powered the Chicago fair's “Making of a Motor Car” assembly line exhibit.

The Winton Engine Company evolved into a developer of engines for marine applications, power companies, pipeline operators — and railroads. With GM’s financial backing, Winton engineers designed a radical new two-stroke diesel that delivered one horsepower per 20 pounds of engine weight. It provided a four-fold power to weight gain.

The Model 201A  prototype — a 503-cubic-inch, 600 horsepower, 8-cylinder diesel-electric engine — used no spark plugs, relying instead on newly patented high pressure fuel injectors and a 16:1 compression ratio for ignition.

At Chicago’s Century of Progress World’s Fair in 1933, GM evaluated two 201A diesel-electric engines, using them to generate power for its “Making of a Motor Car” exhibit. The working demonstration of a Chevrolet assembly line fascinated thousands of visitors who watched from overhead galleries.

Powered by a single eight-cylinder Winton 201A diesel engine, the revolutionary "streamliner" traveled the 1,015 miles from Denver to Chicago in just over 13 hours -- a passenger train record.

One of the visitors happened to be Ralph Budd, president of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (known as the Burlington Line).

Budd immediately recognized the locomotive potential of these extraordinary new diesel-electric power plants. He saw them as a perfect match for the lightweight “shot-welded” stainless steel rail cars being pioneered by the Edward G. Budd (no relation) Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia.

During its "dawn to dusk" record-breaking run, the Zephyr burned only $16.72 worth of diesel fuel.

Edward Budd was the first to supply the automobile industry with all steel bodies in 1912. His success in steel stamping technology made the production of car bodies cheaper and faster. By 1925, his system was used to produce half of all U.S. auto bodies.

The Depression, however, put the Budd Manufacturing Company almost $2,000,000 in the red — prompting its fortuitous diversification into the railroad car market to generate revenue. When approached by Burlington President Ralph Budd in 1933, this Budd was ready.

Within a year, the two technologies were successfully merged with the creation of the Winton 201A powered Burlington Zephyr — America’s first diesel-electric train. It would change railroad history.

Visitors line up to admire the stainless steel beauty of the Burlington Zephyr, which will soon be featured in a Hollywood movie. By the end of 1934, eight major U.S. railroads have ordered diesel-electric locomotives.

Art Deco Locomotives

Although ''The Silver Streak'' was a 1934 "B" movie -- intended for the bottom half of double features -- it remains a favorite of some railroad history fans.

The Zephyr rolled into Chicago’s Century of Progress exhibition on May 26, 1934, ending a nonstop 13 hour, 4 minute, and 58 second “dawn to dusk” promotional run from Denver.

Powered by a single eight-cylinder Winton 201A diesel, the “streamliner” cut average steam locomotive time by half. The Zephyr traveled 1,015 miles at an average speed of 76.61 miles per hour and reached speeds along the route in excess of 112 mph — to the amazement and delight of track-side spectators from Colorado to Illinois.

During its record-breaking run, the Zephyr burned just $16.72 worth of diesel fuel (about four cents per gallon). The same distance in a coal steamer would have cost $255. Construction innovations included the specialized shot-welding that joined sheets of stainless steel. The lightweight steel also resisted corrosion so it didn’t have to be painted.

Americans fell in love with the Zephyr. Four months after its high-speed appearance at Chicago’s Century of Progress, the streamliner made its 1934 Hollywood film debut, starring as “The Silver Streak” for an RKO picture. The Zephyr was loaned for filming –  and the Burlington logo on its front was repainted to read Silver Streak. “The stream-lined train, platinum blonde descendant of the rugged old Iron Horse, has been glorified by Hollywood in the modern melodrama,” proclaimed the New York Times.

Winton diesel-electric engines powered a new generation of U.S. submarines. The Porpoise (SS-172) was the first of its class to join the fleet in 1935 -- and served throughout World War II.

Although the black-and-white “B” movie came and went without making much of a splash, it has won its place in movie history as a rail-fan favorite, according to a 2001 article in the Zephyr Online. “It did have a lot of action, and the location shots of the Zephyr are an interesting record of this pioneer.”

The RKO film should not to be confused with 20th Century Fox’s 1976 comedy “Silver Streak,” which was filmed in Canada using Canadian Pacific Railway equipment from the Canadian, a transcontinental passenger train, according to the Obscure Train Movies website.

More than a Railroad Technology

By the end of 1934, eight major U.S. railroads had ordered diesel-electric locomotives. The engine technology’s cost advantages in manpower, maintenance, and support were quickly apparent.

