Grand Lake St. Marys – hand-dug from 1837 to 1845 – originally was nine miles long by three miles wide. It supplied water to central Ohio’s Miami and Eric Canal until designated a “public recreation and pleasure resort” in 1915.

America’s “first offshore drilling” is generally acknowledged to be over Louisiana’s Caddo Lake in 1911 – although historians in Mercer and Auglaize counties in Ohio say otherwise.

Mercer County documents record oil wells pumping far out in the waters of Grand Lake St. Marys 20 years before drillers ventured into the waters of Caddo Lake.

Work on the Ohio reservoir that would become known as Grand Lake St. Marys – about 60 miles north of Dayton – began in 1837 to support construction of the Miami and Erie Canal near the towns of Celina and St. Marys. To maintain the canal’s water levels, the reservoir was excavated over nine years by more than 1,700 men earning 30 cents a day.

From “Our Post Card Past; Grand Lake St. Marys Ohio,” Mercer County Historical Society, Celina, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Joyce L. Alig.

By 1845 the lake covered 17,500 acres to a depth of about seven feet. It was the largest man-made body of water in the world at the time and successfully supported the vital commerce of the Miami & Erie Canal.

Forty years later Ohio’s oil boom began.

In 1884, independent producers near Findlay discovered natural gas in a geologic formation known today as the Lima-Indiana trend. This formation stretched 260-miles across Ohio and Indiana. It would yield extraordinary quantities of natural gas and oil for decades.

Oilmen followed the Lima-Indiana Trend southwest to the shores of Grand Lake St. Marys near the Indiana border. Local companies like the Neeley-Clover Oil Co., Riley Oil Co., and Manhattan Oil Co. drilled successful wells right up to the reservoir’s shoreline, but going offshore presented a new set of challenges.

Offshore “Cribs”

Contemporary accounts of over-water drilling describe the practice of building 14 foot square “cribs” upon which traditional cable-tool rigs and their steam engines and boilers could be supported. Cribs had evolved as necessary engineering solutions to building bridges, dams, and other water structures.

On Grand Lake St. Marys, oilmen built derricks atop such cribs. Pipelines carried the oil from producing wells to storage tanks on shore.

The 1898 Auglaize County Atlas identifies an abundance of oil wells surrounding the far eastern end of Grand Lake St. Marys and also shows wells built offshore.

The 1903 Ohio Geological Survey recorded, “By 1890 the productive territory had been pushed to the eastern border of the Grand reservoir, and a year later wells were being drilled in that body of water.”

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR) notes, “In 1891, at the beginning of production in the water of Grand Lake St. Marys, wells were drilled within the canal reservoir mainly by small local companies…In less than ten years, more than 100 wells were drilled within the shallow waters of the lake.”

In 1915 the state of Ohio determined that with the canal no longer in use, Grand Lake St. Marys was repurposed as a public recreation and pleasure resort area, which it remains today.

A modern DNR map still plots the locations of the historic wells over the lake.

The Neely-Clover Oil Co. was an early driller on the lake that completed many successful wells. In Wildcatting from Pennsylvania to Texas, author Harold Neely writes, “Part of the leases they had were out in the lake that was known as the Grand Reservoir of St. Marys, and these leases were secured from the state of Ohio. They drove pilings and set the rig up on platforms and drilled these wells, one to ten acres, and quite a bit of this state land was productive.”

Riley Oil Co. drilled more than 100 wells in the reservoir, including the Riley-Mosher, which began producing in 1886 and still produced 35-barrels a day as late as 1910. By then, however, the boom was over.

In 1913 the New York Times reported the reservoir “contains more than 100 oil wells,” but oil men had moved on. Production on the waters of Grand Lake St. Marys lost its economic incentive when Spindletop’s astounding yield drove the price of Ohio crude below 15 cents a barrel.

The once plentiful derricks gradually disappeared into Ohio’s petroleum history.

Editor’s Note – For a more detailed look at this unique Ohio offshore history, be sure to read “The First Over Water Drilling: The Lost History Of Ohio’s Grand Reservoir Oil Boom” by Judith L. Sneed of Mooringsport, Louisiana.

Louisiana’s Caddo Lake, circa 1911.

Sneed originally presented her article in Shreveport during a March 26-29, 2003, Petroleum History Symposium, hosted by the Petroleum History Institute (PHI) of Oil City, Pennsylvania.

Sneed’s abstract – in the 2005 Oil-History Journal - notes: In 1911 Gulf Oil Company’s Ferry Lake No.1 well was completed over the waters of Caddo Lake, Louisiana. It has long been touted as the location of the world’s first over water oil well. This accolade, however, is not correct. Stand alone oil wells produced commercial quantities of oil over a small lake in Ohio as early as 1891. How did we lose this bit of history?

Also see “Offshore Petroleum History.”

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The exploration history of the U.S. offshore oil and natural gas industry began in the Pacific Ocean more than 100 years ago. As recently as 1947 no company had ever risked drilling beyond the sight of land.

America’s offshore petroleum industry began in the late 19th century in Pacific Ocean with drilling and production piers at Summerland, California. Drilling platforms also appreared on lakes in Ohio and Louisiana. By the 1940s, technology was taking wells far into the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1896, as enterprising businessmen pursued California’s prolific Summerland oilfield all the way to the beach, the lure of offshore production enticed Henry L. Williams and his associates to build a pier 300 feet out into the Pacific – and mount a standard cable-tool rig on it.

Although never built, Thomas Rowland’s 1869 design for an offshore platform was far ahead of its time.

By 1897 this first offshore well was producing oil and 22 companies soon joined in the boom, constructing 14 more piers and over 400 wells within the next five years. The Summerland offshore field produced for 25 years – fueling the growth of California’s economy.

Piers, Platforms and a Patent

In 1894, Henry Williams drilled two wells on a California beach. He drilled another in 1895 with encouraging results. This led Williams and others to exploring for oil offshore the next year.

They constructed piers and drilled wells, leading to the realization that the Summerland oilfield extended offshore. This would be the first offshore field developed in the nation by drilling offshore wells from piers. – From Santa Barbara County records

In 1911, Gulf Refining Co. abandoned the use of piers. It drilled Ferry Lake No. 1 on Caddo Lake, Louisiana, using a fleet of tugboats, barges, and floating pile drivers. When the well came in at 450 barrels per day, Gulf constructed platforms every 600 feet on each 10-acre lakebed site.

The  Caddo Lake wells – completed over water without a pier connection to shore – have frequently been called America’s first true offshore drilling . However, Ohio oil documents record hundreds of oil wells pumping far out into a lake – 20 years before drillers ventured into the waters of Caddo Lake.

