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 »

February 13, 1924 – Forest Oil incorporates

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

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

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

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

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

February 8, 1836 – Natural Gas lights Philadelphia

Philadelphia Gas Works lamp.

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

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

Learn more about the early natural gas industry in “Indiana Natural Gas Boom.” Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 9, 1862 – American Oil arrives in London

In 1862, a U.S. brig arrives in London with a cargo of oil from the booming Pennsylvania oilfields.

America exports oil for the first time when the brig Elizabeth Watts arrives at London’s Victoria dock after a six-week voyage from Philadelphia. The vessel carries 901 barrels of oil and 428 barrels of kerosene from the booming oilfields of Oil Creek, Pennsylvania.

No ship has ever crossed the Atlantic bearing such cargo. In America, anxious sailors had feared the vessel would explode before casting off on November 19, 1861. The shippers are the highly successful Philadelphia import-export firm of Peter Wright & Sons, which since its founding in 1818 has prospered transporting “china, glass, and Queensware” among other commodities.

Within a year Philadelphia will export 239,000 barrels of oil – without the technology of railroad tank cars or “tanker” ships. America will become a net importer of oil in 1948. Read the rest of this entry »

January 2, 1866 – Patent advances Drilling Technology

An innovative 1866 patent includes a roller bit using "rapid rotary motion," which presages modern rotary drilling technologies.

An  “Improvement in Rock Drills” patent is filed that for the first time includes all the basic elements of modern rotary rigs and notes that its “peculiar construction is particularly adapted for boring deep wells.”

Peter Sweeney of New York City is granted Patent No. 51,902, which describes the basic elements of rotary rigs and improves upon an 1844 British patent by Robert Beart. Sweeney’s patent includes a roller bit with replaceable cutting wheels such “that by giving the head a rapid rotary motion the wheels cut into the ground or rock and a clean hole is produced.”

“The drill-rod is hollow, and it connects with a hose through which a current of steam or water can be introduced in such a manner that the discharge of the dirt and dust from the bottom of the hole is facilitated,” it further specifies.

Almost 40 years later, rotary drilling will revolutionize the industry when Capt. Anthony Lucas brings in the 1901 Spindletop gusher with a rotary rig.

Learn more at “Making Hole — Drilling Technology.”

Read the rest of this entry »

December 26, 1905 – Nelly 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. Her invention begins with a visit to Europe, where she first sees glycerin containers made of steel.

“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. I finally worked out the steed package to perfection, patented the design, put it on the market and taught the American public to use the steel barrel.”

Bly 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.”

See “The Remarkable Nellie Bly.” To learn more petroleum history, see “The 42-Gallon Oil Barrel.”

Read the rest of this entry »

December 20, 1913 – “Prince of Petroleum” opens Tulsa Refinery

The Tulsa refinery built by Joshua Cosden in 1913 continues to operate today.

A refinery built by Joshua Seney Cosden – who will become known as the “Prince of Petroleum” –  goes on stream in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With a capacity of 30,000 barrels a day, his refinery is among the largest in the country. It continues operating today.

The Cosden Oil Refinery is the oilman’s second. He builds on his success by forming companies that acquire and transport oil to the refineries. Cosden is said to have amassed a fortune of $50 million. He soon owns luxurious homes in New York, Florida and Rhode Island — as well as a stable of thoroughbred race horses, his own railroad car and a yacht.

However, in 1925 Cosden loses control of his petroleum assets to the Mid-Continent Oil Company. Although he will make another $15 million in the oilfields of West Texas, he loses everything during the Great Depression. Cosden dies at 59 in 1940. His Tulsa refinery continues today as a part of the Dallas-based Holly Corporation, which in 2011 merged with Frontier and changed its name to HollyFrontier.

December 20, 1951 – First Oil Discovery in Washington State

Oil is discovered in Washington when an exploratory well in Grays Harbor County flows at 35 barrels a day. It proves uneconomical. By 2010, more than 600 wells have been drilled – with only one commercial success…in 1959.

Washington's only commercial well is plugged in 1961 after yielding only 12,500 barrels of oil.

The Hawksworth Gas and Oil Development Company discovers the oil with its Tom Hawksworth-State No. 4 well near Ocean City, Washington. The well flows at 35 barrels a day with 300,000 cubic feet of natural gas from a depth of 3,711 feet. It is soon abandoned as non-commercial.

Eight years later, in 1967, Sunshine Mining Company reopens the well and deepens it to 4,532 feet in an effort to develop commercial production — but with only intermittent shows of oil and natural gas the well is shut in again.

Although 600 wells are drilled in 24 counties by 2010, only one produces commercial quantities of oil – the Medina No. 1, completed by Sunshine Mining in 1959 about 600-yards north of the failed Hawksworth-State site. That well, Washington’s only commercial producer, is closed in 1961 after yielding 12,500 barrels of oil.

For the early discoveries and other facts about the other petroleum-producing states, see “State Energy Education Contacts.”

December 21, 1842 – Birth of a Boom Town “Aero View” Artist

“Bird’s Eye View” — or “Aero View” — panoramic maps artist Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler is born. Following the fortunes of America’s early petroleum industry, he will produce hundreds of unique maps of the earliest oilfield towns of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas.

More than 400 Thaddeus Fowler panoramas have been identified by the Library of Congress, including this detail of the booming oil town of Sistersville, West Virginia, published in 1896.

Fowler is perhaps the most prolific of the dozens of bird’s-eye view artists who crisscrossed the country during the latter three decades of the nineteenth century, notes the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.

“He produced at least 17 views of different Texas cities in 1890 and 1891, but that output is dwarfed by his production of almost 250 views of Pennsylvania between 1872 and 1922,” explains the museum’s “Texas Bird’s-Eye Views” exhibit.

Oil City, Pennsylvania, prospered soon after the 1859 oil discovery -- considered America's first -- at nearby Titusville. Thaddeus Fowler published his maps of both communities in the 1890s.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the Civil War Fowler served in the 21st New York Volunteers. He was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862 and discharged at Boston in 1863. His panoramic maps became a hugely popular cartographic form used to depict towns and cities in great detail. Created without the use of observation balloons, they were marketed as “aero views.”

Fowler featured many of Pennsylvania’s oil earliest oilfield towns, including Titusville and Oil City — along with the booming oil community of Sistersville in the new state of West Virginia.

He gained his commissions by interesting citizens and civic groups in the idea of a panoramic map of their community. After one town had agreed to having a map made, he often sought to involve neighboring towns — exploiting their sense of community pride.

Fowler traveled through Oklahoma and North Texas in 1890 and 1891 similarly documenting such cities such as Wichita Falls, Texas, Bartlesville and Tulsa, Oklahoma. In total, he produced 426 views — the most of any panoramic artist. He dies in 1922 at the age of 80. Read more in “Oil Town Aero Views.”

December 21, 1922 – API creates Standards Committee

The board of directors of the American Petroleum Institute (API Standards) creates a committee to investigate, develop, and approve standards for the manufacture of oilfield and refinery equipment. The first technical standards are issued two years later.

December 22, 1875 – President seeks Asphalt for Pennsylvania Avenue

President Ulysses S. Grant urges Congress to repave Pennsylvania Avenue’s badly deteriorated plank boards with asphalt.

President Ulysses S. Grant first directed that Pennsylvania Avenue be paved with Trinidad bitumen in 1876. Thirty-one years later, asphalt derived from petroleum distillation was used to repave the famed pathway to the Capitol, above.

Grant delivers a “Report of the Commissioners Created by the Act Authorizing the Repavement of Pennsylvania Avenue” to Congress.

The project will cover 54,000 square yards. “Brooms, lutes, squeegees and tampers were used in what was a highly labor-intensive process.”

With work completed in the spring of 1877, the asphalt – obtained from a naturally occurring bitumen lake found on the island of Trinidad — will last more than 10 years. In 1907, the road to the Capitol will be repaved again with new and far superior asphalt made from petroleum.

By 2005, the Federal Highway Administration reports that more than 2.6 million miles of America’s roads are paved. See “Asphalt Paves the Way.”

December 22, 1975 – Birth of Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage facilities are connected to commercial pipeline networks and marine terminal facilities. The Department of Energy's St. James Terminal, above, is on about 173 acres 30 miles southwest of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is established when President Gerald Ford signs the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Today, the 727-million-barrel U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency oil in the world.

In addition to creating SPR, the 1975 legislation mandated increasing automobile fuel efficiency through a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard mileage goal of 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985.

SPR was a revolutionary idea in 1974, notes the Suburban Emergency Management Project.

When the newly created Department of Energy assumed management in 1977, “it was generally believed that the mere existence of a large, operational reserve of crude oil would deter future oil cutoffs and would discourage the use of oil as a weapon.”

SPR today includes five large underground caverns — naturally occurring salt domes near the U.S. Gulf Coast in both Louisiana and Texas.

December 23, 1927 – Bad Santa of Cisco, Texas

A Cisco, Texas, man disguises himself as Santa Claus and attempts to rob a bank.

Adding to the lore of Cisco, Texas — near the 1917 “Roaring Ranger” oilfield and the boom town where Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel — a man disguised as Santa Claus makes an ill-fated attempt to rob a local bank two days before Christmas.

In the former oil boomtown of Cisco in Eastland County, Marshall Ratliff dons a Santa Claus disguise and tries to rob the town’s First National Bank with three armed accomplices. A running gun battle with police and citizens ensues, leaving more than a dozen wounded and eight dead before Ratliff is captured. He later kills a guard and escapes. Recaptured, a mob strings him up from a utility pole. When the first rope breaks, they hang him again. Read more about the Ranger oilfield and Cisco’s colorful history in “Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel.”

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society is a 501 (c)-3 nonprofit program dedicated to preserving the history of U.S. oil and natural gas exploration by providing advocacy for organizations that work to preserve that history through exhibition, material preservation – and especially educational programming.

Please support this unique energy education mission with a 100 percent tax-deductible donation.

December 13, 1905 – Hybrids evolve as “End of Oil” predicted

One of the world's earliest hybrids, a 1902 Porsche used a gasoline engine to generate electricity to power electric motors mounted on the front wheel hubs, above.

“The available supply of gasoline, as is well known, is quite limited, and it behooves the farseeing men of the motor car industry to look for likely substitutes,” declares Thomas J. Fay in an article for Horseless Age that presages “end of oil” fears.

The Horseless Age, a monthly journal first published in 1895 and “devoted to the interests of the automotive industry,” describes the earliest motor technologies, including the use of compressed air propulsion systems, electric cars, steam, and diesel power — as well as hybrids.

As early as 1902, Ferdinand Porsche’s Mixte uses a small four-cylinder gasoline engine to generate electricity – but not to turn its wheels. The engine powers two three-horsepower electric motors mounted in the Mixte’s front wheel hubs that can briefly surge to seven horsepower and carry the vehicle to a top speed of 50 mph.

This hybrid system is resurrected more than 100 years later with Chevrolet’s introduction of the Volt.

“In this system an electric generator or dynamo is coupled direct to the petrol motor, and the current furnished is employed to operate electric motors which drive the car,” notes one expert in 1905. The Horseless Age will cease publication in 1918. Read about automotive technologies in “Cantankerous Combustion — First U.S. Auto Show” and “The Blue Flame — Natural Gas Rocket Car.”

December 13, 1931 – Discovery of the Conroe, Texas, Oilfield

In 2010, George W. Strake Jr. accepted a "Houston Legends" award honoring his father, who discovered the Conroe oilfield in 1931.

George W. Strake Sr. brings in the South Texas Development Company No. 1 well eight miles southeast of Conroe, Texas, with a daily flow of 15 million cubic feet of natural gas and several hundred barrels of oil. Development continues and by the end of 1932 the field has 60 wells producing more than 65,000 of barrels of oil every day.

Strake’s legacy as an oilman and philanthropist is recognized at a November 2010 “Houston Legends” luncheon for his family sponsored by the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. Speakers acknowledge Strake’s character, community involvement — and his special place in petroleum history for discovering “the great Conroe oilfield, which by the time of Mr. Strake’s death (in 1969) had produced upwards of half a billion barrels.”

Disaster will strike Strake’s oilfield in 1933 when several wells collapse, erupt into flame, and later create a crater — a lake of oil. The crisis ends three months later thanks to relief wells drilled by George Failing and his newly patented truck-mounted drilling rig. Learn more about Failing and see his revolutionary truck at the Cherokee Strip Regional Heritage Center in Enid, Oklahoma.

Also see “Technology and the Conroe Crater.”

December 14, 1981 – Oil Search continues in Minnesota

Minnesota is not among the 33 states with oil or natural gas production, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

A dowser — using copper wires — claims to have located petroleum deposits in Nobles County, Minnesota, near the town of Ellsworth, reports the Minneapolis Tribune.

Despite the lack of geological evidence, a few locals invest $175,000 to drill a 1,145-foot well — but find no oil or natural gas. The Tribune also reports that a Murray County group has engaged a “Texas oilman and evangelist to lead a prayerful search for oil.”

The Minnesota Geological Survey reported in 1980 that of every 17 wells drilled in suitable geologic settings, 16 were dry holes and one noncommercial. By 1984, the survey concluded that “the geologic conditions for significant deposits of oil and gas do not exist in Minnesota.”

Minnesota remains among 17 states without petroleum production, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America. In 2009, the United States had 405,865 producing oil wells and 444,760 natural gas wells.

December 15, 1892 – Birth of Willie-Cries-For-War

Willie-Cries-For-War will launch a future governor's petroleum career.

Ponca Indian Willie-Cries-For-War is born In Oklahoma’s Indian Territory. Five years before his birth, the Dawes General Allotment Act enables reservation lands formerly held in common by tribe members to be broken into small allotments for individuals.

At age 19, Willie-Cries-For-War leases his 160-acre allotment to Ernest “E. W.” Marland for $1,000 per year and 12.5 cents per barrel of oil produced. He becomes very wealthy when Marland’s well near Ponca City comes in at 120 barrels a day and is quickly followed with other producers. Marland, considered a maverick by many oilmen of his day, was among the first to use geology as a tool to discover oil –and his methods proved to be effective.

Marland, who will become governor of Oklahoma in 1935, forms several companies, including the 101 Oil Company and the Kay County Gas Company, until consolidating all into the Marland Oil Company in 1921.

Bought by the Continental Oil Company in 1928, Marland’s company is now a part of ConocoPhillips history. Visit the E. W. Marland Mansion Estate, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977, in Ponca City. Also visit Ponca City’s Conoco Museum, which opened in 2007.

December 15, 1958 – Jack-Up Rig squeezes by Golden Gate Bridge

“Seemingly towering high above the deck of the Golden Gate Bridge, this ungainly barge with towering legs proceeds on its way towards the open sea,” notes an Associated Press photographer in San Francisco, California. “The craft, a 4,500-ton offshore mobile platform, said to be the world’s largest, had to lower its 270-foot towers 57 feet to squeeze under the bridge.”

An Associated Press photographer in San Francisco captures a jack-up rig in a "tight squeeze" as it passes beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The platform's 270-foot towers, lowered 57 feet to pass the bridge, will serve as legs reaching to the ocean floor.

The 1958 state-of-the-art offshore drilling platform’s towers — which will serve as legs reaching to the ocean floor — will be raised again after passing the bridge “to avoid grounding on the shallows before reaching the ocean,” the AP photographer notes.

The ancestors of today’s jack-up rig design can be traced to a World War II invention. Col. Leon B. DeLong of the Army Corps of Engineers develops it to support the D-Day landing.

In June 1944, the logistics of supplying troops put ashore on Omaha and Gold beaches include DeLong’s highly classified construction of artificial harbors, codenamed Mulberrys – employing barges with four retractable 60-foot pylons to provide platforms to support floating causeways that extended to the beaches. Tons of supplies and equipment came ashore in the massive effort.

The Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig Museum is a retired jack-up platform that features three floors of models and interactive displays.

After World War II, the DeLong-type platforms begin serving the U.S. petroleum industry as Modular Offshore Drilling Units. Exploration will move farther offshore, especially after a November 14, 1947, discovery — the first out of sight of land — by Kerr McGee Industries.

Within 10 years, in addition to tender-serviced platforms in shallow waters, jack-up rigs equipped with much larger pylons are operating to depths of more than 150 feet. By the end of 1949, 11 oil and natural gas fields have been  found in the Gulf of Mexico with 44 exploratory wells.

The Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig Museum in Galveston, Texas, is a retired jack-up drilling rig — with three floors of models and interactive displays educating visitors about the offshore oil and gas industry. Learn more about early offshore technologies in “Offshore Oil History.”

December 17, 1884 – MIT Newspaper describes Oilfield Firefighting

“Oil Fires, like Battles, are fought by Artillery” is the catchy phrase in an 1880s article. This rare photograph is from the collection of the Kansas Oil Museum in El Dorado.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology publishes a firsthand account of the problem of lightning strikes in America’s oilfields — and the technology used to extinguish burning oil tanks.

MIT’s student newspaper not only reports on the fiery results of an oilfield lightning strike, but also the practice of using artillery to fight such conflagrations.

“A Thunder-Storm in the Oil Country” notes that “it is usually desirable to let [oil] out of the tank to burn on the ground in thin layers; so small cannon throwing a three inch solid shot are kept at various stations throughout the region for this purpose.”

Today, several petroleum museums have a cannon on exhibit to educate visitors about this early firefighting technology, especially in the Great Plains, where frequent lightening strikes caused oil tank fires. See “Oilfield Artillery.”

December 17, 1903 – Fueling the First Flight

Powered by natural gas, a three-horsepower engine drives the overhead shaft and belts in the Wright Brothers' Dayton, Ohio, workshop.

A homemade engine burning no more than 50-octane marine gasoline powers Wilbur and Orville Wright’s 59-second flight into aviation history at Kittyhawk, North Carolina. The brothers’ genius “mechanician” Charlie Taylor has fabricated the 150-pound, 13-horsepower engine in their Dayton, Ohio, workshop.

“We didn’t make any drawings,” Taylor recalls. “One of us would sketch out the part we were talking about on a piece of scratch paper, and I’d spike the sketch over my bench. It took me six weeks to make that engine.”

The Wright brothers utilize natural gas for power in their workshop. A “one lunger” (single cylinder) three-horsepower natural gas engine drives the overhead shaft and belts that in turn power a turret lathe, drill press, and a rudimentary wind tunnel. Natural gas had reached the brothers’ printing business from Ohio’s Mercer County, about 50 miles northwest – in an area previously judged by the official state geologist to be “barren.”

Read about advances in high-octane aviation fuel in “Flight of the Woolaroc.”

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

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December 8, 1931 - Improved  Blow-Out Preventer patented

James Abercrombie's patent helps set a new standard in safe drilling operations during the Oklahoma City oilfield boom of the 1930s.

Drilling safety increases dramatically when James S. Abercrombie improves the Cameron Iron Works mechanically operated ram-type blowout preventer (BOP). Abercrombie patents a “Fluid Pressure Operated Blow Out Preventer” designed to be operated “instantaneously to prevent a blowout when an emergency arises.”

This hydraulic design, patent No. 1,834,922 (reissued in 1933), sets a new standard in safe drilling operations.

The new rapidly reacting BOP is first used during the Oklahoma City oilfield boom to help end an era of dangerous and wasteful gushers. Abercrombie’s patent improves upon the 1926 ram-type device he and machinist Harry S. Cameron first sketched out on the sawdust floor of Cameron’s machine shop in Humble, Texas.

This onshore BOP configuration is typical for a well drilled with a hole size greater than four inches diameter.

A BOP is a large valve that can seal off the wellhead. During drilling or well interventions, the valve may be closed if overpressure from an underground zone causes formation fluids such as oil or natural gas to enter the wellbore and threaten the rig. By closing this valve (usually operated remotely via hydraulic actuators), the drilling crew can prevent explosive pressure release, thus regaining control of the down-hole pressure.

Modern blowout preventers include not only ram-types employing steel cut off rams to seal the borehole as in Abercrombie’s patents, but also annular BOPs (Granville Knox – 1952) and spherical BOPs (Ado Vujasinovic – 1972) stacked for redundancy and capable of withstanding pressures of up to 20,000 pounds per square inch.

In 2003, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers recognizes the “Cameron Ram-Type Blowout Preventer” as an Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

James Abercrombie

“While several inventors unsuccessfully attempted to develop ways to control blowouts, it wasn’t until 1922 when oil driller James Smither Abercrombie (1891-1975) took his idea of a ram-type blowout preventer to machinist Harry S. Cameron (1872-1928). On the sawdust floor of Cameron’s machine shop in Humble, Texas, the two sketched out the details for the mechanical operated BOP, which was granted a patent in January 1926.”

Although the concept of rams closing around the drill pipe is still used today, modern BOPs look little like the original version and are far more powerful. Cameron’s original mechanically operated BOP today is exhibited at Cameron headquarters in Houston.

Read more in the article, “Ending Oil Gushers — BOP.”

December 9, 1921 – GM Scientists invent Ethyl “Anti-Knock” Gasoline

Public health concerns will result in the phase-out of tetraethyl lead in gasoline beginning in 1976.

General Motors scientists discover the antiknock properties of tetraethyl lead – and American motorists are soon saying “fill ‘er up with Ethyl.”

In early internal combustion engines, “knocking” resulted from the out-of-sequence detonation of the gasoline-air mixture in a cylinder. This shock frequently damaged the engine.

After five years of painstaking laboratory effort in pursuit of an additive to eliminate pre-ignition “knock” problems of gasoline, GM researchers Thomas Midgely Jr. and Charles F. Kettering discover the antiknock properties of tetraethyl lead. Their experiments examine the properties of knock suppressors such as bromine, iodine and tin — and compare these to new additives such as arsenic, sulfur, silicon and lead.