Despite the greater initial cost of diesel-electric, a century of steam locomotive dominance soon came to an end. By the mid-1950s, steam locomotives were no longer being manufactured in the United States.

GM won the Navy’s competition for a lightweight powerful diesel — choosing the 16-cylinder Winton Engine Company diesel-electric to power a new class of submarine. In 1935, the USS Porpoise was first to join the fleet, where it served throughout World War II. Diesel-electrics power plants descended from the Burlington Zephyr would remain part of the fleet until replaced by nuclear propulsion.

The two trains that changed America's railroad industry in the late 1930s: the Union Pacific M-10000 and Burlington Line Zephyr streamliners. The Zephyr is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Its competitor was cut up for scrap in 1942.

A Zephyr competitor — the Union Pacific M-10000 built by the Pullman Car & Manufacturing Company — also appeared at the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. In fact, this aluminum streamliner was revealed six weeks earlier than the Zephyr. Originally powered by an inefficient four-stroke engine, the M-10000 would switch to the Winton 201A. Recognized as America’s first streamliner, the M-10000 was cut up for scrap in 1942.

The Zephyr (later renamed the Pioneer Zephyr) is on display at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.

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

In August 1859, Edwin L. Drake, credited with discovering America’s first commercial oil well, used a common water well hand pump to retrieve the new resource from 69.5 feet.

It wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient for producing oil from a well. Industry pioneers realized that by improving pumping efficiency they could extend the economic life of far deeper wells by years.

The new resource will be refined to meet the phenomenal worldwide demand for an inexpensive lamp fuel: kerosene.

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. Today there are more than one-half million in the United States alone.

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 marginal or “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 – Edwin Laurentine Drake (1819-1880) will become the “father of the petroleum industry” when he drills America’s first commercial oil well in 1859 near Titusville, Pennsylvania. Drake used a steam engine and cable-tool drilling rig to drill his famous well.

Drake overcomes many financial and technical obstacles to make his historic discovery. He also pioneers new drilling technologies, including using iron casing to isolate his well bore from nearby Oil Creek. Seeking oil for the Seneca Oil Company for refining into a new product (kerosene) his shallow well creates an industry.

The Hughes 1909 roller bit.

Learn more about drilling technology – including how “fishtail” bits became obsolete in 1909 when Howard Hughes Sr. introduced the twin-cone roller bit: “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.”

Petroleum history is important. The American Oil & Gas Historical Society is a small nonprofit organization that depends on tax-deductible donations. Please print this form and send a donation today.

April 16, 1855 – Rock Oil promises “Very Valuable Products”

A report about oil's potential as an illuminant will lead to the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company discovering America's first commercial well.

A report from Yale chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr. says Pennsylvania “rock oil” can be distilled into a high-quality illuminating oil.

The New Haven, Connecticut, professor’s “Report on Rock Oil or Petroleum” is an analysis of samples from Cherrytree Township, Venango County.

“Gentlemen,” Silliman writes to his clients – soon to be oilmen – “it appears to me that there is much ground for encouragement in the belief that your company have in their possession a raw material from which, by simple and not expensive processes, they may manufacture very valuable products.”

According to Daniel Yergin’s The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (an 800-page history of the global oil industry), Silliman’s report banishes any doubt about the potential new uses for “rock oil” and is a turning point in establishing the modern petroleum industry. The reputation of Silliman, himself the son of  a great American chemist, will help attract investors to George Bissell and Jonathan Eveleth’s fledgling Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, which incorporated on December 30, 1854.

Four years later, Edwin L. Drake will reward investors with the first U.S. commercial oil well near Titusville. A growing number of refineries will begin producing a new, highly sought product. Kerosene, first refined from “coal oil” in 1853 by Canada’s Abraham Gesner, will fuel lamps – illuminating North America and the world.

April 18, 1939 – “Device for Perforating Casing”

Simultaneous firing at several depths will enhance the flow of oil.

“A device for perforating casing after it has been installed in a well” is designed by Ira J. McCullough of Los Angeles, who receives two patents for his multiple bullet-shot casing perforator and mechanical firing system.

The innovation, a technology that simultaneously fires charges at several depths, will greatly improve well production.

“It is the object of my invention to provide a device for perforating a well after the casing has been installed in the well in which there is plurality of projectiles, each of which is adapted to be propelled by the burning of a separate charge of powder, and in which the charges of powder are simultaneously ignited in order that all of the projectiles will be shot or projected from the apparatus at substantially the same time and with ample force and velocity to penetrate a plurality of casings and intervening walls of cement,” he explains.