Louisiana’s Caddo Lake, circa 1911.

As early as 1891, the first submerged oil wells were 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.” See “Ohio Offshore Wells.”

Even earlier, some historians say the true beginning of the modern offshore industry can be traced to an 1869 U.S. patent. Thomas Fitch Rowland of Greenpoint, New York, patented a “submarine drilling apparatus” on May 4, 1869.

Rowland’s design included a fixed, working platform for drilling offshore to a depth of almost 50 feet. The anchored, four-legged tower – with telescoping legs “suitable hydraulic attachments or devices” – resembles modern offshore platforms. Ream more in “An 1869 Offshore Rig Patent.”

Gulf of Mexico Technologies

In 1938, Pure Oil Co. and Superior Oil Co. built a freestanding drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, despite logistics, engineering, and communications challenges.

They hired a Houston engineering and construction company, Brown & Root Marine Operators, Inc., to build a 320-foot by 180-foot freestanding wooden deck in 14-feet of water about a mile offshore. The chosen drilling site was near Creole, La.

Using onshore building criteria and intuition, the Creole platform was designed to withstand winds of 150 mph and constructed 15 feet above the water. Three hundred treated yellow pine pilings were driven 14 feet into the sandy bottom.

The Superior-Pure State No. 1 well was successful – but was wiped off its pilings by a hurricane in 1940. Although the pilings were damaged, the platform was quickly rebuilt and put back into production in the four million barrel field.

Onshore salt domes were recorded as early as 1890 by the Geological Survey of Texas.

“It may be tentatively assumed that the Gulf of Mexico is a potential source of salt-dome oil…Whether or not it will ever be economically feasible to explore these waters for the domes that must exist is a question for the future to answer.” – Geologist Orval Lester Brace in 1941.

Kerr-McGee dramatically answered the salt dome question in 1947 with an experimental offshore rig.

Not much equipment specifically designed for offshore drilling existed and exploration remained an extraordinarily speculative and risky business venture. An offshore dry hole could easily swallow the huge capital costs sunk into construction of a large, permanent rig platforms.

Nevertheless, Dean McGee of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries Inc. partnered with Phillips Petroleum and Stanolind Oil & Gas Co. to secure leases for exploratory wells in the Gulf of Mexico. They hired Brown & Root to build a freestanding platform 10 miles out to sea.

The Mighty Kermac No. 16

“We decided to explore the areas where the really potential prolific production might be – salt domes – the good ones on land were gone, but we could move out in the shallow water and, in effect, get into a virgin area where we could find the real class-one type salt dome prospect,” McGee said.

Vessels were needed to provide supplies, equipment, and crew quarters for the drilling site, 43 miles southwest of Morgan City, La. The gradually sloping Gulf of Mexico reached only about 18-feet deep at the drilling site. A second platform would be built about eight miles from the first at Ship Shoal Block 28. Sixteen 24-inch pilings were sunk 104 feet into the ocean floor to secure a 2,700 square foot wooden deck.

The Kermac No. 16 well stood in almost 20 feet of water, 10 miles at sea.

The well was spudded on Sept. 10, 1947. The biggest hurricane of the season arrived a week later – with winds of 140 mph. Kerr-McGee had $450,000 invested in the project. Both platforms were evacuated during the hurricane, but damage was minimal. Drilling promptly resumed. On Nov.14, the Kermac No. 16 well came in at 40 barrels per hour.

“Spectacular Gulf of Mexico Discovery. Possible 100-Million Barrel Field – 10 Miles at Sea,” proclaimed the Oil & Gas Journal. Kermac No.16 would produce 1.4 million barrels of oil and 307 million cubic feet of natural gas by 1984.

Early drillers focused on natural oil seeps – until a 1901 gusher at Spindletop, a salt dome in Beaumont, Texas. Seismic instruments revealed how salt moved up through the earth – sometimes leaving oil trapped.

New Records

By the end of 1949, 11 oil and natural gas fields were found in the Gulf of Mexico with 44 exploratory wells, according to the National Ocean Industries Association, which notes that the industry continued to through the 1950s.

Modern offshore energy industry benefits come from the hard lessons learned from 60 years of open water experience. Compared to the limits of just a few years ago, today’s achievements will no doubt pale in comparison to what the future of offshore exploration will bring.

Revenue generated from the production of oil became the second-largest revenue generator for the country, after income taxes. NOIA also notes:

As the industry entered the last decade of the 20th century, advancing technology ensued. New depth records for drilling reached 7,625 feet in the Gulf of Mexico, and Shell Oil’s platform ‘Troll,’ which stands in the North Sea in 1,000 feet of water, 1,500 feet high, became one of two man-made objects visible with the naked eye from the surface of the moon. The other is the Great Wall of China.

The first use of helicopters offshore was at the request of Kerr-McGee and Humble Oil. Bell Helicopters recognized the opportunity and formed Petroleum Bell Helicopters Co.

At right is a Bell Helicopter advertisement from 1954, courtesy the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum

A flat area on an LST (from WW Two’s landing ship, tanks) anchored next to Humble Rig 28 served as landing pad for one of the first helicopters to be flown offshore.

Moveable rigs drill many exploratory offshore wells. Sometimes it is more economical to build a permanent platform from which well completion, extraction and production can occur. These large, permanent platforms are extremely expensive; they generally require large expected hydrocarbon deposits to be economical to construct.

This depiction of offshore drilling and completion platforms gives an idea of just how massive modern rigs can be. Because of their size, most permanent offshore rigs are constructed in pieces near land.

As components of the rig are completed, they are taken out to the drilling location. Sometimes construction or assembly can even take place as the rig is being transported to its intended destination, notes naturalgas.org.

Also see “Rigs to Reefs,“ “Deep Sea Roughnecks” and “Swimming Wrenches” (a history of remotely operated undersea vehicles).

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A “big fin” squid.

On November 11, 2007, a mile and a half underwater, a petroleum company’s remote control submersible camera captured a rarely seen Magnapinna squid.

The brief video, obtained by National Geographic News, shows the alien-like squid loiter above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico. The clip – from Shell Oil Company’s Perdido production site — marks the first sighting of a Magnapinna or “big fin” squid near oil development. Some marine biologists have now formed partnerships with petroleum companies.

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Offshore Oil and Gas Resources

Gulf of Mexico federal offshore oil production accounts for 23 percent of total U.S. crude oil production and federal offshore natural gas production in the Gulf accounts for 7 percent of total U.S. dry production, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Over 40 percent of total U.S. petroleum refining capacity is located along the Gulf coast, as well as 30 percent of total U.S. natural gas processing plant capacity.