When the two men synthesize tetraethyl lead and try it in their one-cylinder laboratory engine, the knocking abruptly disappears. Although being diluted to a ratio of one part per thousand, the additive yields gasoline without the power-robbing knock. ”Ethyl,” the world’s first anti-knock gasoline containing a tetraethyl lead compound, goes on sale on February 2, 1923, at the Refiners Oil Company (later Sohio) service station on South Main Street in Dayton, Ohio.

However, the gasoline mixture’s danger to public health is underestimated. In the 1950s, geochemist Clair Patterson discovers the toxicity of tetraethyl lead; phase-out of its use in gasoline begins in 1976 and is completed by 1986. In 1996, EPA Administrator Carol Browner declares, “The elimination of lead from gas is one of the great environmental achievements of all time.”

See the related article, “Cantankerous Combustion — First U.S. Auto Show.”

December 10, 1844 – Legendary “Coal Oil Johnny” is Adopted

“Coal Oil Johnny” of Venango County, Pennsylvania.

Culbertson and Sarah McClintock adopt infant Johnny Steele – who will one day be known as “Coal Oil Johnny” – and his sister, Permelia, and bring them home to their farm on the banks of Oil Creek in Venango County, Pennsylvania.

The oil boom prompted by Edwin Drake’s oil discovery – America’s first commercial oil well – 15 years later makes the widow McClintock 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 his mother’s 200-acre farm with 20 producing wells yielding $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.”

The rise and fall of Coal Oil Johnny, who dies in modest circumstances in 1920 at age 76, will linger in petroleum history – giving rise to stereotypes J..R. Ewing, or the Beverly Hillbillies, or even John D. Rockefeller.

“For generations after the peak of his career, he was still so famous that any major oil strike, particularly like the epoch-marking one at Spindletop in Texas in 1901, brought his tales back to people’s lips,” notes an October 18, 2010, article, “The Legend of Coal Oil Johnny, America’s Great Forgotten Parable,” in the Atlantic magazine.

“Coal Oil Johnny was a legend and like all legends, he became a stand-in for a constellation of people, things, ideas, feelings and morals — in this case, about oil wealth and how it works,” notes the article. “He was the first great cautionary tale of the oil age — and his name would resound in popular culture for more than half a century after he made and lost his fortune in the 1860s.”

John Washington Steele’s Venango County home has been restored by Pennsylvania’s Oil Region Alliance.

December 10, 1967 – “Operation Gasbuggy” tests Nuclear Fracturing

Government scientists detonate an underground 29-kiloton nuclear warhead 55 miles east of Farmington, New Mexico, to test the feasibility of using nuclear explosions to stimulate release of natural gas trapped in dense shale deposits.

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

“Operation Gasbuggy” includes experts from the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Mines and El Paso Natural Gas Company. Near three low-production gas wells, the team drills to a depth of 4,240 feet and lowers a 13-foot by 18-inch diameter nuclear device into the borehole.

The 29-kiloton underground detonation was part of a bigger program begun in the late 1950s to explore the use of nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes.

The experimental explosion is part of Operation Plowshare, a program established by the Atomic Energy Commission in the late 1950s to explore the possible use of nuclear explosive devices for peaceful uses. The Hiroshima bomb is estimated to have been less than 18 kilotons.

The detonation creates a molten glass-lined cavern about 160 feet in diameter and 333 feet tall that collapses within seconds. Subsequent measurements indicate fractures extend more than 200 feet in all directions — and a significant increase in natural gas production. However, concerns about Tritium contamination put an end to the concept.

“There was no mushroom cloud, but on December 10, 1967, a nuclear bomb exploded less than 60 miles from Farmington,” explains historian Wade Nelson. “Today, all that remains at the site is a plaque warning against excavation and perhaps a trace of tritium in your milk,” he adds in his 1999 article, “Nuclear explosion shook Farmington.”

It was believed a nuclear device would provide "a bigger bang for the buck than nitroglycerin" for fracturing dense shales and releasing natural gas. Government researchers carried out dozens of experiments until 1975 -- setting off 35 nuclear detonations in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.

“Geologists had discovered years before that setting off explosives at the bottom of a well would shatter the surrounding rock and could stimulate the flow of oil and gas. It was believed a nuclear device would simply provide a bigger bang for the buck than nitroglycerine, up to 3,500 quarts of which would be used in a single shot,” Nelson explains.

The 1967 nuclear detonation reportedly led to the production of 295 million cubic feet of natural gas -- with Tritium contamination.

It was hoped nuclear stimulation of natural gas wells might result in the recovery of as much as ten times the amount of natural gas as was then being recovered and help relieve the nation’s energy crisis.

According to Wade, records indicate the Gasbuggy well produced 295 million cubic feet of gas. A U.S. Department of Energy report discusses flaring, or burning off of the gas during a series of production tests that lasted until 1973. The radioactive contamination from the flaring “was miniscule compared to the fallout produced by atmospheric weapons tests in the early ‘60s,” he adds.

Researchers carried out 27 separate experiments under Project Plowshare — setting off 35 nuclear detonations in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado. The experiments focused mostly on creating craters and canals. The entire Plowshare program was canceled in 1975.

In 2008, the Energy Department’s Office of Legacy Management assumed responsibility for long-term surveillance and maintenance at the Gasbuggy site.

Hydraulic fracturing — pumping a mixture of fluid and sand down a well at extremely high pressure, causing natural fissures in the rocks to expand and lengthen — has replaced explosive stimulation of natural gas wells. Read more in “Shooters — A ‘Fracking’ History.”

New Mexico’s Farmington Museum features “Dinosaurs to Drill Bits” — an energy education exhibit that tells the oil and natural gas story of the prolific San Juan Basin.

December 11, 1950 – Federal Offshore expands Beyond Cannon Shot

After decades of controversy and a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision citing the federal government’s “paramount rights” out to and beyond the three nautical mile limit — an 18th Century precedent based on the presumed maximum range of smoothbore cannon — the court issues a supplemental decree that prohibits any further offshore development without federal approval.

Following additional legislation, the first Outer Continental Shelf lease sale held by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey’s Conservation Division in 1954 yields $129.5 million from 417,221 acres. By 2009, Minerals Management Service cumulative lease sales (without including royalties) exceed $78 billion. This leasing program provides a source of federal revenue second only to taxes. Read about America’s early offshore oil and natural gas technologies in “Offshore Oil History.”

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society is a 501 (c)-3 nonprofit program dedicated to preserving the history of U.S. oil and natural gas exploration by providing advocacy for organizations that work to preserve that history through exhibition, material preservation – and especially educational programming.

Please support this unique energy education mission with a 100 percent tax-deductible donation.

November 28, 1892 – First Commercial Oil Well West of the Mississippi

Students visit the Norman No. 1 Well Museum in Neodesha, Kansas, to learn about the historic November 28, 1892, gusher -- and about their state's modern petroleum industry. Oil or natural gas is produced in 89 of 105 counties.

After 22 days of drilling near Neodesha, Kansas, the Norman No. 1 well comes in – considered the first significant oil well west of the Mississippi River.

Beginning as a four-barrel-a day producer, this Kansas discovery is the first to uncover the vast Mid-Continent oilfield, which extends into Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas.

“Norman No. 1 was the first oil well west of the Mississippi River to produce a commercial quantity of oil. This major oil discovery ushered in a new era for Neodesha and the state. By 1904, Kansas was producing four million barrels of crude oil per year and, in 1925, ranked fifth among the states in oil production,” explains the Kansas Historical Society.

Oil flowing from a southeastern Kansas discovery well "signaled the beginning of production from the immense Mid-Continent field, which by 1919 produced over half the oil supply for the country," according to the National Park Service.

“William Mills arrived in Neodesha in 1892 and after examining several sites in the area, selected a garden plot belonging to T. J. Norman, a local blacksmith,” adds another oil patch historian. “On November 28, 1892, at just 832 feet, the steel bit chopped its way to find oil and the Norman No. 1 Oil Well.”

Mills immediately plugged the well and traveled east to show a sample to the experienced oilmen of Pennsylvania. “It proved that Neodesha had the riches of oil and gas in their back yard, making the area the richest bed of prehistoric decay,” explains Neodesha’s oil museum.

The Neodesha discovery attracts the attention of men willing to risk large amounts of money on Kansas as a source of oil, the museum notes. “The first of these were John W. Galey and James Guffey of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These veteran oilmen, with their talent for developing petroleum resources on a large scale, put southeastern Kansas on the road to success.”

This rare photograph shows a Standard Oil Company refinery in Neodesha, Kansas. Built in 1897, it refined 500 barrels of oil per day -- and was the first to process oil from the Mid-Continent field. From "Kansas Memory" collection of the Kansas Historical Society.

Today, the Norman No. 1 well site — added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on August 28, 1974, and designated a U.S. National Landmark on December 22, 1977 — is at the northeast corner of Mill and First streets in Neodesha.

“A museum has been built in a city park surrounding the site — a fitting recognition of Norman No. 1′s importance as one of the most significant oil discoveries in U. S. and Kansas history,” concludes the Kansas Historical Society. The Norman No. 1 Museum and RV Park offers indoor and outdoor exhibits that include a replica of the orginal wooden cable-tool derrick.

December 1, 1865 – Lady Macbeth visits Pithole, Pennsylvania

Less than a year after Miss Eloise Bridges plays Lady Macbeth, the drilling boom ends and the most famous boom town in Pennsylvania fades into history. Today, visitors can walk the grassy paths of former streets -- and view scale models in the Pithole Visitor Center.

Shakespearean tragedienne Miss Eloise Bridges appears as Lady Macbeth in the luxurious Murphy Theater in Pithole, Pennsylvania.

Once extolled by a Richmond, Virginia, newspaper as “the most handsome actress in the Confederate States,” Miss Bridges performs in one of the region’s most notorious oil boom towns. Within nine months of the discovery of oil, Pithole hosts a muddy population of over 30,000 oilmen, teamsters, coopers, lease-traders, roughnecks, and merchants of all kinds — along with gamblers, “soiled doves” and criminals. 

Almost overnight, 57 hotels, a daily newspaper and the third busiest Post Office in Pennsylvania are up and running. Murphy’s Theater is the biggest building in Pithole. It offers 1,000 seats, a 40-foot stage, a twelve-musician orchestra, and Tiffany chandelier lighting.

Managed by the Drake Well Museum, a diorama is among Pithole Visitors Center exhibits of the vanished 1865 oil boom town.

Miss Bridges is the darling of the Pithole stage. Following her performance as Lady Macbeth, the Titusville Morning Herald chastises the audience: “The simple clapping of the hands is sufficient to express the most exquisite delight and satisfaction…but rude boisterous stomping and screaming…is absolutely disgraceful.”

Eight months after Bridges departs for new engagements in Ohio, Pithole’s oil suddenly runs dry — and the most famous boom town in Pennsylvania collapses into empty streets and abandoned buildings. Today, little remains of Pithole in the lush Pennsylvania countryside. Visitors can walk the grassy paths of former streets and view a scale model of the city at its peak in the Pithole Visitors Center. 

December 1, 1901 – Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company organized

Henry Foster, soon known as "the richest man west of the Mississippi," will build the La Quinta Mansion in Bartlesville, Oklahoma -- now part of Oklahoma Wesleyan University.

With all 1,470,559 acres of Oklahoma’s Osage Indian Reservation under a 10-year lease expiring in 1906, Henry V. Foster organizes the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company from the Phoenix Oil and Osage Oil companies.

For the Osage Indians, the lease provides a 10 percent royalty on all petroleum produced and $50 per year for each natural gas well. Foster subleases drilling to 75 different companies, but by 1903 only 30 wells have been drilled — including 11 dry holes.

Although debt ultimately drives the Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company into receivership, the company emerges with veteran oilman Theodore N. Barnsdall a majority owner. By the end of 1904, drilling results in 361 producing wells. In 1912, Barnsdall sells his interests to the Empire Distributing Gas Company, a subsidiary of Cities Service Company, for $40 million.

Foster, who becomes known as “the richest man west of the Mississippi,” builds the 32-room La Quinta Mansion — now the administration building for Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville. The Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company old headquarters building is at the corner of Frank Phillips Boulevard and Johnstone Street. Learn more Bartlesville oil history at the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum.

December 1, 1913 -  First Drive-In Service Station opens

“Good Gulf Gasoline” goes on sale when Gulf Refining Company opens America’s first drive-in service station at the corner of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Unlike earlier simple curbside gasoline filling stations, this purposefully designed pagoda-style brick facility offers free air, water, crankcase service, and tire and tube installation. A manager and four attendants stand by. The service station’s lighted marquee provides shelter from bad weather.

Gulf Refining Company's decision to open its first station along Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was no accident, according to ExplorePAhistory.com. By 1913 the boulevard had become known as "automobile row'" because of the high number of dealerships. In addition to gas, the Gulf station sold the first commercial road maps in the United States. Photo courtesy of Bob Beck, Gulf Oil Historical Society.

“On its first day, the station sold 30 gallons of gasoline at 27 cents per gallon. On its first Saturday, Gulf’s new service station pumped 350 gallons of gasoline,” notes the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. “Prior to the construction of the first Gulf station in Pittsburgh and the countless filling stations that followed throughout the United States, automobile drivers pulled into almost any old general or hardware store, or even blacksmith shops in order to fill up their tanks.”

Oil company maps, circa 1915 to 1925, are dominated by Gulf Refining Company, which is the only oil company to issue maps annually until about 1925.

The decision to open the first station along Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh was no accident, the historical commission adds. By 1913 when the station was opened, Baum Boulevard had become known as “automobile row” because of the high number of dealerships that were located along the thoroughfare.

“Gulf executives must have figured that there was no better way to get the public hooked on using filling stations than if they could pull right in and gas up their new car after having just driven it off the lot.”

In addition to gas, the Gulf station also offered free air and water — and sold the first commercial road maps in the United States.

“The first generally distributed oil company road maps are usually credited to Gulf,” says Harold Cramer in his Early Gulf Road Maps of Pennsylvania. “The early years of oil company maps, circa 1915 to 1925, are dominated by Gulf as few other oil companies issued maps, and until about 1925 Gulf was the only oil company to issue maps annually. The first maps were made by W. B. Akins of Pittsburgh, an advertising man.”

The Gulf Refining Company was formed in 1901 by members of the Mellon family, along with other investors, as an expansion of the J. W. Guffey Petroleum Company formed earlier the same year –  to exploit the Spindletop oil discovery in Texas.

The American Petroleum Institute reports that in 2009 there were 162,350 locations nationwide selling gasoline — including service stations, truck stops, convenience stores and marinas.

Lucy looks for a gusher.

December 1, 1960 – Oil Musical hits Broadway

Lucille Ball debuts in “Wildcat” — her first and last foray onto Broadway. Critics love Lucy but hate the show, where she stars as penniless “Wildcat Jackson” scrambling to find a gusher in the dusty Texas border town of Centavo City, circa 1912.

“Wildcat went prospecting for Broadway oil but drilled a dry hole,” reports The New York Times theater critic. Audiences flock to this rare oil patch musical – but after 171 performances, the show closes.

December 2, 1942 – Petroleum Administration for War

President Roosevelt establishes by executive order the Petroleum Administration for War to centralize war policies relating to petroleum and provide adequate supplies “for the successful prosecution of the war and other essential purposes.” Roosevelt terminates PAW on May 3, 1946.

December 4, 1928 – Reflection Seismography applied in Oklahoma

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

A new oilfield technology is applied for the first time near Seminole, Oklahoma, when Amerada Petroleum Corporation drills into the Viola limestone to bring in the first oil well from a geological structure identified by reflection seismography.

This seismic survey, executed by subsidiary Geophysical Research Corporation, uses technology that evolved from the early seismic experiments of Reginald Fessenden, Ludger Mintrop — and Oklahoma physicist John C. Karcher.

The Greater Seminole Area includes six of Oklahoma's 20 giant oilfields -- Earlsboro, St. Louis, Seminole, Bowlegs, Little River, Allen, and Seminole City. The Oil Museum in Seminole includes a diorama maintained by volunteers that features many of the boom towns of the 1930s.

The work of Fessenden, chief physicist for the Submarine Signaling Company of Boston, and later, Ludger Mintrop — who further developed portable seismic detection equipment to locate Allied artillery for the Germans during World War I — made the technology practical for the field. 

“In the United States in 1917, John C. Karcher, an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Standards, independently invented a similar instrument,” notes the Oklahoma Historical Society. “Both the German and American versions, crude contrivances at best, were intended for use in locating enemy artillery by measuring the seismic vibrations produced by their firing.”

Although both Mintrop and Karcher, who was president of Geophysical Research Corporation, would secure patents, Karcher’s successful apparatus, methodology – and his 1928 Seminole oil discovery — would earn him the title “Father of Reflection Seismography.”

Visit the Oklahoma Oil Museum in Seminole.

December 4, 1928 – Discovery of Oklahoma City Oilfield

Henry V. Foster’s Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company and Foster Petroleum Corporation bring in the 4,000 barrel-a-day Oklahoma City No. 1 well, discovery well for the Oklahoma City oilfield. Oilmen had searched for decades before the well is completed south of the city limits.

The 6,335-foot-deep wildcat well produces an astonishing 110,000 barrels of oil in its first 27 days, causing a rush of development that soon extends the field northward. It reaches the city limits by May 1930. The Oklahoma City Council begins passing ordinances limiting drilling to the southeast part of the city – allowing only one well per city block.

By January 1, 1932, a total of 867 producing wells have been completed — and the Oklahoma City oilfield’s production peaks at 67 million barrels.

To reach reserves underlying Oklahoma State Capitol Building, wells are "slant drilled" to reach the oil sands beneath capitol. Above, a 1954 image of producing wells. Still a leading producing state, by 2008, Oklahoma will have 83,700 producing oil wells and 43,600 natural gas wells.

From such a beginning the sprawling Oklahoma City oil and natural gas field will become one of world’s major oil producing areas, notes a state historical marker. Production will rank eighth in nation for the next 40 years — yielding  733,543,000 barrels of oil.

Development of the Oklahoma City oilfield will add stability to the economy of Oklahoma during the Great Depression — and lead to new industry regulations as more discoveries are made.

Located on 18 acres across from the capitol building, the Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City includes outdoor exhibits.

Another major well hits the city’s prolific Wilcox producing zone on March 26, 1930. Exessive pressure and equipment failure results in the Mary Sudik No. 1 well remaining uncontrolled for 11 days — making it “the most publicized oil well in world,” according to  the Oklahoma Historical Society.

“Problems created by rapid development of the field sparked passage of the first comprehensive state legislation for conservation of oil and gas, thus providing model statutes for other states to follow,” the historical society concludes. The Oklahoma City oilfield’s discovery well and “Wild Mary Sudik” were both drilled by Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company.

Today, visitors can watch newsreel film of the Mary Sudik No. 1 well in the natural resources exhibit at the Oklahoma History Center. Also visit the center’s Devon Energy Oil and Gas Park on Northeast 23rd Street — just east of the state capitol.

November 21, 1925 – Magnolia Petroleum Company incorporates in Texas

Magnolia will operate hundreds of service stations in the South.

Formerly an unincorporated joint-stock association — with roots dating to an 1889 refinery in Corsicana, Texas — Magnolia Petroleum Company incorporates and transfers all assets to the new company. The original association, formed on April 24, 1911, by John H. Sealy, has grown to provide multiple grades of refined oil products through 505 service stations in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Standard Oil Company of New York purchases most of Magnolia Petroleum Company’s assets in December 1925 and operates it as a subsidiary. Magnolia Oil Company merges with Socony Mobile Oil Company on September 30, 1959, and is ultimately absorbed into today’s ExxonMobil Corporation.

November 22, 1878 – Historic Pipeline Company organizes
 
The Tidewater Pipe Company is organized in Pennsylvania. In 1879 it will build the first oil pipeline to cross the Alleghenies from Coryville to the Philadelphia Reading Railroad at Williamsport — bypassing Standard Oil’s dominance in transporting petroleum.

On May 28, 1879, an 80-horsepower engine in Coreyville will pump 250 barrels of oil from the Bradford oilfield across the mountains and into Williamsport 109 miles away. 

November 22, 1905 – Oklahoma Discovery will make Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World”

On a chilly November morning in 1905 — two years before Oklahoma becomes a state — oil is discovered on the Glenn farm south of Tulsa. Soon, there are hundreds of wells producing so much oil that the land is called the “‘Glenn Pool.” The discovery will help make Tulsa the “Oil Capital of the World.”

Glenpool dedicated a 28-foot-tall "derrick" in Black Gold Park in 2008. The monument, which illuminates at night, includes granite etchings telling the 1905 story of oilmen Robert Galbreath, Frank Chesley and Charles Colcord -- and how Tulsa became the "Oil Capital of the World."

With daily production soon exceeding 120,000 barrels, Glenn Pool becomes the greatest oilfield in America at the time, exceeding the giant Spindletop discovery near Beaumont, Texas, four years earlier.

“Black gold from this field helped fuel the nation and brought thousands of people and a new prosperity to Oklahoma,” explains a documentary, “The Glenn Pool Story.”

“Robert Galbreath and Frank Chesley had been alternating shifts on the floor of a cable-tool drilling rig in the Creek Indian Reservation,” notes Norman Hyne, professor of petroleum geology at the University of Tulsa.

“They had paid for the lease and the rig — five dollars a day including driller — with their own money. The well was on the banks of a creek located four miles south of an unimpressive, small town on the Frisco Railroad and the Arkansas River by the name of Tulsa.”