McCullough’s device (patent no. 2155322) also includes a “disconnectable means” that – once the charges are lowered into the borehole – can render percussion inoperative as “a safeguard against accidental or inadvertent operation.”

Learn more in “Downhole Bazooka.”

April 19, 1892 – First U.S. Gasoline Powered Auto

Gasoline engines will take time to catch on with consumers.

American inventors Charles and Frank Duryea test drive a gasoline powered automobile built in their Springfield, Massachusetts, workshop.

Considered the first automobile regularly made for sale in the United States, the model will be produced – a total of 13 – by the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. Other manufacturers quickly follow the Duryea example.

In March 1896, the Duryea brothers will offer the first commercial automobile – the Duryea motor wagon. It is reported two months later that in New York City a motorist driving a Duryea hits a bicyclist. This is recorded as the nation’s first automobile traffic accident.

By the time of America’s first national automobile show in November 1900 at Madison Square Garden, of the 4,200 automobiles sold in the United States, gasoline powers less than 1,000. The most popular vehicles are powered by electricity, steam and gasoline…in that order.

See “Cantankerous Combustion.”

April 20, 1875 – New Technology links Well Pumping

Oilfield technology advances in 1875 with this "Improvement In Means For Pumping Wells."

Pumping multiple wells with a single steam engine boosts efficiency in early oilfields when Albert E. Nickerson and Levi C. Streeter of Venango County, Pennsylvania, patent their “Improvement In Means For Pumping Wells.”

The new technology uses a system of linked and balanced walking beams to pump the oil wells. The use of wooden or iron rods instead of rope and pulleys will make their system the forerunner of rod-line (or jerk line) systems that will operate well into the 20th century and remain icons of early oilfield production.

Read more in “All Pumped Up.”

April 20, 1893 – Discovery of the Los Angeles Oilfield brings Economic Boom

Downtown L.A. well sites highlight field trips organized by the Center for Land Use Interpretation: "Urban Crude: The Oil Fields of the Los Angeles Basin."

The giant Los Angeles oilfield is discovered when a struggling prospector, Edward L. Doheny, and his mining partner Charles A. Canfield drill into the tar seeps between Beverly Boulevard and Colton Avenue.

The discovery well — near present-day Dodger Stadium — sets off California’s first oil boom by producing about 45 barrels a day. Within two years, 80 wells are producing oil and by 1897 more than 500 wells are pumping.

By 1895, Los Angeles City field produces about 750,000 barrels, over half of the 1.2 million barrels produced in the entire state of California. In 1925, California supplied half of the world’s oil and much of it came from pumps in the Southland.

More than nine billion barrels of oil have been produced in the Los Angeles area. There are still more than 30,000 active wells pumping around 230 million barrels of oil a year, making Los Angeles County the second most productive oil county in California (Kern County is number one).

"Everyone thinks of Los Angeles as the ultimate car city, but the city’s relationship with petroleum products is far more significant than just consumption."

“The history of Los Angeles is intertwined with the use and production of gasoline and oil. Everyone thinks of Los Angeles as the ultimate car city, but the city’s relationship with petroleum products is far more significant than just consumption.

“Los Angeles is located directly above huge oil reserves and is home to a lucrative and active oil industry, an industry that prefers to remain largely hidden and unknown,” notes an article from the Center for Land Use Interpretation, which organized a 2009 field trip to Los Angeles well sites. ”The tour sold out seven minutes after tickets became available.”

Visit the Page Museum’s La Brea Tar Pits and the Brea Museum and Heritage Center.

April 20, 2010 – Deepwater Horizon Accident creates Major Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

The National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling will issue its report in 2011.

At about 10 p.m., an explosion occurs aboard the Gulf of Mexico drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which is completing a well in almost 6,000 feet of water about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Of the 126 men and women on board, 11 are killed and 17 injured. Destroyed by the explosion and fire, the deepwater semi-submersible rig sinks.

Uncontrolled oil production from the destroyed BP well causes a massive oil spill until capped in mid-July. Among others, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (known as the Minerals Management Service until June 2010) and the U.S. Coast Guard will investigate.

A detailed report on the accident is issued in January 2011 by National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

On April 22, 1920 – Natural Gas Well in South Arkansas

The Arkansas Natural Resources Museum opened in 1986.

The first natural gas well in south Arkansas is completed two and a half miles southeast of El Dorado. Drilled to a depth of 2,247 feet, the well produces between 40 million to 60 million cubic feet of gas a day – and “a spray of oil produced from the Nacatoch sands,” according to The Discovery of Oil in South Arkansas, 1920-1924.