To meet increasing U.S. demand while addressing environmental concerns, new technologies have resulted in drilling rigs capable of drilling 250 miles offshore to ocean depths exceeding 10,000 feet. At stake are an additional 19 billion barrels of oil and another 86 trillion cubic feet of gas. Fear of oil spills and heated environmental debates restrict access to many potential areas.

More than 5,000 offshore oil and natural gas platforms operate in the Gulf of Mexico around the clock, seven-days a week. It is the largest artificial reef system in the world.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, more than 60 percent of all oil found in seawater is not from wells, but from natural seepage (the largest emitting 1,000 barrels of oil a week); 32 percent comes from shipping and run-off from land. Four percent can be attributed to tanker spills.

However, near Santa Barbara, Calif., offshore drilling’s worst environmental disaster occurred in 1969 when an undersea well blew out. The calamity quickly brought industry changes that have protected the offshore environment ever since.

Between 1980 and 1999, about 7.4 billion barrels of oil were produced in federal waters, says the U.S. Coast Guard. Less than a thousandth of one percent spilled – less than the natural seepage of oil from the sea floor.

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Charles Duryea claimed the first U.S. patent for a gasoline automobile in 1895. Henry Ford sold his first “Quadri-cycle” in 1896. At the turn of the century, about 8,000 vehicles shared mostly unpaved roads with horses and wagons.

In 1906, a “Stanley Steamer” (above) set the world land speed record at 127.7 m.p.h. – still officially recognized as the land speed record for a steam car.

Of the 4,200 automobiles sold in the United States at the turn of the century, gasoline powered less than 1,000. On November 3, 1900, America’s first national automobile show opened in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Read the rest of this entry »

The founding of the Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company in 1902 will lead to creation of an oil field 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.

Petroleum drilling technologies, among the most advanced of any industry, have evolved since 1859 – especially as wells have reached far deeper. In 1922, it took a Texas wildcatter’s experience and ingenuity to invent a device designed to stop gushers.

Gushers like this famous one on Spindletop Hill, Texas, in 1901 were dramatic – but dangerous and wasteful.

The image of James Dean celebrating in a rain of oil may have been dramatic in 1956, but most oilfield gushers ended much earlier. By the time the movie “Giant” was made, the technology of well control and blowout prevention had been in place more than 30 years.

Perhaps the most famous high-pressure blowout occurred at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas.

On January 10, 1901, a three-man crew was drilling when a six-inch stream of oil and gas erupted 100 feet into the air. This oilfield would prove to be among the largest and most significant for a gasoline-hungry nation.

The Beaumont newspaper described the discovery well drilled by Anthony F. Lucas and Pattillo Higgins of the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company: “An Oil Geyser – Remarkable Phenomenon South of Beaumont – Gas Blows Pipe from Well and a Flow of Oil Equaled Nowhere Else on Earth.”

It took nine days and 500,000 barrels of oil before a shut off valve for the well (producing from a salt dome, as Lucas had predicted) could be affixed to the casing to stop the flow. At the time and for years to follow, images of gushers would attract investors.

James Abercrombie invented the “ram-type” blowout preventer – using hydrostatic pistons to close on the drill stem and form a seal against the well pressure.

Learn more at the Spindletop/Gladys City Boomtown Museum in Beaumont. Read the rest of this entry »

When a well strikes a high-pressure formation about 6,500 feet beneath Oklahoma City – and oil erupts skyward – the prolific Oklahoma oilfield will become famous worldwide.

Newsreel photographers will send film of the “Wild Mary Sudik” well to Hollywood. Within a week, newsreels appear in theaters around the country. When the Mary Sudik is brought under control, crews will recover 200,000 barrels of oil from pits and ponds.

The Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company’s Mary Sudik No. 1 well flows for 11 days before being brought under control on April 6, 1930.

The well, which produces about 20,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, becomes a public sensation known as “Wild Mary Sudik.”

The giant discovery is featured in newsreels and on radio, according to “Oklahoma Journeys,” an audio program of the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City.

“At about 6:30 the morning of March 26, 1930, the crew of roughnecks drilling a well on the property of Vincent Sudik paused in their work,” the program begins about the well, which is near I-240 and Bryant Street in present day Oklahoma City.

“The tired drillers had been waiting for daylight to continue their work,” the audio tape notes.

Experts control the well with “a clever ball-shaped contrivance” that lowers a two-ton “overshot” cap.

The program’s narrator Michael Dean notes that after drilling to drilling to 6,471 feet, the roughnecks overlook a dangerous pressure increase in the well.

“The exhausted crew failed to fill the hole with mud,” he explains. “They didn’t know the Wilcox sand formation was permeated with natural gas under high pressure, and within minutes that sand under so much pressure found a release.”

The drilling crew is caught off guard when oil and natural gas suddenly “came roaring out of the hole,” Dean adds.

“Pipe stems were thrown hundreds of feet into the air like so many tooth picks. First there was gas then the flow turned green gold and then black,” he reports. “Oil shot hundreds of feet into the air, and for the next eleven days, the Mary Sudik ran wild.”

“Wild Mary” Daily Updates

On April 6, Floyd Gibbons of NBC Radio – who broadcast regular reports about the well – reports that after two unsuccessful attempts, the well is closed with a two-ton “overshot” cap.

An Associated Press article describes the “clever equipment” required to control the well without sparking a fire – a “double die was screwed into four inches of casing threads…a clever ball-shaped contrivance, called a fantail, was used to affix the double die to the casing.”

The fantail was placed over the well, “and the ‘Wild Mary’s’ pressure, playing through jets in the contrivance, aided in lowering the cap through the blast,” the article explains.

“With the petroleum geyser halted, operators in the field drew sighs of relief,” it concludes. “A stray spark from two clanking pieces of steel and the territory might have become a raging inferno.”

With the well was brought under control and the danger of fire eliminated, drilling continues at a frantic pace elsewhere in Oklahoma City.

However, the prolific, high-pressure of the Wilcox sands formation continued to challenge drillers and the technologies of the day.

An article in the Southwest Missourian newspaper reported:

Oklahoma City, April 7 – A gas well, estimated to be producing at a rate of 75,000,000 cubic feet a day, blew in at the edge of the city today, creating a new fire threat less than 24 hours after the wild No. 1 Mary Sudik gusher, several miles to the south, had been brought under control.

Recognizing the risks of drilling into the Wilcox sand, Oklahoma City passes additional ordinances for safety and well spacing in the city.