The two men drilled deeper after first penetrating the Red Fork Sands with only a small show of natural gas. Then, at a depth of about 1,450 feet, Ida Glenn No. 1 well came in as a 75-barrel-a-day producer of high-quality oil– known as light, sweet crude.

The well is named for the Creek Indian woman from whom the oilmen had leased 160 acres at three-cents an acre plus a one-eighth interest in any production. Galbreath drills a second well within 300 feet of his first well and then another. All are producers.

"Unlike the thick, sour oil from Spindletop, the famed 1901 Texas discovery that had already played out, this oil was light and sweet -- just right to refine into gasoline and kerosene. The reservoir was shallow, less than 1,500 feet deep, well within the range of the cable tool drilling rigs of that day."

The wells reveal the 12-square-mile Glenn Pool.  A massive drilling boom begins — and drilling is cheap because producing wells are shallow, writes Tulsa author Ruth Sheldon Knowles in her 1959 book about wildcatters, The Greatest Gamblers. By the time of statehood in 1907, Glenn Pool has made Oklahoma the nation’s biggest oil producer.
 
“It was Oklahoma’s first major oilfield and the richest field the world had yet seen,” adds Hyne in an April 2005 article for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. “Unlike the thick, sour oil from Spindletop, the famed 1901 Texas discovery that had already played out, this oil was light and sweet — just right to refine into gasoline and kerosene. The reservoir was shallow, less than 1,500 feet deep, well within the range of the cable tool drilling rigs of that day.”

Tourists visit the Glenn Pool discovery well monument soon after its April 2008 dedication.

Hyne says that within two years of the discovery, pipelines are built from the Texaco and Gulf refineries on the Gulf Coast and down from the Standard Oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, to access the high-quality crude. Numerous other refineries were built in the Glenn Pool area.

The giant oilfield produces 325.5 million barrels of oil by 1986, and royalties of almost one million dollars a year are paid to Creek Indians who hold 160-acre allotments in the field.

“It is said that more money was made on the Glenn Pool oilfield than the California gold rush and Colorado silver rush combined,” concludes Hyne, who created a Glenn Pool Oil Field Educational Center website after the well’s 2005 centennial. The field is now under waterflood (enhanced recovery) and producing primarily from small, marginal wells, he adds.

"The Glenn Pool Story" is broadcast by Oklahoma Educational Television Authority.

“Black gold from this field helped fuel the nation, and brought thousands of people and a new prosperity to Oklahoma,” explains a documentary about the 1905 discovery. “The Glenn Pool Story,” broadcast by the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, includes archival photos and rare film clips “to tell the compelling story of the Glenn Pool’s impact on America and how, a century later, the petroleum industry still benefits Oklahoma.”

In April 2008, a monument was unveiled in Glenpool’s Black Gold Park by the Glenn Pool Oil Field Commission. A  28-foot-tall “derrick” illuminates at night and includes granite etchings that tell the 1905 story of oilmen Robert Galbreath, Frank Chesley and Charles Colcord. The commission also sponsored publication of Almost Forgotten — The Amazing Story of Glenn Pool: Oklahoma’s First World-Class Oil Field, distributed to high schools by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board.

November 23, 1951 – Superman features “World’s Deepest Oil Well”

"Mole Men" emerge from a 32,000-foot well in this 1951 Superman classic.

A risk of drilling too deep highlights the theatrical release of “Superman and the Mole Men,” which earns good reviews. The movie features newspaper reporters Clark Kent (George Reeves) and Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates) traveling on assignment to the town of Silsby, “Home of the World’s Deepest Oil Well.”

The National Oil Company is making news at its “Havenhurst Experimental Number One” drilling site — the drill bit “has broken into clear air” at 32,000 feet. “Good heavens, that’s practically to the center of the earth!” Lois exclaims (in fact, the deepest U.S. well in 1951 reached 20,521 feet). The oilmen conclude there may be life, perhaps even a civilization, far below the surface. Alarmed, the company attempts to cap the well — but small humanoid creatures emerge. The townspeople fear an invasion of mole men.

It takes the compassion of Superman to resolve the crisis. He calms the mob, saves the creatures, and returns them to the safety of the well. In a spectacular conclusion, the derrick collapses in flames, forever closing the connection between the two worlds.

November 23, 1953 – First LPG Ship departs Houston

The first vessel had an LPG capacity of 38,053 barrels in 68 vertical pressure tanks.

The first seagoing Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) ship goes into service when Warren Petroleum Corporation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, sends the Natalie O. Warren from the Houston Ship Channel terminal at Norsworthy, Texas, to Newark, New Jersey.

The unique vessel has an LPG capacity of 38,053 barrels in 68 vertical pressure tanks — the equivalent of about 339,000 standard gas grill LP tanks. The ship is the former Cape Diamond dry-cargo freighter, converted and refitted over a five-month period by the Bethlehem Steelyard in Beaumont, Texas.

Continental will use railroad tank cars to ship kerosene from a refinery in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ogden, Utah.

The experimental design will lead to new maritime construction standards for such vessels. After 14 years of successful service, the Natalie O. Warren is scrapped in Santander, Spain. Today’s LPG tankers may carry more than 18 times the capacity of the Natalie O. Warren.

November 25, 1875 – Continental Oil and Transportation

Convinced that he can profit by purchasing bulk kerosene in cheaper eastern markets and shipping it by rail to Ogden, Utah, for distribution, Isaac Elder Blake forms the Continental Oil and Transportation Company.

Continental purchases two railroad tank cars — the first to be used west of the Mississippi River — and begins shipping kerosene from a Cleveland, Ohio, refinery. The company quickly grows, expanding into Colorado in 1876 and California in 1877.

However, when John D. Rockefeller acquires the Consolidated Tank Line Company in San Francisco, the competitive advantages of Standard Oil overpower Blake’s enterprise. Standard absorbs Continental Oil in 1885. After the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil, Continental Oil will reemerge as an independent company. It continues today as ConocoPhillips.

November 27, 1940 – “Gas” by Edward Hopper exhibited in New York

Edward Hopper's classic painting "Gas" includes the flying Pegasus logo of Mobilgas.

Edward Hopper’s painting “Gas” is first exhibited by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Hopper began the painting in September 1940, when his wife Jo wrote, “Ed is about to start a canvas — an effect of night on a gasoline station.”

Hopper’s image — which includes the flying Pegasus logo of Mobilgas — is an amalgamation of several gas stations in and around his home and studio in Truro, Massachusetts. It illustrates his unique American style — as reflected in such icons as “Nighthawks,” painted two years later.

Critics praise Hopper’s visual mastery of isolation and melancholy, but also suggest that “Gas” with its commonplace Mobilgas advertisement presages America’s Pop Art movement that comes a decade later. Fellow artist Charles Burchfield admires Hopper’s simple title for the painting, saying that for “a less discerning artist, (it) would have come out as ‘Gas Station’ or ‘Gas Station Attendant.’”

Edward Hopper dies on May 15, 1967, at the age of 84. Read more about Mobil’s logo in “High Flying Trademark.”

November 27, 1941 – “Oil Queen of California” dies

Emma Summers’ “genius for affairs” put her in control of the Los Angeles City oilfield’s production and earned her oil queen title.

Mrs. Emma Summers, once known as the “Oil Queen of California” dies at the age of 83 in Los Angeles.

Forty years earlier, the San Francisco Call newspaper described Mrs. Summers as “A woman with a genius for affairs – it may sound paradoxical, but the fact exists. If Mrs. Emma A. Summers were less than a genius she could not, as she does today, control the Los Angeles oil markets.”

Summers graduated from Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music and moved to Los Angeles in 1893 to teach piano — but soon caught oil fever. With her home not far from where Edward Doheny had discovered the Los Angeles City field just a year before, Summers invested $700 for half interest in a well just a few blocks from Doheny’s.

Summers’ first 14 oil wells came in as producers — and launched her dominance in the Los Angeles oilfield. See “Oil Queen of California.”

 
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society is a 501 (c)-3 nonprofit program dedicated to preserving the history of U.S. oil and natural gas exploration by providing advocacy for organizations that work to preserve that history through exhibition, material preservation – and especially educational programming.

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November 14, 1947 – First Offshore Oil Well Out of Sight of Land

The modern offshore oil and natural gas industry begins when an exploratory well strikes oil in the Gulf of Mexico – the first successful offshore oil well out of sight of land.

Commissioned by Kerr-McGee Industries, America's first offshore Gulf of Mexico drilling platform (above) is 10 miles off the Louisiana coast in just 18 feet of water. Built by Brown & Root Company for only $230,000 -- and without comparable information on how strong to make the pilings, welds and jackets -- the platform will withstand hurricane-force winds and waves.

The company of Brown & Root builds this freestanding platform 10 miles from shore for Kerr-McGee Oil Industries and partners Phillips Petroleum and Stanolind. Brown & Root has learned from a previous offshore experience. In 1938, the company constructed a 320-foot by 180-foot freestanding wooden deck in 14 feet of water about a mile offshore.

The historic "Kermac 16" platform is included in a 1954 Bell Helicopter advertisement encouraging the use of helicopters for offshore transportation.

The latest freestanding offshore platform, called “Kermac 16,” has a loading factor of 2,000 pounds per square foot that can withstand winds as high as 125 miles per hour — despite not having supporting guide wires. Brown & Root builds the platform at a time when no equipment specifically designed for offshore drilling yet exists.

With $450,000 invested, Kerr-McGee brings in the well as a 40-barrel-per-hour producer in about 18 feet of water off Louisiana’s gradually sloping Gulf of Mexico coast.

Kerr-McGee purchases World War II surplus utility freighters and materials to provide supplies, equipment, and crew quarters for the drilling site at Ship Shoal Block 32.

Sixteen 24-inch pilings sunk 104 feet into the ocean floor secure the 2,700 square foot wooden deck — which successfully withstands the biggest Category 5 hurricane of the 1947 season a week after spudding (the start of drilling).

“Kermac 16″ produces 1.4 million barrels of oil and 307 million cubic feet of natural gas before being shut down in 1984. Learn more about U.S. offshore pioneers and technology in “Offshore Oil History” and “Deep Sea Roughnecks.”

November 15, 1906 – Justice Department seeks Standard Oil breakup

An 1885 photograph of John D. Rockefeller.

Under Sherman Anti-Trust Act provisions, the U.S. Attorney General files suit to compel dissolution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey — and its subsidiaries. An 1892 court decision had previously ordered the Standard Oil Trust to be dissolved, but Standard Oil reorganized and continued to operate from headquarters in New York and later New Jersey.

The Justice Department will win this new suit, but John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirms the lower court’s decision on May 15, 1911, noting, “the combination and conspiracy in restraint of trade and its continued execution…monopolize a part of interstate and international commerce.”

November 17, 1949 – Geological Survey begins Petroleum Survey

The U.S. Geological Survey embarks on a massive geological study of the United States. More than 70 geologists engage in intensive investigations covering 22 states and Alaska — to define areas favorable for oil and natural gas exploration.

November 19, 1861 – American Exports Oil for First Time

A U.S. brig sets sail from Philadelphia with a cargo of 901 barrels of Pennsylvania oil and 428 barrels of refined kerosene

America exports petroleum for the first time when the Elizabeth Watts departs Philadelphia’s docks bound for London with a cargo of 901 barrels of Pennsylvania oil and 428 barrels of refined kerosene.

The shippers are the highly successful Philadelphia import-export firm of Peter Wright & Sons, which since its founding in 1818 has prospered transporting “china, glass, and Queensware” among other commodities.

The company hires the Elizabeth Watts and her captain, Charles Bryant, to ship the petroleum to three British companies: G. Crowshaw & Company, Coates & Company, and Herzog & Company. Forty-five days later, on January 9, 1862, the U.S. brig  sails down the Thames River to arrive at London’s Victoria Dock. It will take 12 days to unload the 1,329 barrels. Philadelphia exports 239,000 barrels the next year.

In 1948, with the post-World War II economy booming, America for the first time becomes a net importer of oil.

November 19, 1927 – Birth of Phillips 66 gasoline

By 1930, Phillips 66 gasoline is sold at 6,750 outlets in 12 states.

After a decade as an exploration and production company, Phillips Petroleum Company enters the highly competitive business of refining and retail gasoline distribution. The company introduces a new line of gasoline — “Phillips 66″ — at its first service station, which opens in Wichita, Kansas.

The gasoline is named “Phillips 66″ after it speeds company officials down U.S. Highway 66 at 66 miles an hour in route to their Bartlesville, Oklahoma headquarters. Highway 66 becomes the backbone of Phillips marketing plans for the new product — which boasts “controlled volatility,” the result of a higher-gravity mix of naphtha and natural gasoline. The composition makes Phillips 66 gasoline easier to start in cold weather, and advertisements enticed motorists to try the “New Winter Gasoline.”

Aggressive acquisition of new stations adds 50 new retail outlets each month to the company. By 1930, Phillips 66 gasoline is sold at 6,750 outlets in 12 states. Visit the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

November 20, 1866 – Petroleum Torpedo patented

The Ranger oilfield in Texas will bring success to Conrad Hilton -- and lead to his first high-rise hotel, which he builds in El Paso in 1930.

Civil War veteran Col. Edward A.L. Roberts of New York City is awarded U.S. Patent. No. 59,936 for the latest version of what will become known as the “Roberts Torpedo.” Roberts will receive many patents after his first — issued on April 25, 1865 — for an “Improvement in Exploding Torpedoes in Artesian Wells” to fracture oil-bearing formations and dramatically increase oil production. See the article “Shooters – A ‘Fracking’ History.”

November 20, 1930 – Hilton’s High-Rise begins in Texas

Conrad Hilton opens his first high-rise hotel — 11 years after buying his first hotel in Cisco, Texas, to serve the town’s booming population of roughnecks and oilmen working the nearby Ranger oilfield. Hilton’s Cisco hotel, the Mobley, has 40 rooms, each rented for an eight-hour period to coincide with oilfield shifts.

Following his Cisco purchase, he builds his first in Dallas in 1925. A year later he builds another in Abilene, a third in Waco in 1927, followed by Marlin, San Angelo, Plainview, and Lubbock. The high-rise El Paso Hilton that opens today in 1930 will be placed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 24, 1980. 

See Read more in “Oil Boom brings First Hilton Hotel.”

November 7, 1965 – Jet Fuel powers New Record

JP-4 jet fuel powered an F-104 engine.

Using high-octane jet fuel, Ohio drag racer Art Arfons sets the land-speed record at 576.553 miles per hour at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. His home-made Green Monster is powered by JP-4 fuel in an afterburner-equipped F-104 Starfighter jet engine.
 
Between 1964 and 1965, referred to as “The Bonneville Jet Wars,” Arfons sets the record three times. On October 23, 1970, the Blue Flame — powered by a rocket motor that burns liquefied natural gas — sets a new record of 622.407 mph that stands for 13 years.

See “The Blue Flame – Natural Gas Rocket Car.”
 
November 8, 1880 – Death of Edwin L. Drake, Founder of U.S. Petroleum Industry

A monument dedicated in 1901 marks Edwin Drake's final resting place in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Edwin Laurentine Drake, today recognized as the founder of the American petroleum industry, dies in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at the age of 61.
 
Drake drilled just three oil wells — but his first, which found oil on Saturday, August 27, 1859, and produced about 20 barrels a day — launched the modern energy industry and transformed America’s future.
 
Although the petroleum industry will bring economic prosperity to many, in 1863 Drake loses all his money to oil speculation. By 1873 he is so ill and destitute that the Pennsylvania legislature votes him a $1,500 pension in recognition of his historic contributions.
 
Originally buried in Bethlehem, Drake is moved to the Woodlawn Cemetery in Titusville, where a monument in his honor is dedicated in 1901. His first well, drilled to 69.5 feet, is nearby at the Drake Well Museum.

November 10, 1854 – Oil Seep will lead to Historic Discovery

Kerosene for lamps will replace the medicinal "Seneca Oil" product from an historic Pennsylvania oil seep.

The stage is set for the start of America’s petroleum industry when the lumber firm Brewer, Watson & Company sells to George H. Bissell and Jonathan G. Eveleth 105 acres at the junction of the east (Pine Creek) and west branches of Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
 
The lumber company had previously hired Joel D. Angier (a future mayor of Titusville) to collect and sell medicinal “Seneca Oil” from a known oil seep on this acreage where they operated a sawmill.

Thanks to research by his friend Benjamin Silliman Jr., a Yale chemist, Bissell recognized that the oil could be used to produce kerosene for lamps.

J. H. Colton's "Map Of The Oil District Of Pennsylvania" of 1865 shows America's earliest petroleum companies drilling southeast of Titusville. Image from the David Rumsey Map Collection Database.

Deciding to attempt to produce this oil commercially, Bissell and Eveleth form the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company — and hire Edwin L. Drake to drill their first well in 1859. Drake’s well will launch the American petroleum industry.
 
“The successful commercial development of the oil seeps…was the fulfillment of a vision Bissell had five years earlier when he was first shown samples of petroleum taken from the site,” notes an article at Oil 150, a website created for the 2009 sesquicentennial of the U.S. petroleum industry.

“Among the great oil pioneers of the first decades, Bissell was a giant,” concludes historian Neil McElwee. “The oil men and writers of the nineteenth century as one recognized George Bissell as the patriarch of their industry.”

November 11, 1884 – Birth of Consolidated Edison Company of New York

Conflicts between work crews from competing companies gave rise to the term "gas house gangs."

The nation’s largest gas utility is created in New York City when six gas-light companies — the New York, Manhattan, Metropolitan, Municipal, Knickerbocker and Harlem companies — merge to form the Consolidated Gas Company — today’s Consolidated Edison Company.

“With six major gas companies serving New York City, the streets were constantly being torn up by one company or another installing or repairing their own mains — or removing those of a rival,” notes the Con Edison website. “From time to time, work crews from competing companies would inadvertently meet on the same street and literally battle for customers, giving rise to the term ‘gas house gangs.’

“Through the years, Consolidated Gas continued to acquire gas, electric, and steam companies serving New York City and Westchester County. On March 23, 1936, the business was renamed the Consolidated Edison Company of New York.”

Con Edison today distributes natural gas to more than one million customers in Manhattan, the Bronx, part of Queens, and most of Westchester County. More than 4,200 miles of gas mains and nearly 400,000 service pipes transport more than 200 million dekatherms of natural gas a year.

November 12, 1899 – Newspaper features Mrs. Alford’s Dynamite Factory

A laminated 1899 article preserved at the Penn-Brad Oil Museum in Bradford, Pennsylvania, tells the story of Mrs. Byron Alford -- a petroleum pioneer more than 20 years before women won the right to vote.

The New York World profiles Mrs. Byron Alford — the “Only Woman in the World who Owns and Operates a Dynamite Factory.”
 
Alford’s dangerous business operates on five acres outside of Bradford, Pennsylvania, with a daily production of 3,000 pounds of “nitro-glycerine” and 6,000 pounds of dynamite. Local drillers need the explosives for “shooting” wells to boost production. Mrs. Alford manufactures it for them in 12 unpainted wood buildings.
 
Brick buildings would have been prettier, Alford notes in the newspaper article, but it would cost more to replace them and, “the owner of a nitroglycerine factory never knows beforehand when it is going to blow up or afterward why it did blow up…there is never anyone to explain how it happened.”

Penn-Brad Oil Museum

Alford first entered the business in 1884 with her husband. When Mr. Alford’s health began failing 10 years later, she took over. “It is an odd business for a woman to be in,” she says, “but I know no reason why a woman who understands it cannot manage it as well as a man.”

Despite the hazards, Alford  prospers for many years. She dies of natural causes in 1924 at age 77. Today, new technologies for producing natural gas from the Marcellus Shale have brought renewed prosperity to Bradford — and much of western Pennsylvania. Visit the Penn-Brad Oil Museum and learn about America’s “first billion dollar oilfield.”

November 12, 1916 – Forest Oil Company formed

Forest Oil's "yellow dog" lamp logo originated in 1916.

Forest Oil Company incorporates and begins operations in the Bradford oilfield of northwestern Pennsylvania. The company adopts a new technology: water-flooding (injecting water into oil-bearing formations) to stimulate production from wells considered depleted. Forest’s production increases from 38 barrels per day in 1916 to more than 10,000 barrels by the late 1920s.
 
In 1924 Forest Oil consolidates with the January Oil Company, the Brown Seal Oil Corporation, the Andrews Petroleum Corporation and the Boyd Oil Corporation to form the Forest Oil Corporation. Today, Forest Oil Corporation and its subsidiaries continue to produce and market oil and natural gas. The company’s distinctive “yellow dog” lamp with two wicks logo originated in 1916.
 
See the American Oil & Gas Historical Society article by Kristin L. Wells, ”Yellow Dog: Icon of the American Oil Field,” in Hart’s E&P magazine.

November 13, 1925 – Spindletop booms Again

The Beaumont, Texas, museum includes 15 buildings of exhibits.

More than two decades after its first oil boom, Spindletop, Texas, experiences a second boom when the Yount-Lee Oil Company strikes a 5,000-barrel-a-day well south of the 1901 “Lucas Gusher,” according to the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum in Beaumont.

“Yount believed that there was much more oil at Spindletop, if flank wells could be drilled deep enough. He was right, and the McFaddin No. 2 began to produce oil at 2,518 feet on November 13, 1925. That evening, Magnolia’s radio station announced the discovery, and the second Spindletop boom began. Soon the Hill was ringed with wells, but the wild atmosphere that had characterized the first boom was not repeated.”

                      ————————-    

Editor’s Note — Happy birthday to Dorothy Jean Womack of Eufaula, Oklahoma, born on November 7, 1928 – and a founding member of the American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

October 31, 1871 – Refinery Method patented

Modern refining will evolve from this “apparatus for separating volatile hydrocarbons."