Six days earlier, Hunter Oil of Shreveport, Louisiana, had completed the first oil well in Arkansas near Stephens – but the well did not produce commercial quantities. It will be the January 10, 1921, Busey-Armstrong No. 1 well discovery well that  launches the state’s petroleum industry.

Twenty-seven of the state’s 75 counties today have oil or natural gas wells. According to the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), in 2009 more than 39, 400 wells have been drilled in Arkansas since 1921 – with 14,889 “dry holes.”

Visit the Arkansas Natural Resources Museum in Smackover. The museum includes a five-acre Oilfield Park with operating examples of oil producing technologies used in south Arkansas oilfields from the 1920s to today. Also read “H.L. Hunt and the East Texas Oilfield.”

April 10, 1866 – Brothers patent Railroad Oil Tank Car

The Densmore Tank Car will revolutionize the bulk transportation of crude oil to market. Hundreds of tank cars were in use by 1866.

Railroad oil tank cars become an oilfield innovation when James and Amos Densmore of Meadville, Pennsylvania, are granted a patent for their “Improved Car for Transporting Petroleum,” which they developed a year earlier in the booming oil region.

Using an Atlantic & Great Western Railroad flatcar, the brothers secured the large wooden tanks in order to ship oil in bulk  - “instead of in barrels, casks, or other vessels or packages, as is now universally done on railway cars.” Patent No. 53,794 illustrates the design for two tanks on a railroad car.

An historical marker on U.S. 8 south of Titusville memorializes the Densmore brothers’ contribution to petroleum transportation technology.

The first functional railway oil tank car was invented and constructed in 1865 by James and Amos Densmore at nearby Miller Farm along Oil Creek. It consisted of two wooden tanks placed on a flat railway car; each tank held 40-45 barrels of crude oil. A successful test shipment was sent in September 1865 to New York City. By 1866, hundreds of tank cars were in use. The Densmore Tank Car revolutionized the bulk transportation of crude oil to market.

The Densmore brothers invent one of the first typewriters.

These early oil-tank cars will be gradually be replaced by the more familiar horizontal types beginning in 1868. The Densmore brothers will soon turn from the oil patch to become leaders in development of the typewriter.

In 1875, Amos will assist Christopher Sholes to rearrange the “type writing machine” keyboard so that commonly used letters no longer collide and get stuck. The “QWERTY” arrangement improves Shole’s original 1868 invention.

James Densmore’s oilfield financial success will lead to creation of the Densmore Typewriter Company, which produces its first model in 1891.

April 11, 1957 – Oklahoma Independent Producer William G. Skelly dies

William Grove Skelly, founder of Skelly Oil Company, and one of Oklahoma’s great oilmen, dies in Tulsa at the age of 78. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, on June 10, 1878, Skelly began his petroleum career as a 15-year-old, $2.50-a-day tool dresser in Venango County (tool dressers sharpened cable-tool bits among other duties on the floor of wooden derricks).

A Skelly service station is preserved at an indoor exhibit in Science City at Union Station, a Kansas City, Missouri, museum that opened in 1940.

“Oil booms in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois made Skelly decide that it was time for him to become an independent producer,” explains historian Ken Anderson. “He sought backing for money to buy leases and to drill for oil, and later moved southwest. He first went to Texas but found a greener pasture in the El Dorado Field in Kansas, which had opened in 1916.”

Skelly incorporates Skelly Oil in Tulsa in 1919 and becomes one of the strongest independent oil companies — helping make that small town the “Oil Capital of the World,” Anderson notes in an article for the Oklahoma Historical Society.

“Over the years Skelly became the champion and leader of numerous civic, educational, and charitable causes in Tulsa. He spent many hours in Washington, D.C., and in Oklahoma City representing the petroleum industry,” Anderson concludes. Skelly served as president of the International Petroleum Exposition from 1925 until his death, and in 1928 he founded Tulsa’s Spartan School of Aeronautics.

April 14, 1865 – Failed Oilman turns Assassin

John Wilkes Booth's dreams of Pennsylvania oil wealth ended in July 1864.

After failing as an oilman in the booming Pennsylvania oilfields, John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Abraham Lincoln. Just one year earlier, Booth had left the stage and drilled oil wells in Venango County.

In January 1864, Booth made the first of several trips to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where he purchased a 3.5-acre lease on the Fuller farm. Maps of the day show the three-acre strip of land on the farm, about one mile south of Franklin and on the east side of the Allegheny River.