Although the first ram-type blowout preventer had been patented by James Abercrombie in 1926, many high-pressure Texas and Oklahoma oilfields would take time to tame.

The Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City includes the Devon Energy Oil and Gas Park.

In December 1933, Abercrombie patented an improved blowout preventer (patent No. 1,834,922), that set a new standard for safe drilling during the Oklahoma City oilfield boom. Read more in “Ending Oil Gushers – BOP.”

Visitors today  can see the valve that split in half and view newsreel film of the Wild Mary Sudik in the oil and gas and natural resources on exhibit at the Oklahoma History Center.

There also is the Devon Energy Oil and Gas Park with drilling and production equipment at the center, located on N.E. 23rd Street just east of the state capitol.

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There are more than 120,000 vehicles on U.S. roads powered by natural gas. Experts say engine design advances promise greater natural gas use for transportation. Historic pursuit of the world land speed record is the heritage of this “fuel of the future.”

The 38-foot Blue Flame’s natural gas-powered rocket motor could produce up to 58,000 horsepower.

Throughout the 20th century, land speed records were set with vehicles powered by steam, electricity, and all manner of petroleum distillates. National pride was often at stake as British, American, French, Belgian, German, and Italian teams fielded competing machines.

The first record was set by a Frenchman in 1898. Count Gaston De Chasseloup-Laubat, driving an electric powered car, achieved 39.24 mph.

Powered by natural gas, the Blue Flame makes a spectacular debut at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. On October 23, 1970, the rocket-car sets a new world land speed record of 630.388 mph.

Jet Engines rule World Speed Record

Natural gas industry funding will provide Dick Keller and his team of engineers vital access to research facilities, including a supersonic wind tunnel.

After decades of more traditional internal combustion fueled records, mainly by the British, by the 1960s, American innovation – at Utah’s famed Bonneville’s Salt Flats – took mankind’s need for speed to a new level. Jet engines began pushing the land record to previously unthinkable levels. Read the rest of this entry »

When Erle P. Halliburton patents his remarkable “Method and Means for Cementing Oil Wells” on March 1, 1921, he brings greater efficiency, production and safety to America’s oilfields.

Erle Halliburton’s 1921 well cementing process isolates down-hole zones, guards against collapse of the casing – and permits control of the well throughout its producing life.

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

Halliburton’s small petroleum equipment and service company headquartered in Ardmore, Oklahoma, will receive many more patents on its way to becoming a worldwide leader in extending the life of oil and natural gas wells.

After working in Burkburnett, Texas, in 1919 Halliburton had moved to the booming Healdton oilfield near Ardmore, where he established the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.

“It is well known to those skilled in the art of oil well drilling that one of the greatest obstacles to successful development of oil bearing sands has been the encountering of liquid mud water and the like during and after the process of drilling the wells,” Halliburton notes in his 1920 patent application. Read the rest of this entry »

February 12, 1954 – First Major Oil Discovery in Nevada

Nevada’s petroleum industry begins with the discovery of oil by Shell Oil’s Eagle Springs No. 1 well drilled in Railroad Valley in Nye County.

Shell Oil Company’s second test of its Eagle Springs No. 1 well finds oil.

This routine test becomes the discovery well for the Railroad Valley field – and Nevada’s first major producer.

“This milestone represents a great achievement for Nevada’s oil industry,” notes Alan Coyner, administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals. “Nevada continues to have tremendous exploration potential for additional oil discoveries in the future.”

According to the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, the discovery well is 10,358 feet deep and produces 306,029 barrels of oil from a productive interval between 6,450 and 6,730 feet during its 16-year productive life.

Since 1954, there have been about 50 million barrels of oil produced from 101 wells drilled within 15 different Nevada fields.

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 to form the Forest Oil Corporation – an early leader in secondary recovery technology.

Originally based in Bradford, Pennsylvania – home 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 “Yellow Dog – Oilfield Lantern.”

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Jonathan Dillen’s lantern was “especially adapted for use in the oil regions…where the explosion of a lamp is attended with great danger by causing destructive conflagration and consequent loss of life and property.”

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.

Railroad museums have collections of cast iron smudge pots, but nothing quite like these heavy, odd shaped, crude-oil burning lanterns once prevalent on petroleum fields from Pennsylvania to California.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S.S. Texas, commissioned in 1914, was the last American battleship built with coal-fired boilers. By 1927, it had been converted to burn fuel oil – with a dramatic improvement in efficiency. The revolutionary change from coal to oil-fired boilers at sea is another chapter in the story of petroleum.

When the industrial revolution ended the “age of sail,” coal that fired the boilers of steam-powered ships became a strategic resource. Worldwide “coaling stations” were essential at a time when oil was little more than a crude lubricant or patent medicine.

Commissioned on March 12, 1914, with coal-powered boilers that were converted to use fuel oil in 1925, the U.S.S. Texas “was the most powerful weapon in the world, the most complex product of an industrial nation just beginning to become a force in global events,” says an historian at Battleship Texas State Historic Site.

In 1866, Congress appropriated $5,000 to evaluate petroleum as a potential replacement for coal to fire the Navy’s boilers. The “experts” decided to stay with coal. Read the rest of this entry »

January 14, 1928 – Future Dr. Seuss begins Career at Standard Oil  

During the Great Depression, Theodore Geisel created advertising campaigns for Standard Oil – where he developed the skills – and critters – that would redefine children’s literature.

New York City’s Judge magazine includes its first cartoon drawn by Theodore Seuss Geisel – who will develop his skills as “Dr. Seuss” while working for Standard Oil Company.

In the 1928 cartoon that launches his career, Geisel draws a peculiar dragon trying to dodge Flit, a popular bug spray of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

The Underwater History of Remotely Operated Vehicles

Much of today’s offshore oil and natural gas industry relies on remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that can trace their roots back to Howard Hughes, Jr.

In the late 1950s, Hughes Aircraft Co. developed its Manipulator Operated Robot – MOBOT – for the Atomic Energy Commission. Working on land, the robot performed tasks in environments too radioactive for humans.

Weighing 4,500 pounds with hydraulically powered steel claws and television eyes, MOBOT was linked by a 200-foot cable to the operator, who used pistol grips and levers to control it. In 1960, Popular Science magazine declared, “Marvelous MOBOT Will Do Work Too Hot For Man.”

The offshore petroleum industry recognized the robot’s underwater potential.

“Marvelous MOBOT will do Work too Hot for Man,” declared a 1960 article in Popular Science magazine. The offshore petroleum industry was quick to perceive the MOBOT’s underwater potential.