An 1871 invention presages many elements of modern refineries’ fractionating towers and is a significant improvement over the earlier process of extracting kerosene by simple atmospheric distillation in kettle stills.

Henry Rogers patents his “apparatus for separating volatile hydrocarbons by repeated vaporization and condensation.” He notes that “by my method of distilling the commercial articles known as benzine, gasoline, chimogen, rhigoline, carbon spirits and the like are products of perfectly uniform constitution, and these light products are entirely separated from the lubricating-oil and lamp-oil.”
  
October 31, 1930 – H. L. Hunt to make Historic Deal 

Judge Robert T. Brown of the Texas Fourth Judicial District places the properties of 70-year-old wildcatter Columbus  Marion “Dad” Joiner into receivership. His ruling will lead to an historic $1 million-plus property deal at the Baker Hotel in Dallas.

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

It has been revealed that Joiner has oversold lease certificates to hopeful investors in Rusk County. His Daisy Bradford No. 3 gusher, discovery well for the massive East Texas oilfield, is immediately tied up in conflicting claims.

Joiner takes refuge from claimants and creditors in the Baker Hotel, where oilman Haroldson Lafayette (H. L.)  Hunt Jr. negotiates a $1.34 million deal with him for the Daisy Bradford well and 5,580 acres of leases, despite the  certainty of lengthy litigation. In the 300 lawsuits and 10 years of litigation that follow, Hunt sustains every title.

Hunt’s  deal with Joiner puts him in the midst of the “Black Giant” East Texas oilfield. To date, this oilfield has yielded over five billion barrels of oil — and is still producing.
 
The Baker Hotel witnessed many oil deals. Its Peacock Terrace, which opened in 1925, was popular with debutantes, movie stars and swing bands of the 1930s, according to the University of Texas Archives. The oil patch landmark was imploded 1980: “In  seconds the grand hotel was in ruins. The site was cleared and in its place a modern skyscraper known as Bell Plaza stands. The dancing ceased, the party was over.”
 
Learn more petroleum history at the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

November 1, 1830 – Drilling Technology evolves

Four-legged drilling derricks will become a petroleum industry standard.

New Jersey inventor Levi Disbrow receives a reissued patent for his March 1825 design of a “Machine for Boring Artesian Wells.” 

Disbrow’s revolutionary system employs a mechanical drilling machine with a spring-expanded auger bit and a four-legged derrick. Expanding auger bits in the borehole permit Disbrow to “bore a hole larger than the tube through which they are passed down.”
 
Having studied drilling methods in the West Virginia salt industry, Disbrow develops his system to drill for water. His most successful effort is a seven-inch diameter, 442-foot-deep water well at the corner of Broadway and Bleeker Street in New York City.

Disbrow’s patent is reissued again (No. RE57) on October 20, 1843, as “Apparatus for Boring in Earth.”

November 1, 1865 – First Railroad Oil-Tank Car arrives 

The first oil-tank railroad cars feature two iron-banded wooden tanks that each hold 45 barrels of oil.

Five months before James and Amos Densmore’s “oil tank car” patent is issued, their railroad car arrives at the Miller Farm, four miles south of Titusville, Pennsylvania, to be filled with oil delivered by Samuel Van Syckle’s oil pipeline (another first) from the booming town of Pithole.
 
The Miller Farm’s 17 large storage tanks supply the Oil Creek Railroad, which connects to other rail lines in Corry and on to Pittsburgh, New York City, and other markets. The Densmore tank car design features two iron-banded wooden tanks — each holding up to 45 barrels of oil — on a flatcar.
 
Their design evolved from several earlier efforts to solve the challenge of shipping oil. Competing variations soon appear and patent infringement litigation follows. The U.S. Court in New York City rules against the brothers, noting that “there could be no patent about wheels, trucks, barrels nor their peculiar position and juxtaposition and arrangement in tank cars.”

See also “Railroad Oil-Tank Car patented” on April 10, 1866.

November 1, 1872 – Pennsylvania Producers limit Production

Excess oil production and low prices unite independent producers.

Oil prices rise to $4.60 a barrel in Pennsylvania’s oil region in response to the Petroleum Producers Association’s 30-day shutdown of pumping operations begun on October 1, the first use of “shutdown days” to limit oil supplies to refiners. Excessive production had driven the price down to a low of $3.10 a barrel in September — and operators angrily declared it cost more than that to produce the oil.
 
The Oil City Derrick newspaper reports “that a business producing three million dollars a month, employing l0,000 laboring men and fifty million dollars of capital, should be entirely suspended, dried up, stopped still as death by a mutual voluntary agreement, made and perfected by all parties interested, within a space of ten days — this is a statement that staggers belief — a spectacle that takes one’s breath away.”

November 2, 1902 – Locomobile goes with Gasoline

Geronimo drives a Locomobile Model C in this 1905 photograph taken on the 101 Ranch near Ponca City, Oklahoma. In full headdress to Geronimo's left is his friend Edward Le Clair Sr., a Ponca Indian.

The first four-cylinder, gas-powered Locomobile is delivered to a buyer in New York City. The $4,000 Model C has a 12-horsepower engine. “The Locomobile Company had been known for building heavy, powerful steam cars,” notes one historian. “But by the turn of the century it was clear that the future of the automobile — and thus of the Locomobile — lay in the internal-combustion engine.”
 
Just a few years later, a Locomobile “Old 16″ — a 16-liter, four-cylinder, 120-horsepower two-seater — wins a 258.5-mile international race in Long Island, New York.

“In 1908, Old 16, the Locomobile race car, won the prestigious Vanderbilt Cup,” notes an exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. “Its victory marked the first time an American car won an international auto race and served notice to the rest of the world that America was poised to change the auto industry forever.”

November 3, 1878 – Haymaker Gas Well roars in near Pittsburgh

In 1884, when natural gas was piped into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it was "the first time that gas was transported to a large metropolitan city by a corporation organized to produce and transport natural gas," explains a plaque affixed to a bolder of rock similar to the highly productive Murrysville sandstone. Volunteers from the Murrysville Historic Preservation Society maintain the site.

After drilling for oil, Michael and Obediah Haymaker’s natural gas well erupts from a depth of almost 1,400 feet. “Every  piece of rigging went sky high, whirling around like so much paper caught in a gust of wind. But instead of oil, we had  struck gas,” Michael Haymaker later recalls.

Eighteen miles east of Pittsburgh, the out-of-control well in Murrysville, Pennsylvania, produces an estimated 34 million cubic  feet of natural gas daily — probably the largest natural gas well ever drilled up to that time. With no way to cap it and  no pipeline to exploit commercial possibilities, the roaring Haymaker well serves only to draw thousands of curious  onlookers to a flaming torch that burns for 18 months, visible from miles away.

“Outlet of a Natural Gas Well, Near Pittsburgh” -- Harper's Weekly, November 7, 1885. "A sight that can be seen in no other city in the world."

The well, brought under control, will produce for years. The Haymaker brothers sell their interest to Joseph Newton Pew and his partner, Edward Emerson. Pew and Emerson form the Penn Fuel Company, recorded as “first to supply natural gas to a major city (Pittsburgh) for home and industrial use.”
 
The area’s highly productive Murrysville sandstone brings prosperity and development of the new fuel source for homes and industry, notes Explore Pennsylvania History. “Murrysville became the site of the nation’s first commercial gas well industry. Many new businesses took shape in the region, including Equitable Gas Company, which was soon acquired by George Westinghouse to become part of his Philadelphia Company.”
 
Equitable Gas Company has more than 900 wells and 440,000 acres under lease in Pennsylvania and West Virginia by  1910. Pew and Emerson later follow other oil and natural gas deposits to Findlay, Ohio — and form the Sun Oil Company  of Ohio, which will become today’s Sunoco.

The Murrysville Historic Preservation Society  maintains the site — and “is working to have the gas well site designated as a National Historic Landmark, which, if approved, would formally establish the site’s national significance in American history and culture.”

November 3, 1900 – First American Auto Show

Automobiles powered by internal combustion engines at the 1900 National Automobile Show were primitive. The most popular automobiles proved to be electric, steam, and gasoline…in that order.

America’s first National Automobile Show opens in New York City’s Madison Square Garden.

Manufacturers present  160 different vehicles and conduct driving and maneuverability demonstrations on a 20-foot-wide wooden track that  encircles the exhibits. A 200-foot ramp tests hill-climbing power.
 
Almost 48,000 visitors pay 50 cents each to see the latest in automotive technology. The most popular models prove to be  electric, steam, and gasoline…in that order.

New Yorkers especially welcome electric models as a way to reduce the  estimated 450,000 tons of manure, 21 million gallons of urine, and 15,000 horse carcasses that have to be removed from  the city’s streets each year. 

This advertisement for the Winton motor carriage – often identified as the first American automobile advertisement, according to the Henry Ford Museum – appeared in a 1898 issue of Scientific American magazine. Automobiles would help reduce the annual removal of 450,000 tons of horse manure from New York City streets.

Of the 4,200 automobiles sold in 1900, less than a thousand are powered by gasoline. Within five years however,  technology and consumer preference thoroughly establish the dominance of gasoline-powered internal combustion  automobiles that continues to this day.

One early critic complained that the internal combustion engine was, “Noxious, noisy, unreliable, and elephantine. It vibrates so violently as to loosen one’s dentures. The automobile industry will surely burgeon in America, but this motor will not be a factor.”

The critic was wrong. Gasoline, once an unwanted byproduct of kerosene refining, cost only about 15 cents a gallon in 1900 and produced dramatic increases in engine horsepower.

Despite the absence of “filling stations,” gasoline was readily available in a market where electric lights were making kerosene obsolete. Read more in “Cantankerous Combustion — 1st U.S. Auto Show.”

November 6, 1860 – Refinery will bring Illumination
 
Construction begins on the first multiple-still refinery in the Pennsylvania oil region, one mile south of Titusville on the north bank of Oil Creek. William Barnsdall (driller of the first well to follow Edwin L. Drake’s 1859 discovery), James Parker, and W. H. Abbott build six stills and bleachers a cost of $15,000.
 
Much of the equipment is purchased in Pittsburgh and shipped up the Allegheny by boat to Oil City, then up Oil Creek to the construction site. Completed and brought on stream January 22, 1861, the stills produce two grades of illuminating oil, the white and the less expensive yellow. Each barrel of oil yields about 20 gallons of kerosene.

October 25, 1887 – “Filling Station” Pump patented

Silvanus Bowser’s company becomes hugely successful as the automobile’s popularity grows.

Sylvanus and Augustus Bowser of Fort Wayne, Indiana, receive a patent for what will become the modern gasoline-pump design.

The patent, No. 372250, results from the popularity of a pump Sylvanus Bowser designed and sold two years earlier at Jake Gumper’s Fort Wayne grocery store — see September 5, 1885.

“Our invention relates to improvements in liquid-storage tanks or cans which are used for the storing and for measuring when the liquids are drawn out for use — as for delivery — such liquids as kerosene-oil, burning-fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum,” the patent document notes.

October 26, 1970 – Joe Roughneck Statue dedicated

The plaque of this memorial in Boonsville, Texas, reads: "Dynamic symbol of the petroleum industry is Joe Roughneck, who is hereby appointed guardian of this memorial commissioned by the Wise County Roughnecks Club. Dedicated by Preston Smith, Governor of Texas, October 26, 1970."

In Boonsville, Texas, Governor Preston Smith dedicates a “Joe Roughneck” statue on the 20th anniversary of the Boonsville natural gas field’s discovery.

The field’s first well, Lone Star Gas Company’s B. P. Vaught No. 1, produced 2.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas in its first 20 years. 

By 2001 the field has produced 3.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 17 million barrels of condensate from 3,500 wells in the field. 

Although Joe Roughneck began life as a character in Lone Star Steel advertising, it was soon adopted by the industry at large. A bronze Joe Roughneck bust has been awarded since 1955 during an annual Chief Roughneck Award ceremony of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

The traditional Joe Roughneck bust — originally created by noted Texas artist Torg Thompson — continues to be presented to each Chief Roughneck recipient. As the oil patch character became popular, it prompted the company to declare, “Joe doesn’t belong to us anymore. He’s as universal as a rotary rig.”

In addition to the Boonsville monument, Joe’s rugged face today sits atop three different oilfield monuments in the state:  Joinerville (1957), Conroe (1957) and Kilgore (1986). Read “Meet Joe Roughneck.”
 
October 27, 1763 – Birth of “Father of American Geology”

William Maclure created America's first colored geological map.

Today is the birthday of William Maclure, a Scottish geologist and “stratigrapher” who created the earliest geological maps of North America. After settling in the United States in 1797, Maclure explored the eastern part of North America to prepare the first colored geological map of the United States.
 
When Benjamin Silliman (the Yale chemist whose analysis of Pennsylvania “rock oil” helped launch the American petroleum industry) organized the American Geological Society in 1819, William Maclure was elected its first president. Many geological historians consider Maclure (1763-1840) to be the “Father of American Geology.”
 
October 27, 1900 – Spindletop Well spudded
 
After drilling a 575-foot dry hole on a salt dome hill near Beaumont, Texas, Captain Anthony Lucas (born Antun Lučić in Croatia) spuds his second well with the financial backing of successful Pennsylvanian oilmen John Galey and James Guffy.
 
A former captain in the Austrian navy and an experienced mining engineer, Lucas uses a  rotary-rig and fishtail bit along with a new innovation, drilling mud, to overcome the unstable sand and clay wellbore. His efforts will be rewarded on January 10, 1901, with the famous Spindletop gusher.

October 27, 1923 – Lion Oil founded in Arkansas

Founded in 1923 in El Dorado, Arkansas, at its peak in the mid-1950s, Lion Oil will operate about 2,000 service stations in the south.

Lion Oil Company is founded as the Lion Oil Refining Company in El Dorado, Arkansas, by Texan Thomas Harry Barton. 

Barton first organized the El Dorado Natural Gas Company and acquired a 2,000 barrel a day refinery in 1922. Thanks to production from the nearby Smackover oilfield, his newly formed Lion Oil Refining Company grew to 10,000 barrels a day capacity. By 1925, the company had acquired 58 oil wells that produced approximately 1.4 million barrels of oil in the first six months of the year.

At its peak in the mid-1950s, Lion Oil operated about 2,000 service stations in the southern United States. A merger with Monsanto Chemical Corporation in 1955 prompted gradual disappearance of the once familiar “Beauregard Lion” logo. Ownership of Lion Oil passed to Tosco Corporation in 1975 and Ergon Corporation in 1985. In 2011, Delek US Holdings acquired Lion Oil, which today markets gasoline, ultra-low sulfur diesel, solvents, propane, and asphalt products.  
 
October 27, 1938 – DuPont names New Product “Nylon”

A 1940 New Yorker advertisement for a revolutionary petroleum product: Nylon.

A revolutionary petroleum product is revealed when DuPont chemical company announces that “nylon” will be the name of its new synthetic fiber yarn.

Invented in 1935 by Wallace Carothers at a DuPont research facility, nylon is considered the first commercially successful synthetic polymer.
 
Nylon is used for parachutes and many other vital products during World War Two. Carothers is viewed by many as the father of the science of man-made polymers. DuPont was established in 1802 near Wilmington, Delaware, by a French immigrant.

October 28, 1868 – Explosive Technology

In Pennsylvania, the Titusville Morning Herald reports on the latest oilfield technology — the nitroglycerin torpedo.

“It would be superfluous, at this late day, to speak of the merits of the Roberts Torpedo,” the newspaper article explains. “For the past three years, it has been a most successful operation, and has increased the production of oil in hundreds upon hundreds of oil wells to an extent which could hardly be overestimated. 

“Next to the discovery of oil, no invention has done more to enrich well owners, than the Roberts Torpedo. Three years ago Col. Roberts finding that nitroglycerin was the most powerful explosive agent that could be employed in torpedoes, turned his attention to the manufacture of this compound, and established a factory near this city, under the direction of one of the most experienced chemists of this country…” 

Read more in “Shooters – a ‘Fracking’ History.”

October 28, 1926 – Yates Field discovered in Texas

New technologies are renewing interest in the historic Yates field, which covers more than 4,700 square miles. Photo courtesy of the Houston Chronicle.

Using a $15,000 cable-tool rig, the Mid-Kansas and Transcontinental Oil Companies bring in the discovery well for the 26,400-acre Yates Field, in a remote area of Pecos County, Texas.

Initial flow from the Ira G. Yates 1-A is 450 barrels per day from 990 feet to 997 feet. The well site is on the northern border of the Chihuahua Desert and 30 miles from Humble Pipe Line Company’s nearest line at the town of McCamey in Upton County.
 
While Humble is building a 55,000-barrel steel storage tank and a pipeline to McCamey, four new producers come in, capable of yielding over 12,000 barrels of oil daily. In 1927, production has to be reduced to 7,000 barrels a day because of limited storage and pipeline access; however, by 1985 the field has produced more than one billion barrels  of oil.

Water-flooding technologies and carbon dioxide injection insure continued production from the field’s estimated recoverable reserves of one billion barrels. The University of Texas, which has received considerable royalties, reports that the Yates field is among the richest oilfields in the United States, rated in the top 10 for overall production and second for reserves. Also see September 14, 1929.

October 17, 1917 – Oil Discovery fuels WWI Victory 

Eastland County, Texas, discoveries include oil wells near Cisco, where Conrad Hilton will witness the crowds of roughnecks -- and buy his first hotel.

The J. H. McCleskey No. 1 well strikes oil at 3,432 feet, about a mile south of Ranger, Texas. Wildcatters had pursued oil with little success in Eastland County since 1904.

Texas and Pacific Coal Company Vice President William Knox Gordon and his driller Frank Champion bring in the well, which produces 1,600 barrels a day of high gravity oil. The discovery launches the Ranger oilfield boom. Within 20 months the company’s stock value goes from $30 a share to $1,250 a share.
 
The formerly quiet Eastland County farming communities fill with oilmen and entrepreneurs as oil sells for $2.60 a barrel — and many Ranger wells flow at 10,000 barrels a day. Ranger’s population alone grows to more than 25,000 and its four banks hold $5 million in deposits.

Ranger oilfield production is essential to America’s victory in World War I, although the high production drops reservoir pressure and depletes the field. When the armistice is signed in November 1918, a member of the British War Cabinet declares, “the Allied cause floated to victory upon a wave of oil.”

The historic McCleskey No. 1 well is plugged on May 18, 1920. Learn more at the Eastland County Museum and Historical Society — and read  learn how an “Oil Boom brings First Hilton Hotel.”
 
October 17, 1918 – Gasoline Shortage brings Wartime “Gasless Sundays”

"Gasless Sundays" joined "Meatless Thursdays" and "Heatless Mondays" as a result of war shortages.

After seven voluntary “Gasless Sundays” observed east of the Mississippi River to support the World War I effort, the U.S. Fuel Administration ends the initiative, having saved an estimated one-million gallons of gasoline.
 
Because of depleted East Coast reserves, producers are forbidden to make deliveries of gasoline to any customer until all orders to the Army, Navy, and Allies are delivered. Other World War I home front conservation measures include Meatless Thursdays, Heatless Mondays, Lightless Nights, and Victory Gardens. The “war to end all wars” ends three weeks later on November 11, 1918.

October 17, 1973 – OPEC declares Oil Embargo

Established in 1960, OPEC will create an energy crisis in the 1970s.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) implements what it calls “oil diplomacy” — it prohibits any nation that had supported Israel in its “Yom Kippur War” with Egypt, Syria and Jordan from buying any of the oil it sells, according to History.com.

“The ensuing energy crisis marked the end of the era of cheap gasoline and caused the share value of the New York Stock Exchange to drop by $97 billion. This, in turn, ushered in one of the worst recessions the United States had ever seen.”

Even before the OPEC embargo, an American oil crisis was on the horizon because of low domestic reserves, the site adds. “The United States was importing about 27 percent of the crude petroleum it needed every year; and gasoline prices were rising. The 1973 war with Israel made things even worse.”

Although the United States is the third largest crude oil producer, about half of the petroleum it uses is imported. During 2010, America imported about 49 percent of the petroleum it consumed – including crude oil and refined petroleum products, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About half of the imports came from the Western Hemisphere. The nation’s dependence on foreign petroleum has declined since peaking in 2005.

October 18, 2008 – Renovated Oil Park dedicated in Oklahoma

A 2008 gusher re-enactment highlights the dedication of a new 84-foot derrick at Discovery 1 Park in Bartlesville. The park's first replica derrick was erected on the original site in 1948.

A re-enactment of the dramatic moment that changed Oklahoma history highlights the dedication ceremony at Discovery 1 Park in Bartlesville  – site of a renovated Nellie Johnstone No. 1.
 
Events include local roughneck reenactors bringing in the 84-foot derrick’s oil well with a water gusher. A similar cable-tool drilling rig thrilled spectators in on March 25, 1897, when Jenny Cass, stepdaughter of Bartlesville co-founder George W. Keeler, was given the honor of “shooting” Oklahoma’s first oil well.
 
The Bartlesville park’s first replica derrick was erected on the original site in 1948, but removed in 1962, according to the Bartlesville Area History Museum. A second replica was erected on March 5, 1964.

In attendance at the 1964 dedication was W.W. Keeler, grandson of George Keeler and Nellie Johnstone Cannon, daughter of William Johnstone and namesake of the original well. — See “Discovering Oklahoma Oil. “
  
October 20, 1861 – Pennsylvania Oil Boom

Just after midnight, William Phillips — a salt well driller from the Pittsburgh area — brings in his second well on the Tarr farm of Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. It produces an astounding 4,000 barrels per day from only 480 feet. 