Booth’s “Dramatic Oil Company” Wilhelmina No. 1 well will find oil – but the borehole collapses when he and his partners try to increase production using dynamite. As a partner’s son recalled, “the well was ‘shot’ with explosives to increase production. Instead of accomplishing that, the blast utterly ruined the hole and the well.”

Read more in “The Dramatic Oil Company.”

April 14, 1922 – Texans patent Blowout Preventer

To end dangerous and wasteful oil gushers, James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron file a patent (No. 1,569,247) for a hydraulic ram-type blowout preventer. Oil companies embrace the new technology.

James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron will file a patent for their hydraulic ram-type blowout preventer - and help bring an end to dangerous and wasteful oil gushers.

Their revolutionary concept uses rams – hydrostatic pistons – to close on the drill stem and form a seal against the well pressure.

“Once nearly a victim of a disastrous blowout himself, Abercrombie had taken his idea for a ram-type preventer to Cameron’s machine shop in Humble, Texas, where they worked out the details, starting with a sketch on the sawdust floor,” notes the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, which in 2003 recognized their invention as an “Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.”

Cameron and Abercrombie worked out their invention’s details using simple, rugged parts. When installed on a wellhead, the rams could be closed off, allowing full control of pressure during drilling and production. In 1922, their patented blowout preventer (BOP) could withstand pressures of up to 3,000 psi – a petroleum industry record. Later patents improve performance and the new technology becomes an industry standard.

Abercrombie had started in the oilfields as a roustabout in 1908 working for the Goose Creek Production Company and by 1920 owned several rigs in south Texas. He met Harry Cameron in the machine shops of the Cameron-Devant Company, where Abercrombie was a frequent customer. The two soon became friends and business partners.

“Harry Cameron was a great machine-tool man. You could give him a piece of iron and he could make just about anything you wanted,” said Abercrombie.

Today an Abercrombie and Cameron blowout preventer, once exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is displayed in the lobby of Cooper Cameron headquarters in Houston. Modern drilling technologies continue to evolve to meet far more difficult drilling environments. Blowout preventers now withstand five times the pressure of their April 1922 original design.

Read more about the “Ending Oil Gushers – BOP.”

April 14, 1933 – Museum opens in Texas Panhandle

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum opens in Canyon, Texas, on the campus of West Texas A&M University, about 15 miles southwest of Amarillo.

Two floors of petroleum exhibits - including "Cal’s Station" and a cable-tool derrick - at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas, help young people understand the history of the North Texas oil and natural gas industry.

Originally a 12,500-square-foot Art Deco building, today the museum includes 285,000 square feet of exhibit space and annually attracts more than 58,000 visitors. Its Don D. Harrington Petroleum Wing – named for a legendary Panhandle oilman – tells the story of the oil boom years in the Texas Panhandle during the 1920s and 1930s. Two floors of exhibits educate visitors about the oil and natural gas business.

“Popular destinations in this wing include the enormous wooden cable-tool drilling rig from the 1920s, relocated from Borger and reconstructed at the museum, and Cal’s Station, a replica 1930s-era filling station complete with a hand-operated gas pump, a Model T  Ford and a vintage truck,” notes Director Guy C. Vanderpool, who adds that the museum hosted programs for 22,984 school children in 2011.

April 15, 1897 – Birth of the Oklahoma Petroleum Industry

A 2008 gusher re-enactment highlights the dedication of a new replica derrick in Bartlesville.

A large crowd gathers at the Cudahy Oil Company’s Nellie Johnstone No. 1 well near Bartlesville, in the Indian Territory that will become Oklahoma.

George Keeler’s stepdaughter, Miss Jenni Cass, drops a “go devil” down the well bore to set off a waiting canister of nitroglycerin – producing a gusher that heralds the beginning of Oklahoma’s oil and natural gas industry. As the discovery well for the giant Bartlesville-Dewey Field, the Nellie Johnstone No.1 ushers in the oil era for Oklahoma Territory. By the time of statehood in 1907, Oklahoma will lead the world in oil production.

In the ten years following the Nellie Johnstone discovery, Bartlesville’s population grew from 200 to over 4,000 while Oklahoma’s oil production grew from 1,000 barrels to over 43 million barrels annually.

Today, a 184-foot derrick and education center, renovated in 2008, tells the story in Bartlesville’s Discovery 1 Park. Read more about the Sooner State’s first commercial oil well in “Discovering Oklahoma Oil.”