As the search for oil reached deeper into the ocean’s depths, traditional hard hat diving technology advanced to keep up.

The advent of saturation diving and helium/oxygen mixtures extended depths and diving times and reduced the dangers of decompression sickness – “the bends,” but there were limits to what divers could accomplish in the increasingly hazardous depths. See “Deep Sea Roughnecks.”

Shell Oil Company took the lead in transforming Hughes’ landlocked MOBOT into what would one day become known as an ROV.

Beginning in 1960, a series of evolving patents described, “a remotely controlled manipulator device for carrying out operations underwater at an assembly position at the top of a well.”

Patents by Howard Shatto Jr. – named to the Offshore Energy Center’s Industry Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2000 - and others made Shell Oil Company the early leader in offshore development.

In January 1965, Howard L. Shatto Jr. received a patent for an “underwater manipulator with suction support device.” 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 explained how an underwater device patented in January 1965 particularly related 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 noted. “Many of the wells are being drilled in water up to 600 feet deep, a depth greater than divers can safely work.”

The inventor added 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.”

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

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.

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.

Shatto will also lead in the development of “drilling without anchors” – the Sedco-445, considered ”the world’s first dynamic positioning oil exploration drillship.”

Swimming Socket Wrench

Hughes Aircraft Company built the first marine MOBOT for Shell Oil, using sonar and television cameras for navigation, propellers for propulsion, and an umbilical cable for control.

With a mechanical arm, it could turn bolts, operate valves and attach control hoses and guide lines.

“It was basically a swimming socket wrench,” said a Shell engineer, describing the 14-foot, 7,000-pound underwater robot.

Because of the necessity to pay traditional divers to rescue entangled MOBOTs, early models also became known as “a diver’s best friend.”

Nonetheless, Shell successfully used a MOBOT on a wildcat well in 250 feet of water off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, in October 1962. Over the next 10 years, MOBOTs worked on 24 offshore wells – operating to depths of 1,000 feet for extended periods.

Military Technologies

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy developed its own deep-sea technology for both submarine rescue and antisubmarine purposes. In 1963, the nuclear attack submarine USS Thresher sank with the loss of all hands 220 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass.

The Navy’s CURV I (Cable-Controlled Underwater Recovery Vehicle) recovers a lost nuclear bomb from the Mediterranean in 1966 near Palomares, Spain.

The only vehicle capable of reaching a depth of 8,400 feet was the Navy’s manned bathyscaph Trieste, which found and photographed the wreckage. Unfortunately, Trieste had little capability to retrieve objects.

In January 1966 near the coast of Spain, a U.S. Air Force B-52 collided with its refueling tanker, scattering debris and four 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs over the Spanish coast. Three of the nuclear bombs were recovered on land, but the fourth was lost in the Mediterranean Sea.

With a combination of divers and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s manned submersible, Alvin, the missing atomic bomb was located at a depth of 2,850 feet. To retrieve it, the Navy employed its new CURV I (Cable-Controlled Underwater Recovery Vehicle), which snagged the bomb and pulled it to the surface.

The worldwide publicity of the Palomares incident briefly elevated the visibility of marine robotics, but they largely remained submerged in military, scientific, and offshore oil applications.

Secret of the Titanic Discovery

In 1986, Robert Ballard brought the manned submersible Alvin, above, to the wreck of the Titanic. He also utilized an ROV — a fiber optic “tethered eyeball.”

In 1982, oceanographer and former naval intelligence officer Robert Ballard, in search of Titanic, approached the U.S .Navy as a possible source of funding.

The Navy cared little for the Titanic, but was very interested in developing Ballard’s fiber optic video system for deep sea survey and its potential to examine the debris fields of Thresher and Scorpion.

With Navy support and his highly classified mission presented to the public only as “a search for Titanic,” Ballard’s Argo surveyed and photographed both submarine wrecks, yielding invaluable data to his covert sponsors.

Completing the secret mission’s final objectives with 12 days to spare, Ballard’s team used Argo to find the wreck of  Titanic on September 1, 1985, to worldwide acclaim. For 73 years Titanic had remained hidden at a depth of 12,460 feet.

A year later, Ballard brought the Woods Hole veteran deep-diving manned submersible, Alvin, to the Titanic.  Then, for the first time, the public was able to see deeper into Titanic’s ghostly decks through the fiber optic eyes of Jason Jr., and later, Hercules, two increasingly sophisticated ROVs that brought the technology to prime-time television.

Offshore Petroleum Production

While such “Eyeball Class” ROVs were well suited for marine archeology, observation and inspection, the demands of deep offshore oil production demanded further development of heavy “Work Class” ROVs that could be equipped with a variety of tools.

Today, such ROVs can weigh ten thousand pounds, lift over one thousand, and operate at 10,000 foot depths. The petroleum industry is the principle user of this class of ROV.  Further offshore exploration is prompting yet a new generation of marine robotics – the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) which abandons the use of a physical cable connection to the mother ship.

ROVs are used most widely in the offshore petroleum industry.

Defined as “a crewless, non-tethered submersible which operates independent of direct human control,” AUVs make detailed maps of seabed topography and hazards that could impact proposed oil and natural gas offshore infrastructure.

Modern, survey class AUVs remain an emerging offshore technology – separated from Howard Hughes’ simple MOBOT by only 50 years.

Also see “Petroleum Survey finds U-166.”

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January 7, 1905 – Discovery of Humble Oil Field leads to Major Oil Company

Standard Oil of New Jersey will acquire a 50 percent interest in Humble in 1919.

The Humble oil field in Harris County, Texas, is discovered by C. E. Barrett. His Beatty No. 2 well will yield 8,500 barrels a day and launch an oil boom.

The small community of Humble will grow from 700 to 20,000 in a few  months. Overall production from the field – the largest in Texas for the year 1905 –  reaches almost 16 million barrels of oil.

Natural gas had been discovered on “Moonshine Hill” in October 1904 by Higgins Oil and Fuel Company. Early reports of natural gas seepage in the area were not uncommon in the late 19th century.

According to a 1972 historical marker in downtown Humble, the oil field leads to the creation of the Humble Oil and Refining Company in 1911 by a group of its operators, including Ross Sterling, a future governor of Texas.

“Production from several strata here exceeded the total for fabulous Spindletop by 1946,” the marker notes. “Known as the greatest salt dome field, Humble still produces and the town for which it was named continues to thrive.”

Humble Oil Company will consolidate operations with Standard Oil of New Jersey, eventually leading to Exxon and today’s ExxonMobil. Read the rest of this entry »

A good cable-tool man is just about the most highly skilled worker you’ll find.