Northwestern Pennsylvania oilfield technologies will evolve from salt drilling.

This early well taps into the Venango Third Sand’s highly pressurized oil, which flows into Oil Creek several days before being controlled. As new “oilmen” like Phillips develop production skills and technologies, pits are dug and wooden tanks assembled to accommodate the Tarr farm’s oil. For a time, overproduction drives U.S. oil prices to 10 cents a barrel.
 
The Phillips No. 2 well produces until 1871 and yields more than 950,000 barrels of oil, a record that stands for 27 years. Visit the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.

October 20, 1949 -  Rare Well in Maryland

No oil has yet been found in Maryland.

The first commercially successful natural gas well in Maryland is drilled by the Cumberland Allegheny Gas Company in the town of Mountain Lake Park, Garrett County — the westernmost county in the state. The Elmer N. Beachy well produces almost 500 Mcf of natural gas a day.
 
The wildcat discovery prompts a rush of competing companies and indiscriminate, high-density drilling (an average of nine wells per acre), which depletes the field. Twenty of 29 wells drilled within the town produce natural gas, but overall production from the field (7.5 miles by .75 miles) is minimal.

By 1962 the site becomes part of a storage area for the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation. No oil has yet been found in Maryland.
 
October 21, 1921 – First Natural Gas Well in New Mexico

New Mexico’s first commercial natural gas service begins soon after the 1921 discovery.

New Mexico’s natural gas industry is launched with the newly formed Aztec Oil Syndicate’s State No. 1 well about 15 miles northeast of Farmington in San Juan County. The well produces 10 million cubic feet of natural gas daily and the crew uses a trimmed tree trunk with a two-inch pipe and shut-off valve to control the well until a proper wellhead can be shipped in from Colorado.
 
By Christmas, a pipeline reaches two miles into the town of Aztec where citizens enjoy New Mexico’s first commercial natural gas service. Within a year, natural gas can be purchased in Aztec at the flat rate of $2 a month for a heater and $2.25 for a stove. Visit the Farmington Museum.
 
October 23, 1908 – Oil Boom arrives in Wyoming

A postcard from Midwest, Wyoming, pictures the Salt Creek oil boom. Production continues today thanks to new technologies.

Wyoming’s first oil boom begins when the Dutch-owned Petroleum Maatschappij Salt Creek brings in the “Big Dutch” well — a gusher about 40 miles north of Casper.
 
Although the Salt Creek area was known to be productive, the central Salt Creek dome received little attention until noted Italian geologist Dr. Cesare Porro recommended the drilling site to Petroleum Maaschappij in 1906. Drillers J. E. Stock and his father, working for an English corporation known as the Oil Wells Drilling Syndicate, brought in the well at 1050 feet with initial production of 600 barrels a day.
 
More than 4,000 wells have since been drilled in the Salt Creek oilfield, producing from depths of 22 to 4,500 feet. The field has ten producing zones. To increase production, water-flooding began in the 1960s and carbon dioxide injection in 2004. In 2007, the field produced almost three million barrels of oil.

Visit the Salt Creek Museum — and read “Petroleum Pioneers of Wyoming.”
 
October 23, 1948 – Pipeline Inspection Technology advances
 
Northern Natural Gas Company records the first use of an X-ray machine for internal testing of petroleum pipeline welds. The company examines a 20-inch diameter pipe north its Clifton, Kansas, compressor station. The device — now known as a “smart pig” — travels up to 1,800 feet inside the pipe, imaging each weld.
 
As early as 1926, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory had investigated the use of gamma-ray radiation to detect flaws in welded steel and in 1944, Cormack Boucher patented an “Industrial Radiographic Apparatus” described as “particularly suitable for radio-graphing annular welds in relatively large diameter cylindrical structures.” Modern inspection tools may employ magnetic particle, ultrasonic, eddy current, and other inspection methods to verify pipeline and weld integrity.
 
October 23, 1970 – Natural Gas fuels Blue Flame Land Speed Record

On October 23, 1970, the natural gas-powered Blue Flame will set a land speed record that will not be broken for 13 years. Today, there are more than 120,000 vehicles on the road powered by natural gas. Experts say engine design advances promise greater use for transportation.

Natural gas makes a spectacular rocket fuel debut at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah as the Blue Flame sets a new land speed record of 622.287 miles per hour – a record that will stand for 13 years. The 38-foot, 4,950-pound Blue Flame is powered by a rocket motor combining liquefied natural gas and hydrogen peroxide. The motor produces 22,000 pounds of thrust – about 58,000 horsepower.

The 38-foot Blue Flame's natural gas-powered rocket motor can produce up to 58,000 horsepower. Historic pursuit of the world land speed record is the heritage of this “fuel of the future.”

Sponsored by the American Gas Association (AGA), the Blue Flame springs from the imaginations of three Milwaukee men with a passion for speed: Dick Keller, Ray Dausman, and Pete Farnsworth. After building a record-setting rocket dragster, the X-1 Rislone Rocket, they begin the Blue Flame project in 1968.

“It was a promotion of the safety and usefulness of liquefied natural gas,” Farnsworth says in a 1977 interview that notes the support of the Illinois Institute of Technology. “There were nine graduate engineers working on masters degrees for theses on various aspects of the design of the Blue Flame: structures, dynamics, aerodynamics, wheel design, all sorts of things.”

Today, the land speed record is held by the British twin-engine, JP-4 burning Thrust SSC (Super Sonic Car), which reached 763 mph on October 15, 1997. It became the first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier.

Read “The Blue Flame - Natural Gas Rocket Car.”

October 12, 1905 – Boom Times arrive in North Louisiana

In 1955, the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce dedicated a 40-foot monument at the Louisiana State Fairgrounds commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1905 oil discovery.

Oil is discovered in Caddo Parish, creating a classic boom town in Oil City — and economic prosperity for northern Louisiana that would last for decades.

The Caddo Pine Island field, about 20 miles northwest of Shreveport, includes more than 80,000 acres. Five years later, another major discovery will extend the Caddo oilfield by about 1.5 miles.

In 1870, natural gas was discovered in Shreveport by the American Well Works, which was digging a 961-foot water well for the Shreveport Ice Plant.  A night watchman struck a match to see if the wind he heard blowing from the drilling site would blow it out, but the escaping natural gas ignited. The newly discovered gas was subsequently used to light the ice factory and became the state’s first commercial use of natural gas.

Petroleum history is preserved at the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum, above, in Oil City and the Spring Street Historical Museum in nearby Shreveport.

Formerly known as Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Museum, the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum vividly tells the story of Oil City and Louisiana petroleum history using historic buildings, a collection of outdoor displays, and interactive exhibits. Chevron donated a drilling rig now outside the main museum in Oil City.

“This part of Louisiana, of course, was built on the oil and gas industry, and those visitors interested in the technical aspects of oilfield work will find the museum particularly appealing,” notes the museum’s website.

“Across the street and next to the old train depot, an interesting collection of machinery, rigs and equipment further illustrates the character of oil and gas production.”

A statue in Shreveport commemorates an 1870 well that provided the first known commercial use of natural gas in Louisiana.

More petroleum exhibits can be found in Shreveport. The Spring Street Historical Museum is housed in one of the oldest downtown buildings — Tally’s Bank, built in 1865. Nearby, at 90 Market Street, a statue commemorates Louisiana’s first commercial natural gas well.

Both museums note that the oil booms brought 25,000 people to the region — and some of the lawlessness that sometimes accompanies an economic boom. Historians note the influx of such famous outlaws as Tom Star and his gang from Oklahoma and Diamond Dick. Later, Bonnie and Clyde Barrow are said to have often slipped in and out of Oil City.

October 13, 1954 – First Arizona Oil Well

Apache County remains the only petroleum producing county in Arizona.

Arizona becomes the 30th oil producing state when Shell Oil Company brings in the East Boundary Butte No. 2 well a mile south of the Utah border on Apache County’s Navajo Indian Reservation.

The well’s initial flow is small, just 2,200 cubic feet of natural gas and 11 barrels of oil per day from the Paradox Basin.

By 2009, the state’s cumulative production reached 20,992,608 barrels of oil and 32,875,463 Mcf of natural gas, according to the Arizona Geological Survey — and a history of approximately 1,000 dry holes. Apache County remains the only petroleum producing county in Arizona.

October 14, 1929 – Discovery of Van, Texas, Oilfield
 
The discovery of oil in Van, Texas, by the Pure Oil Company creates an oil boom town 60 miles east of Dallas.

By December, three more wells have been drilled and construction started on a camp for oilfield workers. By 1930, among “Cook Camp” buildings is the a sheet metal warehouse that today is the Van Area Oil and Historical Museum.

This Van Zandt County museum, east of Dallas, is in a warehouse originally built in 1930 by the Pure Oil Company.

Pure Oil Company’s Jarman No. 1 discovery well initially produced 146 barrels per hour from the Woodbine sand (between 2,656 feet and 2,712 feet). The Van field adopts advanced production techniques — and becomes the nation’s first field to be completely unitized. 
 
The Van Area Oil and Historical Museum, which opened in 1987, has many reminders of East Texas oil boom days. It is located just north of I-20, on Hwy. 16 West.

October 15, 1997 – High-Octane Speed Record

The still-standing world land speed record is set at 763.035 miles per hour by a British venture, the Thrust SSC (supersonic car).

The jet-powered "Thrust SSC"

The record-setting vehicle uses two jet engines fueled by JP-4 (Jet Propellant 4) to set the record at the Black Rock Desert track in Nevada. JP-4 is a kerosene-naptha blend first adopted for use in jet aircraft in 1951.
 
Today, the SSC team is engineering a new jet and rocket-powered vehicle, the Bloodhound, designed to exceed 1,000 mph. See also the natural gas powered record of October  23, 1970, in “The Blue Flame – Natural Gas Rocket Car.”

October 16, 1865 – Birth of the Oil Pipeline
 
Pipelines — and the technology to lay them – will revolutionize petroleum transportation in the early oil patch.

Van Syckel's oil pipeline began a revolution, according to Ida Tarbell.

In Venango County, Pennsylvania, Samuel Van Syckel’s Oil Transportation Association puts into service a two-inch iron line linking the Frazier well to the Miller Farm Oil Creek Railroad Station about five miles away.

With 15-foot welded joints and three 10-horsepower Reed and Cogswell steam pumps, the pipeline transports 80 barrels of oil per hour — the equivalent of 300 teamster wagons working for ten hours.
 
Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania Tubing Company is laying a seven-mile, six-inch pipeline from Pithole Creek to the Island Well. With their livelihoods threatened, teamsters sabotage the pipelines, until armed guards intervene.

“The day that the Van Syckel pipe-line began to run oil a revolution began in the business. After the Drake well it is the most important event in the history of the Oil Regions,” notes Ida Tarbell in her History of the Standard Oil Company.

October 16, 1931 – Natural Gas Pipeline sets Record

The 1931 natural gas pipeline extends 980 miles across three states.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, America’s first long-distance, high-pressure, large-diameter natural gas pipeline goes into service, linking Texas panhandle fields to consumers in Chicago.

A. O. Smith Corporation developed the technology of thin-walled longitudinal pipe and Continental Construction Corporation built the 980-mile long bolted flange pipeline for the Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America.
 
The $75 million project consumes 209,000 tons of A. O. Smith’s specially fabricated 24-inch diameter steel pipe (6,500 freight car loads) and requires 2,600 separate right of way leases. Texoma Natural Gas Company provides the gas and Chicago’s Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company provides the market.

Today, the Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America operates an interstate system with approximately 9,800 miles of pipeline.

October 3, 1930 – Discovery of the Giant East Texas Oilfield
 
With a crowd of more than 4,000 landowners, leaseholders, stockholders, creditors and spectators watching, Daisy Bradford No. 3 comes in as a gusher near Kilgore, Texas.

Two months later, another wildcat well will strike oil about 10 miles to the north. A third well even farther north brings another large oil discovery. At first, the distance between these wells suggests that they are separate fields. Petroleum geologists are stunned when it becomes apparent the discoveries are from the same formation (the Woodbine)  — 140,000 acres.  

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

“All of East Texas waited expectantly while Columbus ‘Dad’ Joiner inched his way toward oil,” notes Jack Elder in his book, The Glory Days. “Thousands crowded their way to the site of Daisy Bradford No. 3, hoping to be there when and if oil gushed from the well to wash away the misery of the Great Depression.”

The “Black Giant” oilfield has yielded more than five billion barrels since 1930.

When Daisy Bradford No. 3 came in, the thousands of spectators who cheered madly celebrated their newfound fortunes, and congratulated Joiner, the independent oilman who overcame many obstacles — and dry holes– to finally succeed.

Recognizing the significance of the first discovery before the rest of the industry, another oilman, H. L. Hunt, purchases the Daisy Bradford No. 3 well and nearby leases from Joiner. By the summer of 1931 about 900,000 barrels of oil per day are being produced from 1,200 wells. The oilfield provides the financial base for the founding of Hunt Oil Company in 1934.
 
The East Texas field remains the largest and most prolific oil reservoir ever discovered in the contiguous United States. The “Black Giant” has yielded more than five billion barrels — and is still producing.

Read “H.L Hunt and the East Texas Oilfield.”

October 3, 1980 – Oil Museum opens in Kilgore, Texas
 
Fifty years after the discovery of the East Texas oilfield, the East Texas Oil Museum opens in Kilgore — “a tribute to the independent oil producers and wildcatters, the men and women who dared to dream as they pursued the fruits of free enterprise, notes Joe White, founding director.

Established with funding from the Hunt Oil Company, the museum at Kilgore College houses recreations of the boomtown atmosphere of the early 1930s in the largest oil field inside the United States. 
 

Created with the assistance of local oil and natural gas companies, "Boomtown, USA," is the most popular East Texas Oil Museum indoor exhibit --- a full scale town full of stores, people, animals, and machinery depicting the lively activity of a town booming in oil.

“Here are the people, their towns, their personal habits, their tools and their pastimes, all colorfully depicted in dioramas, movies, sound presentations and actual antiques donated by East Texas citizens,” says White. The early discoveries created new towns, new ways of living, and a livelihood for thousands of East Texas citizens. One downtown block in Kilgore, the “World’s Richest Acre Park,” once contained the greatest concentration of oil wells in the world — producing more than 2.5 million barrels of oil.

The oil museum in Kilgore, as well as ones in Beaumont and Galveston (and the region’s modern petroleum story) are featured in an educational booklet, American Oil & Gas Families, East Texas Independents, published by the historical Society in June 2004. Download it as a PDF.
 
October 4, 1917 – Early California Oilfield
 
The Montebello field in the Baldwin Hills of Southern California is discovered when Standard Oil of California’s Baldwin No. 3 oil well comes in with a flow of 7,500 barrels per day from an oil-rich sand at 3,755 feet. It will become one of the Los Angeles County’s top 10 and longest producing fields with 106 wells still producing 648,000 barrels of oil in 2008.

October 6, 1915 – Kansas Oilfield brings in Mid-Continent Production

A large collection of drilling rigs -- and a recreated boom town -- are featured at the Butler County Historical Center and Kansas Oil Museum in El Dorado.

Cities Service Company drilling contractors Golden and Obins bring in the Stapleton No. 1 — discovery well for the 34-square-mile El Dorado oilfield east of Wichita, Kansas. Using scientific geological survey methodology for the first time, Cities Service had identified a promising anticline and leased 30,000 acres near the town of El Dorado in Butler County.
 
The Stapleton well’s first show of oil was at about 600 foot depth, but drilling continued to 2,500 feet into a pay zone yielding 175 barrels a day, prompting Gulf Oil, Standard Oil, and other companies to secure leases.
 
When the United States enters World War I, development of the field escalates and in 1918, the El Dorado oilfield produces almost 29 million barrels of oil. The Stapleton No. 1 well, which produces until 1967, today is visited by tourists — as is the Kansas Oil Museum. The Butler County History Center’s oil museum in El Dorado includes 20 acres of oil industry equipment exhibits, models of the region’s refinery history, and a recreated 1920s oil boom town’s main street. 
 
October 7, 1929 – Teapot Dome Bribe brings Jail Time

Wyoming's Teapot Dome was a Naval Petroleum Reserve established by President William Taft in 1910.

Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, begins serving a one-year sentence in New Mexico’s Santa Fe Penitentiary for taking a $100,000 bribe in the Teapot Dome scandal. Almost 30,000 acres of public lands in Natrona County, Wyoming, had been established as a Naval Petroleum Reserve by President William Taft in 1910; in May 1921, President Warren G. Harding’s executive order gave Fall complete control of all Naval Reserves.
 
In 1922, without competitive bidding, Fall leased Teapot Dome fields to Harry Sinclair of Sinclair Oil Company and Elk Hills, California, fields to Edward Doheny. In subsequent Senate hearings, it emerged that cash was delivered to Fall in his apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington. Fall was convicted for taking a bribe; Sinclair and Doheny were acquitted.

October 8, 1923 – Tulsa hosts First Oil Expo

Beginning in 1923, Tulsa, Oklahoma, will host the International Petroleum Exposition for more than five decades.

Five thousand visitors brave torrents of rain for opening day of the first annual International Petroleum Exposition and Congress in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma.

More than 200 exhibitors display the most complete line of oil country goods ever assembled and it is midnight before the last guest leaves the grounds.  In subsequent years, attendance grows to over 120,000 and the Exposition moves first to the old Tulsa circus grounds, and then to a permanent home at the Tulsa State Fairgrounds.

The trademark Golden Driller statue is added in 1966 as attendance peaks. Economic shocks beginning with the 1973 OPEC oil embargo depress the industry and after 57 years, the International Petroleum Exposition closes for good in 1979 as a result of growing competition from the annual Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.

Support “This Week in Petroleum History.” Join the society today by contributing to its energy education mission.

September 26, 1933 – King Ranch Lease sets Record

At the time, the King Ranch is the largest oil lease contract ever negotiated in the United States.

Despite the reservations of W. S. Parrish, president of Humble Oil and Refining Company, geologist Wallace E. Pratt convinces the company to lease the million-acre King Ranch in Texas for $127,824 per year (plus a one-eighth royalty on any discovered oil).

At the time, this is the largest oil lease contract ever negotiated in the United States.
 
Subsequent leases from neighboring ranches will give Humble Oil & Refining Company nearly two million acres of mineral rights between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande River.

By 1947, Humble is operating 390 producing oil wells on the King Ranch lease. Today, ExxonMobil continues to extend the oil and natural gas lease agreement that has been in effect since 1933.

September 26, 1943 – Florida’s First Oil Well
 
Humble Oil Company brings in Florida’s first commercially successful oil well — the Sunniland No. 1 — near a watering stop on the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad.

On September 26, 1943, after expending about $1 million and reaching a depth of 11,626, Humble Oil Company brings in Sunniland No. 1, Florida's first producing oil well, above.

Humble Oil spends about $1 million drilling to a depth of 11,626 feet to bring in the discovery well, located 12 miles south of Immokalee, near present day Big Cypress Preserve.
 
Florida’s oil had eluded hundreds of wildcatters since 1901. By 1939, almost 80 dry holes had been drilled. About this time, Florida legislators — desperate for their state to become an oil producer and benefit from the tax revenue — offers a $50,000 bounty for the first discovery.

The Humble discovery of the Sunniland oilfield sparks a flurry of lease purchases and wildcat wells. By 1954, the field is producing 500,000 barrels per year from eleven wells at average depths of 11,575 feet. The Sunniland oilfield remains Florida’s top producer until 1964, when Sun Oil Company, after spending $10 million on 34 dry holes, discovers the Felda field in nearby Hendry County.

Humble Oil accepts the $50,000 prize offered by the state, adds $10,000 – and donates the $60,000 equally between the University of Florida and the Florida State College for Women. Humble will later become Exxon, now ExxonMobil. Read more in “First Florida Oil Well.”

September 27, 1915 – Explosion in Ardmore, Oklahoma

The accident will result in new gas transportation regulations.

Two years after Healdton oilfield’s discovery in Oklahoma, a railroad tank car of casing-head gasoline explodes at the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railway depot in Ardmore — destroying most of downtown. Casing-head gasoline comes from the natural gas wells integral to Oklahoma’s early petroleum development.
 
According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, after the disaster the Natural Gasoline Manufacturers Association advocates new regulations governing casing-head gas transportation. The Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railway is found responsible for the explosion and pays 1,700 claims totaling $1.25 million.
 
September 28, 1945 – Truman claims  Outer Continental Shelf

Harry S. Truman

President Harry Truman extends U.S. jurisdiction over the offshore resources of America’s outer continental shelf, placing them under the control of the Secretary of the Interior. The presidential proclamation notes that competing boundaries will be negotiated between the United States and other nations.

Truman’s edict is codified by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953, which affirms the nation’s exclusive jurisdiction over its continental shelf resources — and gives authority to the Department of the Interior “to encourage discovery and development of oil” through a leasing program.
 
October 1, 1908 – First Model T

The first production Model T Ford rolls off the assembly line at the company’s plant in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford will build about 15 million Model T cars — fueled by the inexpensive gasoline that resulted from major oilfield discoveries, including Spindletop Hill in 1901.

October 1, 1942 – Oil Conservation in East Texas

The Texas Railroad Commission calls the use of saltwater injection in the East Texas oilfield "the greatest oil conservation project in history."

The East Texas Salt Water Disposal Company drills its first salt water injection well in the East Texas oilfield near the communities of Tyler, Longview and Kilgore. As early as 1929 the Federal Bureau of Mines had determined that injecting recovered saltwater into formations could increase reservoir pressures and oil production.