In 1909, wildcatter Howard Robard Hughes Sr. was granted two U.S. patents on a drilling bit “that created the cornerstone of Hughes Tool Company, revolutionizing the oil industry.”

Besides having a feel for the job, knowing what’s going on thousands of feet under the ground just from the movement of the cable, he’s got to be something of a carpenter, a steam-fitter, an electrician, and a damned good mechanic.

A cable tool driller knows more knots and splices than any six sailors you can find. – From a 1939 interview in “Voices from the Oilfield” by Paul Lambert and Kenny Franks.

Making Hole

Drilling or “making hole” began long before oil or natural gas were anything more than flammable curiosities found seeping from the ground.

For centuries, digging by hand or shovel was the best technologies that existed to pry into the earth’s secrets. Oil seeps provided a balm for injuries. Natural gas seeps – when ignited – created folklore and places called “burning springs.”

The Chinese drilled with bamboo spring poles as early as 450 A.D.

Drilling technology advanced when the spring pole harnessed the resiliency of a bent tree to assist in pummeling a hole into the ground to find water.

Ancient histories record the technique, which is still used in some corners of the world. While repeatedly kicking down a stirrup was primitive and slow, the spring pole’s rope and chisel were practical drilling technologies.

Salt was an essential commodity for preserving food and extracting it from brine was a simple process. In 1802 in what is now West Virginia, salt brine drillers David and Joseph Ruffner took 18-months to drill through 40 feet of bedrock to a total depth of 58 feet using a spring pole.

The Ruffner brothers’ tools for their spring pole probably consisted of a manila line — and a variety of chisels.

The Ruffner brothers drilling ingenuity and innovation made the Kanawha River Valley a major salt manufacturing and distribution center in the early 1800s. Many early drilling technologies were developed there.

“The Ruffner brothers’ well was the first well known to have been ‘drilled,’ as distinct from ‘dug,’ in the Western Hemisphere,” notes J.E. Brantly in the History of Oil Well Drilling. The well’s historic significance rests on the “development of well drilling tools and practices, which became almost immediately standard equipment used by many other well drillers in the new salt industry.”

There was money to be made from brine wellss. The rapidly growing number of settlers in the frontier needed a lot of salt to preserve food. However, sometimes a good well would be fouled with the intrusion of unsought and unwanted oil. The rainbow sheen and pungent smell of oil was bad news to brine drillers.

Chiseling a Hole with Cable Tools

A detailed model of a late 19th century standard cable-tool drilling rig.

The advent of cable-tool drilling introduced the wooden derrick into the changing American landscape. Using the same basic notion of chiseling a hole deeper and deeper into the earth, but adding the miracle of steam power and clever mechanical engineering, wells could be drilled far more efficiently.

Frequent stops were needed to remove the chipped-away rock and other material, bail out water – and sharpen the bit. Bull wheels and hemp rope repeatedly hoisted and dropped heavy iron drill strings and a curious variety of bits deep into the borehole. Oil was still an adversary to those in search of either fresh water or brine.

However, savvy businessmen like the Ruffner brothers and Samuel Kier of Tarentum, Pennsylvania, learned to profit from this oil.

It had long been recognized that oil could be collected and used as a medicine, lubricant, and even a foul-smelling, smoky illuminant. American Indians gathered oil by using blankets to soak it up from natural seeps. The Ruffner brothers sold their oil to marketers of patent medicines and lubrication products.

Oil from natural seeps had been used as a balm by Native Americans. In 1848, Samuel Kier bottled and sold “Rock Oil” proclaiming its “Wonderful Medical Virtues.”

A decade before the birth of the petroleum industry, Samuel Kier of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania., sold 50-cent, half-pint bottles of Pennsylvania “Rock Oil” proclaiming its “Wonderful Medical Virtues.”

Kier’s advertisements featured wooden cable-tool derricks drilling brine wells.

When a Yale chemist, Benjamin Silliman, found that oil could be distilled into a kerosene illuminant, the world changed forever. Inspired entrepreneurs formed the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company with the idea of using cable tool drilling to extract oil they hoped to find near Pennsylvania’s known oil seeps at Oil Creek near Titusville. It worked, and the petroleum age was born.

Kier soon abandoned his patent medicine and went into the kerosene refining business, buying all the oil he could get.

Edwin L. Drake’s August 27, 1859, discovery of commercial quantities of oil at 69. 5 feet brought America’s first drilling boom — and virtually created an industry. Soon, cable-tool rigs were everywhere, pounding into the earth, searching for oil. In June 1860, J.C. Rathbone used a steam engine to power a rig and produced a 100-barrel-per-day producer at 140 feet in what is now West Virginia.

In Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, the soft soil yielded to cable-tool drilling. But further west, oilmen found resistant rock strata that made drilling far more difficult.

Rotary Rigs cut Faster, Deeper

Rotary drilling introduced the hollow drill stem that enabled broken rock debris to be washed out of the borehole.

A new technology answered the call of necessity and the lure of opportunity. Rotary drilling is most often associated with the spectacular 1901 Spindletop Hill discovery near Beaumont, Texas.

Instead of the repetitive lift and drop of heavy cable-tool bits, rotary drilling introduced the hollow drill stem that enabled broken rock debris to be washed out of the borehole with re-circulated mud while the rotating drill bit cut deeper.

Rotary drilling uses fluids (drilling mud) to circulate out the rock as it is chipped away. The fluid washes out the drill hole as it goes, making the process more efficient. By applying downward pressure, drilling mud also stops an oil well from bursting forth unexpectedly – the dangerous and wasteful gushers.

Meanwhile, grinding their way through layers of rock rather than pounding, the heavy fishtail bits made history. Rotary rigs soon became the preferred means of drilling for oil, although to this day they still share the oil patch with a few cable-tool rigs.

The record depth recorded for a cable-tool rig is 11,145 feet. On Russia’s Kola Peninsula, a rotary rig reached more than 40,000 feet after ten years of drilling.

The Duel Cones of Howard Hughes Sr.

Howard Hughes Jr. will greatly expand the petroleum service company fortune created by his father, who paid $150 for the rights to the roller bit.

Fishtail bits became obsolete in 1909 when Howard Hughes Sr. introduced the twin-cone roller bit. History remembers several men who were trying to develop better drill bit technologies, but it was Hughes who made it happen.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) notes that about the same time Hughes developed his bit, Granville A. Humason of Shreveport, La., patented the first cross-roller rock bit, the forerunner of the Reed cross-roller bit.

By 1934, Hughes had patented a three-cone bit, an enduring design that remains much the same today. Rotary drilling revolutionized the search for oil by allowing deeper wells through harder rock formations.

More innovations followed. Frank Christensen and George Christensen developed the earliest diamond bit in the 1941. The tungsten carbide tooth came into use in the early 1950s. The company Hughes founded would merge in 1987 with one founded in 1927 by Carl Baker (Baker Oil Tool).

In 1990, Baker Hughes purchased the Christensen company, which in 1992 resulted in the first rolling cone bit company and first diamond bit company becoming today’s Hughes Christensen, a Baker Hughes company.

Editor’s Note – Biographers note that Howard Hughes Sr. met Granville Humason in a Shreveport bar, where Humason sold his roller bit rights to Hughes for $150. The University of Texas’ Center for American History has a rare 1951 recording of Humason’s recollections of that chance meeting. Humason recalls he spent $50 of his sale proceeds at the bar during the balance of the evening.

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To learn more about early petroleum technologies, see “All Pumped Up — Production Technology.”

December 26, 1905 – Nellie Bly patents the 55-Gallon Drum

Nellie Bly – well known in her day as a journalist for the New York World newspaper – is issued a U.S. patent for the “metal barrel” that will become today’s 55-gallon steel drum.

Nellie Bly, known worldwide for her exploits as a reporter for the New York World, was issued a U.S. patent on December 26, 1905 — for the “Metal Barrel” that would become today’s standard 55-gallon steel drum.

Patent No. 808,327 is assigned to Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman, better known as Nellie Bly, the most famous woman journalist of her day – who is also president of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company.

An 1890 photograph of Nellie Bly.

Bly’s company, which produces milk cans, boilers, enamel ware, and dozens of other steel products, will manufacture early versions of the “metal barrel” that becomes the now ubiquitous 55-gallon steel drum.

After marrying wealthy industrialist Robert Seaman in 1894, Bly’s invention begins with a 1904 visit to Europe, where she first sees glycerin containers made of steel. Read more in “The Remarkable Nellie Bly.”

“I determined to make steel containers for the American trade,” she recalls. “My first experiment leaked and the second was defective because the solder gave way, and then I brazed them with the result that the liquid inside was ruined by the brazing metal.”

Bly perfected her technique. “I finally worked out the steel package to perfection, patented the design, put it on the market and taught the American public to use the steel barrel,” she explains.

Soon she would proudly claim, “I am the only manufacturer in the country who can produce a certain type of steel barrel for which there is an immense demand at present, for the transportation of oil, gasoline, and other liquids.” Read the rest of this entry »

A handful of America’s earliest oilmen met in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and agreed that henceforth, 42 gallons would constitute a “barrel” of oil. It was August 1866 and Pennsylvania led the world in oil production. Read the rest of this entry »

Veteran oilman George W. Strake Sr. made a major discovery eight miles southeast of Conroe, Texas, in December 1931. His wildcat well would prove historic in many ways.

Although the Conroe well’s producing sands proved to be dangerously gas-charged, shallow and unstable, the giant oil field – the third largest in the United States at the time - soon had 60 successful wells producing more than 65,000 of barrels of oil a day. The region north of Houston boomed as the Great Depression worsened.

Disaster came in January 1933 when one of the wells blew out and erupted into flame. The runaway well cratered – completely swallowing nearby drilling rigs. Read the rest of this entry »

December 10, 1844 – “Coal Oil Johnny” adopted

“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele

The future “Coal Oil Johnny” is adopted as an infant by Culbertson and Sarah McClintock. John Steels is adopted along with his sister, Permelia, and brought home to the McClintock farm on the banks of Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.

The petroleum boom prompted by Edwin Drake’s discovery 15 years later – America’s first commercial oil well – will lead to the widow McClintock making a fortune in royalties. She leaves the money to her only surviving child, Johnny, when she dies in a kitchen fire in 1864. At age 20, he inherits $24,500 – and $2,800 a day in royalties.

“Coal Oil Johnny” Steele will earn his name in 1865 after such a legendary year of extravagance that years later the New York Times will report: “In his day, Steele was the greatest spender the world had ever known…he threw away $3,000,000 in less than a year.”

Read more in “Legend of ‘Coal Oil Johnny.’” Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the first of a series of nuclear denotations conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission to test the feasibility of using nuclear explosions to release natural gas trapped in dense shale deposits. This is “fracking,” late 1960s style.  

In December 1967, government scientists – exploring the peacetime use of controlled atomic explosions – detonate Gasbuggy, a 29-kiloton nuclear device they had lowered into a natural gas well in rural New Mexico. The Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kilotons.

Scientists lower a 13-foot by 18-inches diameter nuclear warhead into a well in New Mexico. The experimental 29-kiloton Project Gasbuggy device will be detonated at a depth of 4,240 feet. Los Alamos Lab photo.

Project Gasbuggy included experts from the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Mines and El Paso Natural Gas Company. Near three low-production natural gas wells, the team drilled to a depth of 4,240 feet – and lowered a 13-foot-long by 18-inch-wide nuclear device into the borehole. Read the rest of this entry »

December 4, 1928 – First Oil Discovery using Reflection Seismography 

A monument in Seminole, Oklahoma, commemorates the December 4, 1928, birth of reflection seismography, a vital petroleum exploration technology.

A new and revolutionary oil field technology is applied for the first time near Seminole, Oklahoma.

Amerada Petroleum Corporation drills into the Viola limestone formation to bring in the first oil well from a geological structure identified by reflection seismography.

This seismic survey, executed by Amerada Petroleum’s subsidiary Geophysical Research, uses technology that evolved from the early seismic experiments of Reginald Fessenden, Ludger Mintrop – and renowned Oklahoma physicist John C. Karcher. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1883, tales of a fabled “tar spring” may have inspired a wildcatter – Pennsylvanian Mike Murphy – to drill Wyoming’s first oil well.

A Salt Creek, Wyoming, oil boom begins in 1908. Production continues today thanks to new technologies.

In 1837, Washington Irving published The Adventures of Captain Bonneville: or, Scenes beyond the Rocky Mountains of the Far West. Eastern readers were spellbound by Capt. Benjamin Bonneville’s four-year expedition, encounters with Indians, and detailed accounts of life on the fur-trapping trail.