The Texas Railroad Commission establishes the company as a public utility and sells stock to 18 large oil companies and 230 independents. In its first 13 years, the company gathers, treats, and re-injects about 1.5 billion barrels of saltwater, prompting the commission to proclaim saltwater injection as the greatest oil conservation project in history. Increased production from the East Texas field is estimated at 600 million barrels of oil.
 
October 2, 1919 – “Mr. Tulsa” incorporates Skelly Oil 

Independent oilman William Skelly's company will help make Tulsa become known as the "Oil Capital of the World."

Skelly Oil Company incorporates in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with founder William Grove Skelly as president.

The company is built upon Skelly’s success in the El Dorado oilfield east of Wichita, Kansas, and earlier ventures, including the Skelly-Sankey Oil Corporation (1916) and Midland Refining Company (1917). Skelly was born in 1878 in Erie, Pennsylvania — where his father hauled oilfield supplies in a horse-drawn wagon.
 
Skelly Oil becomes one of the Mid-Continent’s most successful independents — producing almost nine million barrels of oil in 1929. As Tulsa becomes known as the “Oil Capital of the World,” Skelly is known as “Mr. Tulsa.” He becomes a leading philanthropic sponsor of civic, educational, and charitable causes — and serves as president of Tulsa’s famous International Petroleum Exposition for 32 years until his death on April 11, 1957.

September 21, 1901 – First Oil Discovery in Louisiana

Thomas Watson says oil was first discovered in Sulphur, Louisiana, in 1886. Above, the entrance to the Sulphur Mines "in its glory days," according to Watson, who made a presentation at Sulphur's Carnegie Library on September 6, 2011.

Oil is officially discovered in Louisiana when W. Scott Heywood — already successful thanks to discoveries at Spindletop Hill in Texas earlier in the year — brings in a 7,000-barrel-a-day well on the Jules Clements farm six miles northeast of Jennings.
 
Although the Jules Clements No. 1 is on only a 1/32 of an acre lease, it marks the state’s first commercial oil production and opens the prolific Jennings Field, which Heywood develops by securing leases, building pipelines and storage tanks, and contracting buyers.
 
Heywood’s discovery finds oil at 1,700 feet — after some discouraged investors have sold their stock when drilling reached 1,000 feet. By 1,500 feet, stock in the Jennings Oil Company sells for as little as 25 cents per share. Patient investors are rewarded at 1,700 feet. The oilfield reaches peak production of more than nine million barrels in 1906.

Editor’s Note — A retired professor recently challenged the date of Louisiana’s first commercial oil well. Thomas Watson, PhD., “has uncovered evidence that the first producing oil well in Louisiana was at the Sulphur Mines in 1886,” notes a September 16 article in the Sulphur Daily News. “This information could alter the history of oil production in Louisiana.”

September 23, 1918 – Birth of Wood River Refinery

The Wood River Refinery History Museum is located in front of the Conoco-Phillips Refinery in Wood River, Illinois.

North of St. Louis on the Mississippi River, Roxana Petroleum Company’s Wood River (Illinois) Refinery comes online. The refinery processes more than two million barrels of Oklahoma oil in its first year of operation.

Roxana Petroleum Company is the 1912 creation of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which also founded the American Gasoline Company in Seattle to distribute gasoline on the West Coast. Roxana is established in Oklahoma to locate and produce the oil to be refined at Wood River.
 
Today, the Wood River Refinery is owned by ConocoPhillips and is the company’s largest. It processes 300,000 barrels of oil daily into more than nine million gallons of gasoline/fuel and 42,000 barrels of asphalt during peak season. Visit the Wood River Refinery Historical Museum.

September 24, 1943 – Natural Gas Pipeline will link Texas to Appalachia 

Getting petroleum to vital U.S. industries during World War II brought a surge in pipeline construction.

As natural gas shortages threaten World War II industrial production in northern Appalachia, the Federal Power Commission issues a “Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity” authorizing construction of a pipeline to link Texas natural gas fields to Appalachia by the winter of 1944.
 
A subsidiary of the Chicago Corporation, Tennessee Gas and Transmission Company, builds the 1,265-mile pipeline through seven states, negotiating right-of-way with more than 12,000 individual landowners in 70 counties.

After the pipeline finishes ahead of schedule and under budget, the company prospers. Tenneco Corporation is created in 1960 to manage a growing complement of company subsidiaries. In 1966 Tenneco assumes control of Tennessee Gas assets.

On September 24, 1951 — Well Perforation Patent uses Bazooka Technology

On September 24, 1951, Henry Mohaupt applies for a U.S. patent for his "Shaped Charge Assembly and Gun" -- bringing to the oil patch his World War II anti-tank "bazooka" technology patented one decade earlier.

Swiss Army veteran and chemical engineer Henry Mohaupt applies to patent his “Shaped Charge Assembly and Gun” — bringing World War II anti-tank technology into the oil patch and down the borehole.

Mohaupt had been in charge of a secret U.S. Army Ordnance Department program to develop an anti-tank weapon. His idea of using a conically hollowed out explosive charge to direct and focus detonation energy ultimately produced the 60 millimeter rocket grenade. The new weapon was used in the Army’s M1A1 Rocket Launcher – the GI’s greatly appreciated bazooka. 

After the war, the industrial potential of these shaped charges prompted Well Explosives Company of Fort Worth, Texas, to employ Mohaupt in their effort to develop systems for safely perforating cement casing and pipe to facilitate flow from oil-bearing strata.  Mohaupt’s 1951 patent submission is just one of many that will follow as the demands of ever higher wellbore pressures and other challengers continue to prompt innovation.

In 1957, Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company purchases Welex Jet Services, formerly Well Explosives Company — read more in “Downhole Bazooka.”

September 25, 1922 – First Oil Discovery in New Mexico

New Mexico has produced more than 5.5 billion barrels of oil since its September 1922 discovery well.

New Mexico’s first commercial oil well is drilled on the Navajo Indian Reservation near Shiprock by the Midwest Refining Company.

The Hogback No. 1 is a modest producer at 375 barrels per day, but Midwest soon drills eleven additional wells to establish the Hogback oilfield as a major producer of the San Juan Basin.
 
Two years later, a pipeline to Farmington is completed and oil is shipped by rail to Salt Lake City, Utah, for refining. However, discoveries in southeastern New Mexico will overshadow the San Juan Basin’s oil and natural gas possibilities. New Mexico has produced more than 5.5 billion barrels of oil since the Hogback No. 1 well.

Learn more about the industry at the New Mexico Oil & Gas Association – and visit the Farmington Museum.

September 12, 1866 – Oil first discovered in Texas

In 1859, former Confederate Lyne Taliaferro Barret leased 279 acres east of Nacogdoches, Texas, near Oil Springs -- an area known for oil seeps. After the Civil War he drilled his first oil well. On September 12, 1866, his tenacity was rewarded when the No. 1 Isaac C. Skillern well struck oil at a depth of 106 feet.

The Texas petroleum industry is born 13 miles east of Nacogdoches when Lyne Taliaferro Barret and his Melrose Petroleum Oil Company bring in the state’s first commercial oil well.

The Confederate veteran’s No. 1 Isaac C. Skillern well — drilled in an area known as Oil Springs — finds the newly prized resource at a depth of 106 feet. His well yields a modest ten barrels per day, but limited access to markets soon leads to the company’s failure. 

Barret’s failed project lays dormant for nearly two decades — until new wildcat drilling companies find oil nearby. The Nacogdoches field remains the first and oldest field in Texas and as late as 1941 still recorded production of eight barrels a day from 40 wells. Some of the field’s wells produced into the 1950s.
 
Interestingly, instead of using traditional cable-tool percussion drilling, Lyne Taliaferro Barret uses an auger fastened to a pipe and rotated by a steam-driven cogwheel — the basic principle of rotary drilling that has been used ever since. Read more in “First Lone Star Discovery” – and visit Nacogdoches, “the oldest town in Texas.”

September 13, 1957 – First Hawaiian Refinery

Today, about 40 million barrels of oil are delivered by tanker to Hawaii every year and refined into a host of products, including gasoline, jet fuel, asphalt, diesel and more.

Standard Oil of California announces it will build the Territory of Hawaii’s first oil refinery, eight miles west of Pearl Harbor. According to a 1959 Popular Mechanics article, Standard originally planned to import oil from the Middle East “by means of an unusual undersea submarine cable.”

Today, the plant is a modern 54,000 barrel per day refinery owned by Chevron, which in March 2010 determined that despite low utilization rates and poor refining margins, the 200-employee refinery would remain open. Hawaii’s one other refinery is nearby — Tesoro Corporation’s 95,000-barrels-per-day facility.

September 13, 1975 – President Ford dedicates Petroleum Museum

President Gerald R. Ford was the keynote speaker at the Petroleum Museum's 1975 opening.

President Gerald R. Ford addresses 400 guests at the dedication ceremony of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Library and Hall of Fame in Midland, Texas. After touring the new museum, the president is presented with a bronze sculpture by artist Lester Fox entitled “Dressing the Bit” by Chairman of the Board of Executors of the Museum Emil G. Rassman.

The museum’s wings today include extensive geological, technical and cultural exhibits — and a rare collection of historic Chaparral racing cars, notes Director Kathy Shannon. “Every visit to The Petroleum Museum is an opportunity to experience the fun side of science firsthand,” she says. “Our spectacular exhibit wings offer remarkable insight into the scientific and technological world around us, from the age when dinosaurs roamed the Permian Basin to the wild oil boom in West Texas!”

In early 2011, Chevron celebrated the production of five billion barrels of Permian Basin oil in West Texas — and company officials announced a donation of $1 million, evenly divided between Christmas in Action of Odessa and Midland’s Permian Basin Petroleum Museum.

September 14, 1929 – Permian Basin’s Yates Well sets Record

New technologies are renewing interest in the historic Yates field, which has been producing continuously since the 1920s. Pecos County, the second largest county in Texas, covers more than 4,700 square miles. Photo courtesy of the Houston Chronicle.

In Pecos County, a  West Texas oil well comes in at a depth of 1,070 feet — and becomes the most productive well in the petroleum industry’s history. The Yates 30-A well produces a record 8,528 barrels of oil per hour — an astounding 204,672 barrels per day.
 
The historic Permian Basin well is located just a few hundred yards from the discovery well for the historic Yates Field — the Ira G. Yates 1-A well. It is operated by Transcontinental Oil Company and the Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company (then a subsidiary of Ohio Oil, now Marathon Oil Corporation). Production from the Yates oilfield peaks in 1929 at more than 41 million barrels of oil. The field is still supplying Texas refineries and in 1985 produced its billionth barrel of oil.

“The Yates Field, among the largest ever found in the United States, has been in continuous production for 85 years and has been exploited by a list of oil companies, some of them no longer in existence — but scientists believe that massive amounts of oil still remain stranded in the rocks” notes a June 2011 article, “Geriatric oil field is coaxed along.”

September 14, 1871 – President Grant visits Oil City, Pennsylvania
 
During a tour of the booming oil regions of northwestern Pennsylvania, President Ulysses S. Grant visits Titusville, Petroleum Center and Oil City — the “valley that changed the world” with America’s first commercial oil discovery in August 1859.
 
September 14, 1960 – OPEC founded in Baghdad

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is created at the Baghdad Conference by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The five founding members are later joined by nine others. Headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland, prior to moving to Vienna, Austria, in September 1965.

OPEC’s objective “is to coordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry.”    
 
September 15, 1886 – Indiana Natural Gas Boom begins

In 1885, Andrew Carnegie said that the natural gas he used for steel making had replaced 10,000 tons of coal a day.

Drilling for the newly formed Eaton Mining & Gas Company in Indiana, Civil War veteran Almeron Crannel hits a strong flow of natural gas at 922 feet.

With a two-inch pipe extended 18 feet above the derrick, the flow of natural gas produces a huge flame, reportedly visible in Muncie ten miles away. The well helps reveal the 5,120-square-mile Trenton field spread over 17 east-central Indiana counties.
 
Trenton is the largest natural gas field known in the world at the time. Within three years, more than 200 companies in Indiana are exploring, drilling, distributing, and selling natural gas from more than 380 producing wells. For a while, natural gas is so plentiful that customers are charged by the month or year rather than for a metered amount of gas. Read more in “Indiana Natural Gas Boom.”

September 18, 1948 – Oil found in Utah
 
After searching for oil in Utah for more than 25 years, J. L. “Mike” Dougan, president of the small independent Equity Oil Company, brings in the state’s first commercial well in the Uinta Basin — beating out larger competitors Standard Oil of California, Pure Oil, Continental, Gulf, and Union Oil. The discovery launches a  drilling boom.

J.L. "Mike" Dougan, left, watches oil flow from Utah's first commercial well -- the Ashley Valley No.1 about 10 miles southeast of Vernal.

The Ashley Valley No. 1 well, ten miles southeast of Vernal, comes in at 300 barrels a day from 4,152 feet. By the end of 1948, eight more wells are drilled and development of the field follows. Production averages just less than a million barrels a year from the approximately 30 wells in the field. The Ashley Valley is the state’s largest producing oilfield until 1957.  More discoveries follow as wells are drilled deeper.

Signs of oil had been noted as early as 1850 near Rozel Point on the northern shore of Great Salt Lake, notes the Utah Geological Survey:

“Although some oil was produced beginning in 1904 at the Rozel oil seep, and a few years later at the Virgin River field and at Mexican Hat, large-scale commercial oil development did not begin until the late 1940s and early 1950s in the Uinta and Paradox Basins. Shortly thereafter, Utah was one of the top 15 oil producing states – a position it has held since. The value of extracted crude oil in Utah for 2008 was more than $1.9 billion.”

September 5, 1927 – Schlumberger Brothers invent Electric Well Logging

In 1927, the Schlumberger brothers add a new technology to petroleum exploration and production -- a downhole electronic "logging tool."

A technology that will revolutionize the search for oil and natural gas – an electric downhole well log — is first applied near Pechelbronn, France.

After successfully developing an electrical four-probe surface approach for mineral exploration, brothers Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger adapt their surface system to operate vertically.
 
Lowering their new tool into a well, the Schlumberger brothers record a single lateral-resistivity curve at fixed points in the well’s borehole and graphically plot the results against depth — creating a well log of geologic formations. Changes in subsurface resistance readings show variations and possible oil and natural gas producing areas. From this well-logging beginning, Schlumberger will become a leading worldwide oilfield service company.

September 5, 1885 – Birth of the “Filling Station” Pump

Gas pumps with dials were followed by calibrated glass cylinders, notes a 1955 Popular Science article. Meter pumps using a small glass globe with a turbine inside replaced the measuring cylinder as pumps continued to evolve.

The modern gasoline-pump design is invented by Sylvanus F. (Freelove) Bowser, who sells his first pump to a  grocery store in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
 
Designed to safely dispense kerosene as well as “burning fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum,” the pump holds 42 gallons. It uses marble valves, a wooden plunger and an upright faucet.

This 1916 S. F. Bowser Company gasoline pump operated by a hand crank using a rack and pinion system. A "clock face" shaped dial let the consumer know how much gas had been pumped. Photo from the Smithsonian Collection.

With the pump’s popular success at Jake Gumper’s Fort Wayne grocery store, Bowser forms the S. F. Bowser Company and patents his invention in 1887.
 
Within a decade — as the automobile’s popularity grows — Bowser’s company adapts and becomes hugely successful. By 1905 (the same year the world’s first gasoline station is built in St. Louis, Missouri) the S. F. Bowser “Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump” is soon known to motorists as a “filling station.”

The original Bowser pump consists of a square metal tank with a wooden cabinet equipped with a suction pump operated by hand-stroke lever action. It includes a hose attachment for dispensing gasoline directly into the automobile fuel tank. 

With the addition of competing businesses such as Wayne Pump Company and Tokheim Oil Tank & Pump Company, the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, becomes the gas pump capital of the world. Learn more about gas pumps, pump globes, oil cans and signs at Petroleum Collectibles Monthly.

September 7, 1917 – Hogg Wells do Well
 
After drilling 20 dry holes, the Tyndall-Wyoming Oil Company completes the No. 1 Hogg well as a small producer 50 miles south of Houston, Texas. Four months later a second well produces about 600 barrels a day. These wells end the succession of dry holes dating back to 1901 — when former Texas Governor Jim Hogg paid $30,000 for the lease. Governor Hogg dies 11 years before his two wells prove the West Columbia oilfield to be highly productive. Fortunately for his family, he had stipulated in his will that the mineral rights should not be sold for 15 years after his death. The field yields more than 119,000 barrels of oil in 1918 alone.
 
September 7, 1923 – Dominguez Hills Oil Discovery 

Frederick Burnham

In an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County known as Dominguez Hills, independent oilman Frederick Russell Burnham brings in a well at a depth of 4,068 feet. His company, Burnham Exploration, is partnered with Union Oil Company of California.

Burnham’s 1,193 barrel per day producer opens the Dominguez Hills oilfield — a two-square mile, two-mile deep stack of eight producing zones. By 1933, Burnham’s company pays out $10.2 million to stockholders. The site is now home to a state university.

The California State University Dominguez Hills notes that it is named for the family of Juan Jose Dominguez, a Spanish soldier who received a grant of 75,000 acres for grazing cattle from the governor of the Spanish province of California in 1784. “But family fortunes truly took off with discovery of oil in the 1920s, first in the Torrance area and then, most resoundingly, on Dominguez Hill itself, where productive wells functioned for a half century.” Visit the California Oil Museum in Santa Paula — in the historic headquarters building of the Union Oil Company.

September 9, 1928 – Oklahoma governs Oil Production
 
For the first time, a state regulatory body issues a proration order that governs oil production for an entire state. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission sets the state’s oil production limit to 700,000 barrels daily and limits “production of new wildcat wells to 100 barrels a day.” The commission allocates 425,000 barrels a day for newly discovered fields such as the Greater Seminole (the premier high-gravity U.S. oilfield in 1928) and 275,000 barrels a day for older oilfields.

September 11, 1866 – Turning Kerosene into a Lubricant

Beginning in 1866, "Ewing's Patent Vacuum Oil" preserved and lubricated leather harnesses.

Carpenter and part-time inventor Matthew P. Ewing patents a method of distilling kerosene in a vacuum to produce lubricants. Three weeks later, with partner Hiram Bond Everest, he founds Vacuum Oil Company in Rochester, New York. Their first product is “Ewing’s Patent Vacuum Oil,” extolled for its virtues as a leather conditioner and preserver.
 
Ewing leaves the partnership, but Everest continues to develop vacuum produced lubricants such as Vacuum Harness Oil, which he initially distributes in square containers previously used for canned oysters. The company prospers with the production of heavy lubricating oils. In 1880, Everest sells 75 percent of Vacuum Oil to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil for $200,000.

Last Week in Petroleum History

Editor’s Note — Happy birthday, Nadine.

August 31, 1850 – “Town Gas” company forms in San Francisco

The San Francisco Gas Company is incorporated to produce and distribute manufactured gas extracted from coal tar. Irish immigrant Peter Donahue, his brother James, and engineer Joseph Eastland build their coal gasification plant on San Francisco Bay.

Within two years the company illuminates “town gas” street lamps; by 1915 there are almost 8,500 lamps — each hand lit and shut off every day. The last gas lamp is extinguished in 1930. San Francisco Gas Company is now part of Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation.

August 31, 1859 – The First Dry Hole

Although Edwin Drake used a steam-powered cable-tool rig to find oil at 69.5 feet, John Grandin and blacksmith H.H. Dennis use the simpler, time-honored spring-pole “kick down” method. They drill deeper -- but find no oil. This photograph comes from "The World Struggle for Oil," a 1924 motion picture produced under the direction of the Department of the Interior.

Just four days after America’s first commercial oil discovery at Titusville, Pennsylvania, a series of far less known “firsts” are achieved by local entrepreneur John Livingston Grandin.

John Livingston Grandin

Although Edwin Drake used a steam-powered cable-tool rig to find oil at 69.5 feet, Grandin, assisted by blacksmith H.H. Dennis, uses the simpler, time-honored spring-pole “kick down” method for his well at nearby Gordon Run Creek. The well reaches a depth of 134 feet — but produces no oil, despite many attempts.

Instead of being remembered as America’s second commercial oil discovery, the Grandin exploratory well results in the petroleum industry’s first “dry hole.” Gradin’s drilling attempt might also be credited with the first stuck tool, the first shooting of a well with black powder (and first well ruined by a failed shooting attempt).

Travelers on U.S. 62 about four miles south of the Allegheny River Bridge at Tidioute, Pennsylvania, will find an historic marker erected in July 1959. The marker reads: “At oil spring across river at this point J. L. Grandin began second well drilled specifically for oil, August 1859, after Drake’s success. It was dry, showing risks involved in oil drilling.”

Read more of this little-known story in “The First Dry Hole.”

September 1, 1862 – Union taxes Manufactured Gas

Paying for the Civil War brings new energy taxes.

To help fund the Civil War, new federal taxes take effect — up to 15 cents tax per thousand cubic feet of manufactured gas (coal gasified by heating).

Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorials accuse the local gas company of passing on the tax, which “shifts from its shoulders its share of the burdens the war imposes and places it directly on their customers.”

“Not so,” replies the Brooklyn Gas Light Company.  “(We) do not contemplate anything of the kind.” The gas company pays the tax without adding to customers’ bills.

September 2, 2009 – Gulf of Mexico Oil Discovery

The ill-fated Deepwater Horizon sets the world oil well depth record.

A major oil discovery is made at a world-record depth 250 miles southeast of Houston in the Gulf of Mexico. The Tiber Prospect of BP is estimated to hold more than four billion barrels of oil in place– a “giant” oilfield.