In the unforgiving lands that would one day become the Wyoming Territory, Bonneville traveled down the Popo Agie River and in 1832 made note of a natural resource that would one day bring a new industry to the state of Wyoming:

“In this neighborhood, the captain made search for ‘the great Tar Spring,’ one of the wonders of the mountains, the medicinal properties of which he had heard extravagantly lauded by the trappers. After a toilsome search, he found it at the foot of a sand-bluff, a little east of the Wind River Mountains, where it exuded in a small stream of the color and consistency of tar. Read the rest of this entry »

Wartime planners knew that following D-Day – June 6, 1944 – Allied forces would need vast quantities of petroleum to continue the advance into Europe. Allied leaders also knew that petroleum tankers trying to reach French ports would be vulnerable to Luftwaffe attacks.

The secret pipeline mission used a popular Walt Disney character for its logo.

To prevent fuel shortages from stalling the Normandy invasion, a top-secret “Operation PLUTO” – Pipe Line Under The Ocean – became the Allied strategy. It would fuel victory and help change the petroleum industry.

Although by 1942 the industry had laid thousands of pipe miles of across all manner of terrain, to span the English Channel would require an unprecedented leap in technology. The channel was deep, the French ports distant, and the hazards unpredictable. In great secrecy, two approaches were developed. Read the rest of this entry »

New York chemist Robert Chesebrough will find a way to purify the waxy paraffin-like substance that clogged oil wells in early Pennsylvania petroleum fields.

Few associate 1860s oil wells with women’s smiling faces, but they are fashionably related.

This is the story of how the goop that accumulates around an oil well’s sucker-rod first made its way to the eyelashes of American women.

In 1865, a 22-year-old chemist left the prolific oil fields of Titusville, Pennsylvania, to return to his Brooklyn laboratory and experiment with a waxy substance that clogged well-heads.

Cosmetic industry giant Maybeline can traces its roots to a patent for purifying petroleum.

Within a few years Robert Augustus Chesebrough would patent a method that turned the paraffin-like goop into a balm he called “petroleum jelly.”

In 1872, he patented his new product as “Vaseline.”

Even before America’s first oil well was drilled in Pennsylvania, Chesebrough was in the “coal oil” business in Brooklyn, New York. His expertise was in the reduction of cannel coal into kerosene – a much in demand illuminant.

Chesebrough knew of the process for refining oil into kerosene, so when Edwin L. Drake’s August 27, 1859, discovery launched the American petroleum industry, he was one of many who rushed to the Titusville oil fields to make his fortune.

Scientific American reported, “Now commenced a scene of excitement beyond description. The Drake Well was immediately thronged with visitors arriving from the surrounding country, and within two or three weeks thousands began to pour in from the neighboring States.” Read the rest of this entry »

Building a community oil museum is not for the faint of heart.

“Money and volunteers, volunteers and money,” are the biggest challenges, according to John Larrabee, board president for the Illinois Oil Field Museum and Resource Center on the outskirts of his hometown of Oblong, Illinois.

The Illinois Oil Field Museum is located in Oblong, Illinois, on Highway 33, southeast of Effingham. First opened in 1961, the community museum moved into a new building in 2001 and today continues to add new exhibits.

“The first thing you have to have is a goal and the determination to keep at it, no matter what. Don’t give up, whatever happens,” Larrabee explained in a 2004 interview with historical society Contributing Editor Kris Wells.

It helps to know something about the oil business, said the third generation Illinois Basin oilman. “The museum began way back in 1961 with a fellow named Enos Bloom, Larrabee noted. “In those days, the city of Oblong provided and maintained a building that housed donated artifacts.” Read the rest of this entry »

Petroleum companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico’s outer continental shelf are required to provide detailed sonar data in areas that have archaeological potential.

Several federal agencies today review about 1,700 oil and natural gas company surveys every year. The surveys have revealed more than 100 historic shipwrecks. In 2001, scientists at the Minerals Management Service noted that “a German submarine definitely got our attention.” Read the rest of this entry »

February 28, 1935 – Nylon is World’s First Synthetic Fiber

The world’s first synthetic fiber – nylon – is discovered by a former Harvard professor working at a DuPont Corporation research laboratory. Later called Nylon 6 by scientists, the revolutionary product comes from chemicals found in petroleum.

Wallace Carothers had experimented with artificial materials for more than six years. He previously discovered neoprene rubber (commonly used in wetsuits) and made major contributions to understanding polymers – molecules composed in long chains.

DuPont names the new petroleum product nylon – although chemists call it Nylon 6 because the adipic acid and hexamethylene diamine each contain 6 carbon atoms per molecule. Strong and durable petroleum-based polymer products like nylon are in common daily use throughout the world.

Just 32-years-old, Carothers creates fibers when he combines the chemicals amine, hexamethylene diamine, and adipic acid. He forms a polymer chain using a process in which individual molecules join together with water as a byproduct. But the fibers are weak, explains a PBS series, A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries.

“Carothers’ breakthrough came when he realized the water produced by the reaction was dropping back into the mixture and getting in the way of more polymers forming,” notes the PBS website. “He adjusted his equipment so that the water was distilled and removed from the system. It worked!” Read the rest of this entry »

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.” Read the rest of this entry »

Detailed illustrations tell the story of the industry’s remarkable heritage in Oil and Natural Gas – an excellent book from the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Discovering the story of petroleum – and the many ways it shapes the world – is the theme of this illustrated guide to the industry’s past, present and future. Read the rest of this entry »

More than 4,500 offshore petroleum platforms supply 25 percent of the United States’ production of natural gas and 10 percent of its oil. Thanks to a program begun two decades ago, today’s offshore production benefits both the economy and the environment.

Rigs to Reefs is a program in which offshore structures that are no longer producing remain in the marine environment. Today, they form the world’s largest artificial reef complex.

This is a Gulf of Mexico success story, notes an article in Ocean Science, the Minerals Management Service quarterly magazine. Rigs to Reefs is a program in which offshore structures that are no longer producing remain in the marine environment. Today, they form the world’s largest artificial reef complex.

Offshore platforms are a good choice for artificial reefs. Their size and open design attract fish — and divers — where they can swim easily through the circulating water.

Although Rigs to Reefs developed as an official policy in the mid-1980s, the concept was first explored in 1979. The National Artificial Reef Plan paved the way for government-endorsed artificial reef projects.

The first planned conversion took place in 1979 with the re-location of an Exxon experimental subsea structure from offshore Louisiana to an artificial reef site off Apalachicola, Florida.

In 1984, the National Fishing Enhancement Act established national artificial reef standards.

MMS then developed policies encouraging the reuse of obsolete offshore petroleum structures – requiring compliance with standards of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the criteria in the National Artificial Reef Plan of 1985, which allowed states to plan, construct, and manage artificial reefs. Read the rest of this entry »