Although commercial prospects have not been fully evaluated, the Tiber produces light crude oil, according to Dow Jones News. “Early estimates of recoverable reserves are around 20 percent to 30 percent recovery, suggesting figures of around 600 to 900 million barrels.”

The discovery well — drilled by the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible rig — sets the world oil well depth record by drilling 30,923 feet into seabed from a platform floating 4,132 feet above.

Seven months later at its next drilling site, the Deepwater Horizon will explode and sink while drilling the Macondo well.

September 4, 1841- Early Drilling Technology

Then 1841 invention greatly increases percussion drilling efficiency.

Early drilling technology advances when William Morris patents a “Rock Drill Jar” — a drilling innovation he began experimenting with 10 years earlier in Kanawha County, Virginia (now West Virginia). His wells provide settlers with much-needed salt for preserving food.

Morris, using his experience as a brine well driller, patents his device, No. 2243 – a “manner of uniting augers to sinkers for boring artesian well.” It is a telescoping link apparatus that greatly increases the efficiency of percussion drilling because it “would slacken off as the bit hit bottom and pick up the bit with a snap on the upstroke.”

After oil is discovered in Pennsylvania, cable-tool drilling technology will evolve rapidly as drillers improve upon Morris’ patented jars. Today, cable-tool rigs and jars are still in use around the world. See the article “Making Hole — Drilling Technology.”

September 4, 1850 – Chicago Streets get Gas Light

"Brilliant torches flamed on both sides of Lake Street as far as the eye could see."

A Chicago company delivers its first manufactured gas to customers. “The Gas Alight! — Wednesday marked an era in Chicago,” reports Gem of the Prairie. “The gas pipes were filled, and the humming noise made by the escaping gas at the tops of the lamp-posts indicated that everything was all right.”

The magazine adds: “Shortly afterward the fire was applied and brilliant torches flamed on both sides of Lake Street as far as the eye could see and wherever the posts were set.”

The Chicago Gas Light & Coke Company, incorporated by special act of the Illinois State Legislature in 1849, has exclusive rights to manufacture, distribute and sell gas for 10 years. The price is set at $3.50 per thousand cubic feet and the cost of lighting Chicago city lamps is fixed at $15 per post.

By 1855 nearly 78 miles of pipe have been installed and there are almost 2,000 manufactured-gas consumers in Chicago.

August 24, 1892 – Gladys City Oil Company founded

Gladys City (Texas) Oil, Gas & Manufacturing Company drills near Spindletop Hill, which will become famous for a 1901 gusher.

One of the earliest Texas oil companies  — the Gladys City Oil, Gas & Manufacturing Company — is formed by Patillo Higgins and four partners. They lease 2,700 acres in Jefferson County, Texas.

Higgins is convinced that an area known as “Big Hill” — Spindletop Hill — four miles
south of Beaumont, has oil despite all conventional wisdom to the contrary. The new
oil company drills wells on Spindletop in 1893, 1895 and 1896. All are dry holes.

Higgins leaves the Gladys City venture in 1895. Capt. Anthony Lucas will bring in a gusher on January 10, 1901, that changes the petroleum industry forever. The Spindletop field will produce more oil in one day than the rest of the world’s oilfields combined — and Texaco, Gulf, Mobile and Sun Oil will trace their roots to Patillo Higgins’ confidence in the Big Hill.

Two Beaumont museums tell the story of the great Spindletop discovery — and the
role of petroleum in America’s economic development. Visit the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum and the Texas Energy Museum.

August 25, 1922 – New Mexico’s First Commercial Oil Well

The first commercial oil well in New Mexico is spudded by the Midwest Refining Company — a wildcat well on the western edge of the Navajo reservation in San Juan County. Oil is discovered within a month, producing 375 barrels a day from the San Juan Basin. Midwest drills 11 more wells to establish the Hogback oilfield as a major producer.

Two years later, a pipeline to Farmington is completed and oil is shipped by rail to Salt Lake City, Utah, for refining. Visit the Farmington Museum, which features “Dinosaurs to Drill Bits” — an energy education exhibit that tells the oil and natural gas story of the prolific San Juan Basin.

August 27, 1859 – Birth of U.S. Petroleum Industry

"August 27, 1859, is one of those special dates that changed the world," notes one historian. "Edwin Drake's quest to find oil by drilling was a success, and the modern oil and gas industry took a giant leap forward."

The modern American petroleum industry is born in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The Seneca Oil Company’s highly speculative pursuit of oil is rewarded when Edwin Drake and his blacksmith driller, William “Uncle Billy” Smith, bring in the first commercial oil well at 69.5 feet near Oil Creek in Venango County. They launch a new industry.

“The drilling of this oil well, by Edwin L. Drake in 1859, is the event recognized as marking the modern phase of the petroleum industry,” notes a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark at the site, now home of the Drake Well Museum.

“A series of revolutionary technological changes, unforeseen even by the most prophetic, followed,” the historic marker adds. “An emerging source of concentrated energy and abundant chemical compounds, petroleum supported sweeping changes in our modes of illumination, power development, transportation, and industrial chemistry. Few events in history have so transformed the face of civilization.”

A Drake biography published as part of the 2009 celebration of the 150th anniversary includes more than 200 pages of reference material and dozens of rare images. William Brice, PhD, professor emeritus in geology and planetary science at the  University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, is the author of the Myth, Legend, Reality -  Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry.

August 27, 1859, is one of those special dates that changed the world, Brice explains. “Edwin Drake’s quest to find oil by drilling was a success, and the modern oil and gas industry took a giant leap forward. Even though the use of petroleum dates back to the first human civilizations, the events of that Saturday afternoon along the banks of Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, provided the spark that propelled the petroleum industry toward the future.”

More than 150 years after Edwin Drake used the technology of a 32-foot iron pipe to strike our nation’s first commercial oil, and hundreds of wash bins and whiskey barrels to collect it, “America’s energy producers have never stopped innovating,” notes the industry information website Energy in Depth.

Visit the outdoor exhibits at the Drake Well Museum.

August 27, 1959 – Centennial Stamp Issue

With more than 120 million stamps to follow the first day of issue, the commemorative stamps are "as a reminder of what can be achieved by the combination of free enterprise and the vision and courage and effort of dedicated men," declares U.S. Postmaster Arthur Summerfield.

“No official act could give me greater pleasure than to dedicate this stamp
commemorating the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry,” declares U.S.
Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield on this day in 1959 during his keynote
speech at “Oil Centennial Day” in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

During his introduction of the four-cent commemorative postage stamp, he adds,
“The American people have great reason to be indebted to this industry. It has supplied most of the power that has made the American standard of living possible.”

Fifty years later, after granting commemorative status to Kermit the Frog (and friends), the U.S. Postal Service Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee twice rejects attempts to create a sesquicentennial stamp recognizing the 150th anniversary of the U.S. petroleum industry. Read more in the “Centennial Oil Stamp Issue.”

Aug 27, 2009 – Communities celebrate 150th Anniversary of Petroleum Industry

Titusville, Pennsylvania, annual celebrates it famous 1859 oil discovery -- including this parade during the 1934 jubilee.

Oil patch celebrities participated in the 2011 parade during America's oldest annual oil festival.

Petroleum products were among the parade floats for the 150th anniversary -- including this one from Oil Creek Plastics.

A week-long festivities take place in Oil City, Titusville, Bradford and many other northwestern Pennsylvania communities honor the sesquicentennial of Edwin Drake’s historic oil discovery.

A new Mobile Energy Education Training Unit was part of the 2009 Oil 150 celebration at the Drake Well Museum.

Thousands attend the annual Titusville Oil Festival parade on Saturday — part of a 2009 Drake Day Extravaganza with the theme “Oil 150: America’s Energy Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”

The parade includes 75 floats and 10 marching bands along a 1.7-mile route through Titusville. Seven queens from seven area cities participate along with representatives from six volunteer fire departments, who bring 10 trucks. An annual Antique Car Show is held at Drake Well Park while an Oil Man’s Barbecue takes place at the Cross Creek Country Club.

August 28, 1927 – Tool Company founded

Brothers Arthur and Kirby Penick establish the Oil Center Tool Company (O-T-C) in Houston to supply drilling equipment to east Texas oilmen. Within six months, they file their first patent for improvement in well performance and safety.

In 1931, Oil Center Tool Company supplies the East Texas Oilfield boom. O-T-C introduces the first factory-assembled and tested completion systems of assembly of valves, spools, and fittings today known as “Christmas trees.”

By 1957, when Oil Center Tool is acquired by FMC Corporation, it has more than 50 patents, including well head innovations, flow control systems, blow-out preventers and Christmas trees.

August 15, 1945 – End of WW II Gasoline Rationing

Gas rationing limited most drivers to four gallons a week -- at no more than 35 mph.

World War II gasoline rationing ends in the United States one day after President Harry Truman announces the surrender of Japan. Since the beginning of rationing in December 1942, priority stickers and coupon books had been issued by the Office of Price Administration to conserve petroleum for the war effort.

Most civilian automobiles carried “A” stickers — limiting them to four gallons a week. Higher priority stickers were issued to emergency vehicles. A national speed limit of 35 mph was also imposed to further constrain consumption. In addition to gasoline and fuel oil, wartime rationing included tires, food, clothing, shoes, and coffee.

August 16, 1918 – American Oil fuels Victory 

Despite heavy losses, American petroleum fuels the Allied war effort during World War I. On this day the British tanker Mirlo is sunk by German submarine U-117 off North Carolina — one of more than 1,000 Allied and neutral ships sunk in the final year of World War I alone.

“They have lately sunk so many fuel oil ships that this country may very soon be in a perilous condition,” warns Walter Page, U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau appeals to President Wilson: “Gasoline is as vital as blood in the coming battles.” When the armistice is signed in November 1918, Lord Curzon, a member of the British War Cabinet, declares, “the Allied cause floated to victory upon a wave of oil.” 

August 16, 1927 — Aviation Gasoline powers Air Race across Pacific Ocean

Phillips Petroleum Company vice presidents L. E. Phillips and Clyde Alexander, pilot Arthur Goebel Jr., and legendary oilman Frank Phillips with the 1927 racing airplane – Woolaroc.

It is a foggy Tuesday morning as eight airplanes prepare for takeoff before a crowd of 50,000 at the Oakland Airport in California. Aviation history is about to be made with a race across the Pacific, thanks to a revolutionary petroleum product — Phillips Nu-Aviation Gasoline.

Advanced engine and aircraft technologies are transforming the future of flying. Just three months after Charles Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight, the Dole Pineapple Company offers a $25,000 first prize for an air race of its own – from Oakland to Honolulu, Hawaii

Barnstormer and Hollywood stunt pilot Arthur Goebel Jr. finds a sponsor and friend in Frank Phillips, president of Phillips Petroleum Company of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Several competitors will disappear over the Pacific Ocean during of the 1927 Dole Air Race. The winning aircraft today is in a museum at the Woolaroc Ranch near Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Now ConocoPhillips, the exploration, production and refining company is a pioneer in early in aviation fuel research. It already has developed high-gravity gasoline for some of the first U.S. mail-carrying airplanes after World War I. In fact, Phillips Petroleum produced aviation fuels before it produced automotive fuels.

But in 1927, aviation fuel technology is still in its infancy. Goebel agrees to use a new Phillips Petroleum aviation fuel — Nu-Aviation Gasoline — for the planned 2,439 mile flight over the Pacific. The single-engine monoplane is christened Woolaroc, the name of Frank Phillips’ Bartlesville ranch.

With the enthusiastic crowd of cheering them on, the eight competing aircraft take off from the muddy Oakland Airport field just after noon. Two of the fuel-heavy planes crash during takeoff and others soon return for repairs. Five aircraft eventually head out over the Pacific. Just two will make it to Hawaii.

Read more in “Flight of the Woolaroc.”

August 17, 1785 – Reports confirm Oil on Pennsylvania Creek

Once lined with hundreds of wooden cable-tool derricks, Oil Creek today attracts hikers, canoeists, anglers -- and tourists to the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

“Oil Creek has taken its name from an oil or bituminous matter being found floating on its surface,” notes a report on Pennsylvania by Gen. William Irvine. “Many cures are attributed to this oil by the natives, and lately by some of the whites, particularly rheumatic pains and old ulcers.” 
 
The 1785 report — 74 years before America’s first commercial oil well beside the same creek — follows one two years earlier by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, who reported that Oil Creek, “empties itself into the Allegheny river, issuing from a spring, on the top of which floats an oil, similar to what is called Barbados tar, and from which may be collected by one man several gallons in a day.” 
 
Once lined with wooden cable-tool derricks and crowded with barges, Oil Creek today attracts canoeists and trout fishermen — and a state park offers 7,000 acres for hiking, biking, cross-country and backpacking. The historic creek in “the valley that changed the world” also has a replica wooden derrick of the first U.S. commercial oil well at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.
 
August 19, 1909 – Chemists produce Butter from Oil, Milk from Kerosene

"Skilled chemists...can convert the kerosene into sweet milk."

As public sentiment turns against monopolies — and following journalist Ida Tarbell’s 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company – the company becomes a target for humorists. “The Standard Oil Company has decided to drive the cow and the dairyman out of business,” declares a fanciful story from Jersey City, New Jersey.

“Its skilled chemists have discovered a process whereby they can make gilt-edge butter as a byproduct of crude petroleum,” notes a facetious story in the Stanstead Journal of Quebec, which also declares that “the chemists, in the steps leading up to the petroleum butter discovery, also have perfected a cheap process by which they can convert the kerosene into sweet milk.”
 
August 19, 1957 – First and Only Oil found in Washington State

Surrounded by unsuccessful attempts, Washington's first and only commercial oil well (red) will produce 12,500 barrels before being capped in 1961.

The first and only commercial oil well in the state of Washington is discovered by the Sunshine Mining Company. The Medina No. 1 well flows 223 barrels a day from a depth of 4,135 feet near Ocean City in Gray Harbor County.

Although a well drilled six years earlier produced 35 barrels a day, the Tom Hawksworth-State well was deemed noncommercial and abandoned. The Medina No. 1 well will produce 12,500 barrels before being capped in 1961. “About 600 gas and oil wells have been drilled in Washington, but large-scale commercial production has never occurred,” explains a 2010 report from the Washington Commissioner of Public Lands.

“The most recent production, which was from the Ocean City Gas and Oil Field west of Hoquiam, ceased in 1962, and no oil or gas have been produced since that time,” the commissioner adds, noting that some companies are exploring for coalbed methane in western Washington.

Last Week in Petroleum History

 
August 9, 1922 – Oil Patch Psychic of Luling, Texas

The Central Oil Patch Museum of Luling, Texas, is a restored 1885 mercantile store.

After drilling six consecutive dry holes near Luling, Texas, the heavily in debt United North & South Oil Company brings in the Rafael Rios No. 1 well — discovering an oilfield that is twelve miles long and two miles wide.

Local lore and abundant literature proclaim that Edgar B. Davis, president of the company, found the well only after getting a psychic reading from famed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. Within two years the oilfield has 391 producing wells and yields about 11 million barrels annually.

Davis will sell his leases to the Magnolia Petroleum Company for an astounding $12 million — the biggest petroleum deal in Texas at the time. Psychic Edgar Cayce will claim success helping other Texas wildcatters. He leaves the oil patch for good after forming his own oil company — and drilling a series of dry holes.

Unique pump jacks can be found in downtown Luling.

Today, petroleum exhibits of the Central Texas Oil Patch Museum in a restored 1885 mercantile store describe the historic 1922 discovery. Luling also is known for its decorated pumping units and the Watermelon Thump Festival – and Seed-Spitting Contest. The Guinness Book of World Records documents the contest’s still unbeaten distance of 68 feet, 9 and 1/8 inches set in 1989.

Luling also hosts an annual Roughneck BBQ and Chili Cook-Off — and boasts of ”the best ribs in the country,” according to Reader’s Digest. Read an article about this oil patch community’s museum in the “Central Texas Oil Patch Museum.”
 
August 10, 1909 – Hughes patents Revolutionary Drill Bit

Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas, receives a patent in 1909 for a drill that "relates to boring drills, and particularly to roller drills such as are used for drilling holes in earth and rock."

Rotary drilling is revolutionized when Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas, patents the twin-cone roller bit consisting of two interlocking cones. History remembers several men who were trying to improve on drill bit technologies at the time, but it was Hughes who made it happen. 

Granville A. Humason, for example, developed a cross-roller bit before a chance meeting with Hughes in Shreveport, Louisiana — where he sold the rights to Hughes. The twin-cone roller bit, which drills faster and deeper through harder rock formations, launches the Hughes oilfield service company empire. 

Hughes receives a patent, No. 930758, for a drill that “relates to boring drills, and particularly to roller drills such as are used for drilling holes in earth and rock,” and with business associate Walter Benona Sharp established Sharp-Hughes Tool Company to manufacture and market the twin-cone roller bit.

In addition to modern tri-cone bits, companies like Varel International, founded in 1947, offer a variety of bits manufactured with "natural diamond, Thermally Stable Polycrystalline and Polycrystalline Diamond Compact materials for specific drilling applications."

Hughes company engineers will invent the tri-cone bit in 1933. More innovations follow. Frank Christensen and George Christensen develop the earliest diamond bit in 1941. The tungsten carbide tooth comes into use in the early 1950s. The company Hughes founded merges in 1987 with one founded in 1927 by Carl Baker, Baker Oil Tools, to form today’s Baker Hughes.

In 1992 America’s first rolling-cone bit company and the first diamond-bit company merged to become today’s Hughes Christensen — a Baker Hughes company.

Hughes biographers note that he 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.

On the tape, Humason recalls that he spent $50 of his sale proceeds at the bar during the balance of the evening.
 
See “Making Hole — Drilling Technology.” 

August 11, 1998 – Amoco announces BP merger

BP closed all of its Amoco stations in 2001.

Amoco announces plans to merge with British Petroleum in a stock swap valued at about $48 billion — at the time the world’s largest industrial merger. Amoco began in 1889 as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company of Indiana, and changed its name from Standard to Amoco in 1985.
 
Finalized on December 31, the combined company, BP Amoco PLC, is 60 percent owned by BP shareholders, marking the transaction the largest foreign takeover of an American company. In 2001 BP announces that Amoco service stations will be closed or renamed to BP service stations.

August 12, 1930 – Kentucky Oilmen organize

An 1919 oil discovery in Hancock County started a Kentucky oil boom.

A group of eastern Kentucky oilmen join the Western Kentucky Oil Men’s Association, where the articles of incorporation are amended to become a state-wide organization — today’s Kentucky Oil and Gas Association, Frankfort. R.C. Snyder of the Kentucky Natural Gas Company in Louisville is elected the association’s first president. An oil discovery near Pellville in Hancock County had touched off an oil boom in western Kentucky in 1919.

August 13, 1962 – Norman Rockwell illustrates Petroleum Industry

A Norman Rockwell illustration advertised a leading industry magazine.

Norman Rockwell's skill helps commemorate the 1959 centennial of the birth of the nation's oil industry.

The Oil and Gas Journal advertises with an illustration from artist Norman Rockwell captioned, “Where Oil Men Invest Their Valuable Reading Time.”

Beginning in 1916, Rockwell’s renditions of American life and family brought him widespread popularity through magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Boy’s Life, and Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. 

In addition to the Oil and Gas Journal illustration, Rockwell also provides the American Petroleum Institute with first day of issue artwork to commemorate the 1959 centennial of the birth of the nation’s oil industry — “Oil’s First Century 1859-1959.” The Rockwell illustration depicts “the men of science, the rugged extraction of the crude oil, and ending with your friendly service station attendant,” notes one collector.

Last Week in Petroleum History

August 1, 1872 – First Pennsylvania Natural Gas Pipeline

Pipelines will bring natural gas to many Pennsylvania towns -- and power Pittsburgh steel mills.

The first recorded large-scale delivery of natural gas by pipeline begins when gas is delivered to Titusville, Pennsylvania, through a two-inch wrought iron pipeline from a well five miles to the northeast. The well’s high production — four million cubic feet of natural gas a day –  is the largest in the oil region.

The mayor of Titusville and the Keystone Gas & Water Company constructed the pipeline to deliver “the most powerful and voluminous  gas well on record” to more than 250 residential and commercial customers in Titusville. A second 3.25-inch diameter pipe is soon added.  The well produces into the 1880s.

Once an underestimated byproduct of the new petroleum industry, practical uses of natural gas will be introduced by George  Westinghouse for the Pittsburgh steel and glass industries, notes David Waples, author of The Natural Gas Industry in Appalachia. Learn more  Pennsylvania petroleum history at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.

August 2, 1938 – Petroleum Product debuts in Toothbrushes

A 1938 Life magazine advertisement promotes the nylon bristles of "Dr. West's Miracle-Tuft."

Americans will soon brush their teeth with a nylon-bristle toothbrush — instead of hog bristles, declares a New York Times article.

The  Weco Products Company of Chicago, Illinois, begins promoting its “Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft,” the earliest toothbrush to use synthetic DuPont nylon bristles. This is the first commercial use of the revolutionary petroleum product — nylon, which is a silky synthetic polymer (a plastic). Women’s stockings will soon follow.

“Until now, all good toothbrushes were made with animal bristles,” notes a 1938 advertisement in Life magazine. “Today, Dr.  West’s new Miracle-Tuft is a single exception. It is made with EXTON, a unique bristle-like filament developed by the great DuPont  laboratories, and produced exclusively for Dr. West’s.”

Pricing its toothbrush at 50 cents, the Weco Products Company guarantees “no bristle shedding.” Johnson & Johnson of New Brunswick, New Jersey, will introduce a competing nylon-bristle toothbrush in 1939.

August 2. 1956 – Missouri begins First U.S. Interstate Highway

Missouri launches the U.S. interstate system after "inking a deal for work on U.S. Route 66." Interstate 44 today stretches across south central Missouri and is a major corridor linking the Midwest and the West Coast.

Missouri becomes the first state to award a contract with interstate construction funding authorized two months earlier by the  Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The Missouri highway commission signs the contract for work on the already historic Route 66.

The Highway-Aid Act provides 90 percent federal funding for a “system of interstate and defense highways” — the need to flee cities in the event of a nuclear attack.

The Highway-Aid Act makes it possible for states to afford construction of the network of national limited-access highways, which will eventually reach more than 40,000 miles.

Missouri is the first state to award a contract with the new interstate construction funds, “inking a deal for work on U.S. Route 66 – now Interstate 44 – in  Laclede County,” notes the Missouri Department of Transportation. “There is no question that the creation of the interstate highway system has been the most significant development in the history of  transportation in the United States.”

Read more in “America on the Move.”

August 3, 1769 – The Petroleum Discovery at Rancho La Brea

The La Brea “Tar Pits” are discovered during a Spanish expedition led by Gaspar de Portola.

“The 3rd, we proceeded for three hours on a good road; to the right were extensive swamps of bitumen which is called chapapote,” Franciscan friar Juan Crespi notes in a diary. “We debated whether this substance, which flows melted from underneath the earth, could occasion so many earthquakes.”

Outside the Page Museum of Los Angeles, life-size replicas of several extinct mammals are featured at the Rancho La Brea in Hancock Park. Although commonly called the "tar pits," the pools are actually comprised of asphalt.

Crespi is the first person to use the term bitumen in describing these sticky pools in southern California — where crude oil has been seeping from the ground through fissures in the coastal plain sediments for more than 40,000 years.

"Tar pits" form when crude oil seeps to the surface through fissures in the earth's crust and part of the oil evaporates.

Today, the Page Museum is located at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles. It is one of the world’s most famous sources of fossil, recognized for having the largest and most diverse assemblage of extinct Ice Age plants and animals in the world.

“The Spanish occupation of California about 300 years ago also played a role in the history of Rancho La Brea,” the museum says. The Spanish used the name of Rancho La Brea, or “the tar ranch.” Native Americans had used the substance for centuries to waterproof baskets and caulk canoes when, in 1828, Antonio de Rocha established Rancho La Brea via a land grant by the Mexican government.

Although commonly called the “tar pits,” the thick liquid that bubbles out of the ground at Rancho La Brea is actually asphalt — not tar. The Page museum explains that tar is a by-product made by the distillation of woody materials, such as coal or peat, while asphalt is a naturally formed substance comprised of hydrocarbon molecules.

While drilling for oil and mining for asphalt, the Hancock family discovered the scientific value of Rancho La Brea fossils.

After the American Civil War, Captain George Allan Hancock inherited 4,400 acres of land from the original Mexican land grant. The Hancock family owned and operated a refinery at Rancho La Brea between 1870 and 1890, commercially mining and exporting asphalt to local markets.

Research has been conducted at Rancho La Brea since the early 1900s and now continues at the Page Museum. A scientific publication first recorded the fossils in 1875. Professor William Denton ventured to the pits to evaluate oil prospects — and noted the  fossilized remains of animals. 

Although Denton wrote about his discovery, it took several decades and another geologist interested in oil prospects, William W. Orcutt, to excavate and collect a substantial fossil collection — including the only complete skull of a saber-tooth tiger in the world.

A circa 1910 photograph of asphalt pools in what is today downtown Los Angeles.

“Asphalt is a superb preservative; small and delicate fossils, such as hollow bird bones or paper-thin exoskeletons of beetles are very  well-preserved here,” observes the museum. “As a result, our collection of fossil birds is one of the world’s largest.”

In 1916, the Hancock family — wealthy with the onset of the oil boom in southern California — donated the 23 acres of Hancock Park to Los Angeles County to preserve and exhibit the fossils exhumed from Rancho La Brea.

At the Page Museum (and at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County) young people can learn about Los Angeles as it was during the last Ice Age, when mammoths roamed the Los Angeles Basin.

For a brief history of the asphalt on America’s roads, see “Asphalt Paves the Way.”

August 3, 1942 – War brings Historic Pipeline effort

The longest petroleum pipeline project ever undertaken calls for construction of a 24-inch pipeline from East Texas to Illinois, and a 20-inch line as far as New York and Philadelphia -- more than 1,200 miles.

War Emergency Pipelines, Inc., begins construction on the “Big Inch” line — the longest petroleum pipeline project ever undertaken in the  United States.
 
Conceived to supply wartime fuel demands — and in response to U-boat attacks on oil tankers along the eastern seaboard and Gulf of  Mexico, the “Big Inch” and “Little Big Inch” lines are extolled as “The most amazing government-industry cooperation ever achieved.”
 
With a goal of transporting 300,000 barrels of oil per day, the $95 million project calls for construction of a 24-inch pipeline (Big Inch) from  East Texas to Illinois, and a 20-inch line (Little Big Inch) as far as New York and Philadelphia — more than 1,200 miles. Ceremonies mark  the final weld on the Big Inch in July 1943, just 350 days after construction began. More than 185 million barrels of oil are pumped through  the two pipelines in the first year alone.
 
After the war, the “Inch Lines” will become war surplus property. Sold to the Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. in 1947, both pipelines are  later adapted for natural gas transmission. Visit the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore. 

August 4, 1913 – Discovery of Oklahoma’s “Poor Man’s Field”

The Healdton oilfield launched one of Oklahoma's greatest oil booms. The Healdton Oil Museum tells the story of petroleum development in Carter County and life in the bustling oil boomtowns.

The Crystal Oil Company brings in the Wirt Franklin No. 1 well about 20 miles northwest of Ardmore, Oklahoma. With an initial flow of up to  100 barrels oil per day, it is the discovery well for the Healdton oilfield.

The opening of the Healdton oilfield sets in motion one of Oklahoma’s greatest oil booms. Wirt Franklin will become the first president of  the Independent Petroleum Association of America in 1929.

Throughout its development, Healdton is known as a “poor man’s field” — because of its relatively shallow depth and consequent low cost  of drilling operations. The field attracts independent oilmen with limited financial backing to compete with the larger oil companies.

By June of 1914, 90 percent of Healdton oilfield leases are held by independents (of 120 companies operating in the field, only three are  major companies). By the end of the year, 255 wells are producing 65,000 barrels per day. The low cost of drilling in the Healdton field will attract a large number of Oklahoma oil and natural gas producers.

Among oilmen establishing a financial base at Healdton are Lloyd Noble, Robert A. Hefner and former Oklahoma governor Charles N. Haskell. Also in the Healdton field: Erle Halliburton, who will perfect his method of oil well cementing. Visit the Healdton Oil Museum.

August 7, 1933 – Alley Oop’s Oil Patch Roots

“Alley Oop” appears for the first time when former Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reporter and cartoonist Victor (V.T.) Hamlin publishes the caveman as a syndicated daily cartoon in Iowa’s Des Moines Register. The comic strip is a hit and ultimately appears in more than 800 newspapers. The one-time West Texas oil boomtown of Iraan lays claim to Hamlin’s paleontological inspiration.

A 1995 postage stamp commemorates "Alley Oop" by Victor Hamlin, a cartoonist originally from Iraan, Texas.

Iraan (pronounced eye-rah-ann) first appeared in 1926 as a company town following the discovery of the prolific Yates oilfield. Many of its early buildings were constructed by the Big Lake Oil Company. The Yates field will produce more than 40 million barrels in just three years, but Iraan’s best years will be over by 1960 — when the band Hollywood Argyles sings that Alley Oop is “the toughest man there is alive.” The song reaches number one.

Although Alley Oop is one of 20 comic strips commemorated in a 1995 series of U.S. postage stamps, Yates oilfield production and Iraan’s fortunes have both declined. The town opened its Alley Oop Fantasy Land theme park in 1965 with favorite son Hamlin in attendance. But by 1967 the former boomtown’s population had fallen to less than a thousand. 

Today, tourists visit the Alley Oop Museum and R.V. Park on the northwest edge of Iraan at 9261 Alley Oop Lane, off of U.S. 190. Thanks to improved technologies, production from Yates oil wells continues — and the field is estimated to have one billion barrels of recoverable oil remaining.

Last Week in Petroleum History

July 25, 1543 – Oil reported in New World

Spanish explorers sailing in brigantines discover an oil seep off the Texas coast that will exist as late as 1903.

The first documented report of oil in the New World is made near the Sabine River on the Texas coast — when a storm forces two of Spanish explorer Don Luis de Moscoso’s seven brigantines ashore.

After a discouraging expedition in East Texas, de Moscoso, who succeeded expedition leader Hernando de Soto, built the seven small vessels and sailed down the Mississippi, according to the Houston Geological Society. After reaching the Gulf of Mexico, the Spaniards decided to sail west along the coast. The storm hit and drove two brigantines ashore.

An account published in 1557 notes “the vessels came together in a creek where lay the two brigantines that preceded them, finding a scum the sea cast up, called copee, which is like pitch and used instead on shipping where that is not to be had, they payed the bottoms of their vessels with it.”

Native Americans had previously used oil from seeps for medicine, tanning hides, waterproofing fabrics, and caulking their boats. Moscoso’s men used pitch from from the offshore oil seep they found west of the Sabine Pass. That seep remained active as late as 1903.

July 27, 1918 – Launch of First Concrete Oil Tanker

Built for Standard Oil Company of New York, the first concrete oil tanker is 98-feet long.

America’s first concrete vessel designed to carry oil, the Socony, is launched at its shipyard on Flushing Bay, New York. The reinforced concrete barge is 98-feet long with a 32-foot beam. Built for the Standard Oil Company of New York, the ship draws nine feet with a cargo of 370 tons.

“Bulk oil is carried in six center and two wing compartments, which have been oil-proofed by a special process,” explains the journal Cement and Engineering News. “Eight-inch cast iron pipe lines lead to each compartment and the oil pump is located on a concrete pump room aft.”

Steel shortages during World War Two will lead to the construction of larger concrete oil tankers.

July 28, 1924 — Oil Scouts form Association

Scouts began as the earliest oil patch detectives.

The National Oil Scouts Association of America — today the International Oil Scouts Association – files its charter in Austin, Texas, bringing new standards to an important oilfield profession.
 
Since the birth of America’s petroleum industry in 1859, oil scouts have gathered field intelligence on drilling operations — including often sensitive information about the operator, location, lease, depth of well, formations encountered, logs and other data, which may yield a competitive advantage.

James Tennent, author of The Oil Scouts – Reminiscences of the Night Riders of the Hemlocks, proclaimed in 1915 that scouts “saved the general trade thousands and millions by holding market manipulators in check.”

Read more in “Oil Patch Detectives.”
 
July 29, 1918 – Burkburnett becomes a North Texas Boom Town

A wildcat well comes in on S. L. Fowler’s farm near a small North Texas community on the Red River. The subsequent drilling boom will make Burkburnett famous  — two decades before “Boom Town,” the 1940 motion picture it inspires.

"Burkburnett was a sleepy farm town that transformed into a 'Boom Town' as a result of the North Texas oil boom in 1918," explains the Burkburnett Historical Society. A popular 1940 MGM movie results from an article in Cosmopolitan magazine.

At the time of the Fowler No. 1 well’s discovery, future moviestar Clark Gable is a teenage roustabout in an Oklahoma oilfield. The well is completed at the northeastern edge of Burkburnett, founded in 1907 — and named by President Theodore Roosevelt, who two years earlier hunted wolf along the Red River with rancher Burk Burnett.

A collection of 1930s oilfield photography by Farm Security Administration photographers can be found at Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Although Wichita County had been producing oil since 1912 (thanks to a shallow water well west of town) Fowler’s decision to drill a well on his farm — an attempt called “Fowler’s Folly” by some — will bring an oil boom to Wichita County. Fifty-six drilling rigs are at work just three weeks after his oil strike at 1,734 feet deep. Six months later, Burkburnett’s population has grown from 1,000 to 8,000. A line of derricks two-miles long greets visitors.

By June 1919, there are more than 850 producing wells in "the world's wonder oilfield."

The Burkburnett oilfield joins earlier discoveries in nearby Electra (1911) and Ranger (1917) that will make North Texas a worldwide leader in petroleum production. By the end of 1918, Burkburnett oil wells are producing 7,500 barrels per day. By June 1919, there are more than 850 producing wells in “the world’s wonder oilfield.”

Nineteen local refineries are soon processing the crude oil. The town’s unpaved streets are lined with newly formed stock offices, brokerage houses, and autos stuck in the mud. Twenty trains are running daily between Burkburnett and nearby Wichita Falls. Yet another highly productive Wichita County oilfield is then discovered, bringing more prosperity for North Texas.

But eventually, the oil boom dies out. Affected by the Great Depression, Burkburnett’s population declines during the 1930s. By 1939, the town has a population of less than 3,500. At the same time, the movie “Boom Town” is adapted from a Cosmopolitan magazine article, “A Lady Comes to Burkburnett.” 

The 1940 MGM feature stars Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr and Claudette Colbert. It is nominated for two Academy Awards.

At the time of the 1918 Burkburnett discovery well, Clark Gable was a 17-year-old roustabout in an oilfield outside Bigheart, Oklahoma.

At the time of the 1918 Burkburnett discovery well, Clark Gable was a 17-year-old roustabout working with his father William Gable, a service contractor, in an oilfield outside Bigheart, Oklahoma. In 1922, Gable would collect an inheritance from his grandfather and leave working in the Oklahoma oil patch for good. 

Clark Gable’s father is reported to have said, “I told the stubborn mule if he left me this time, he need never come back.”
 
Today, Burkburnett’s population exceeds 10,000, thanks to agriculture, continued production from its historic oilfield – and the 1941 establishment of nearby Sheppard Air Force Base. Among Burkburnett’s tourist attractions are the Bluebonnet Festival in April — and the Felty Outdoor Oil Museum.

Wichita Falls "skyscraper"

A footnote of the North Texas oil boom is the “World’s Littlest Skyscraper” in Wichita Falls. Just 40 feet tall with 118 square feet per floor, it has survived since 1919. The building is a monument of the boom town era — and a Philadelphia con man who convinced oilmen (who were desperate for office space) to approve fraudulent blueprints.

J. D. McMahon disappeared after collecting $200,000 and completing his promised “skyscraper.” The fine print his investors overlooked noted a scale in inches – not feet. “Apparently too busy to keep an eye on construction, investors ultimately found themselves owners of a building that looked more like an elevator shaft than high-rise office space,” notes the author of “Legend of the World’s Littlest Skyscraper.”

The brick building will become a Wichita Falls landmark and home to an antique store. Today it attracts oil-patch knowledgeable tourists.

July 29, 1957 – Eisenhower begins Import Quotas
 
As America’s reliance on foreign oil continues to grow and discourage domestic production, President Dwight Eisenhower inaugurates a Voluntary Oil Import Program, including import quotas by region.

Eisenhower intends to ensure adequate domestic petroleum is available in case of national emergency. Using a presidential proclamation two years later, the president replaces the voluntary program with a Mandatory Oil Import Program. The program continues until suspended in 1973 as U.S. oil production peaks — and the Arab oil embargo begins.

Last Week in Petroleum History

July 19, 1915 – Powering Washing Machines to Lawn Mowers

One-cylinder, air cooled, two-cycle engines could run on gasoline, kerosene or alcohol.

Howard F. Snyder applies to patent his internal combustion-powered washing machine, assigning rights to the Maytag Company of Newton, Iowa. His invention is targeted “to the ordinary farmer” who does not have access to electricity.

Snyder’s washing machine uses a one-cylinder, air cooled, two-cycle engine that can run on gasoline, kerosene or alcohol. It provides “an assembled machine and power plant so constructed and arranged as to be compact, simple and economical.” 

Optional attachments are subsequently offered to enable butter churning and meat grinding. Four years after Snyder’s innovation, Edwin George of Detroit removes the Maytag engine from his wife’s washing machine, mates it with a reel-type lawn mower, and launches a new company, “Moto-Mower,” selling America’s first commercially successful power mower.

July 19, 1957 – Oil discovery in Alaska Territory
 
The Alaska Territory’s first commercial oilfield is discovered — two years before Alaska statehood. The Richfield Oil Company brings in its Swanson River Unit No. 1 well, which yields 900 barrels per day from a depth of 11,150 feet to 11,215 feet.

The U.S. Congress views the discovery as the foundation for a secure economic base in Alaska. Statehood is granted two years later.

Richfield has leased 71,680 acres of the Kenai National Moose Range, now the 1.92 million acre Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. More Alaska discoveries will follow and by June 1962 about 50 wells are producing more than 20,000 barrels of oil per day. Today’s Atlantic Richfield Company is better known as ARCO.

“The U.S. Congress viewed that discovery as the foundation for a secure economic base in Alaska, and statehood was granted two years later,” explains the Alaska Resources Council.

A decade later, the discovery of the giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield on Alaska’s North Slope will make Alaska a world-class oil and natural gas producer — a status reaffirmed in 1969 with the discovery of the nearby Kuparuk field, the second largest in North America after Prudhoe Bay. Four of the ten largest oilfields to date are on the North Slope.

July 19, 1979 – Oil tankers collide in Caribbean

The burning Atlantic Empress will sink two weeks after the collision. No oil spilled from the two tankers reaches shore.

Two oil tankers collide in the Caribbean Sea, killing 26 crew members. The Atlantic Empress and the Aegean Captain, both Liberian-registered and Greek-owned, collide during a tropical storm off Crown Point, between the islands of Tobago and Grenada.

The Atlantic Empress, carrying Iranian oil from the Persian Gulf to Beaumont, Texas, will suffer a series of explosions before sinking on August 3. The Aegean Captain controls its fire and is towed to Trinidad.

Although some oil is transferred successfully to other vessels, officials determine that as much as 2.1 million barrels of the combined 3.5 million barrels of oil either burned off or spilled into the Caribbean. “No one will know exactly how much oil spilled,” reports United Press International. The region’s warm waters, evaporation and microbes play a role, experts note. Spilled oil from the two ships never reaches shore.
 
July 20, 1920 – Permian Basin Discovery Well

The Permian Basin produces 17 percent of America's oil, about 327 million barrels per year, and contains an estimated 22 percent of proven U.S. oil reserves.

The Permian Basin is discovered by a West Texas wildcat well. The first commercial well comes in at a depth of 2,745 feet. The W. H. Abrams No. 1 well is named for Texas & Pacific Railway official William H. Abrams, who owns the land and leases mineral rights to the Texas Company (later Texaco). 

At 7:45 p.m. — after a shot of nitroglycerine — a jet of oil and natural gas announces the discovery now known as West Columbia field. “As a crowd of 2,000 people looked on, a great eruption of oil, gas, water, and smoke shot from the mouth of the well almost to the top of the derrick,” notes an I-20 roadside marker at Westbrook, Texas.

“Three pipelines were laid at once to draw the oil to earthen tanks, filled by powerful steam pumps with over 20,000 barrels daily,” notes a 1977 historical marker one mile north of the community of West Columbia. “Locally, land that sold for 10 cents an acre in 1840 and $5 an acre in 1888 now brought $96,000 an acre for mineral rights, irrespective of surface values…the flow of oil money led to better schools, roads and general social conditions.”

Fifty-six major fields are located in the Permian Basin, the fourth largest oil producing area in the United States, adds the I-20 marker. “W. H. Abrams No. 1 was designated on May 1, 1968, as Westbrook southeast unit No. 701, formed to increase oil recovery from the Westbrook oil field by water flooding. This enhanced oil recovery technique has produced 67 million barrels of the more than 100 million barrels of oil recovered from this field.

Today, many experts say the Permian Basin produces more than 15 percent of America’s oil and contains an estimated 22 percent of proven U.S. oil reserves. Visit the Petroleum Museum in Midland.

July 20, 1969 – Kerosene fuels Moon Mission

Four days after the Saturn V rocket launches Apollo 11 toward the moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong announces, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

A 19th century petroleum product — kerosene — made the moon landing possible.

Powered by five first-stage engines fueled by "rocket grade" kerosene, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever built.

During launch, five powerful engines of the massive Saturn V’s first stage burn “Rocket Grade Kerosene Propellant” at 2,230 gallons per second — generating almost eight million pounds of thrust. Saturn’s rocket fuel is a highly refined kerosene which, while conforming to stringent performance specifications, is essentially “coal oil” at its heart.

Canadian physician and geologist Abraham Gesner first refined the revolutionary fuel for lamps in 1846. He coined the term kerosene from the Greek word keros (wax).

In 1926, Robert Goddard used gasoline to fuel the first liquid-fuel rocket, seen here in its launch stand.

The Apollo 11 landing crowns liquid rocket fuel research in America dating back to Robert H. Goddard and his 1914 “Rocket Apparatus.” While Goddard’s U.S. patent (No. 1,103,503) was principally focused on a combustion chamber using sequential powder charges, he included a proposed modification for liquid fuel.

On March 16, 1926, Goddard launches the world’s first liquid-fuel rocket from his aunt’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. His rocket, now at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., was powered by liquid oxygen — and gasoline.

Although gasoline will be replaced with other propellants — including the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen used in the space shuttle’s external tank — “rocket grade” kerosene continues to fuel spaceflight.

Cheaper, easily stored at room temperature, and far less of an explosive hazard, the 19th century petroleum product today fuels first-stage boosters for the Atlas and Delta II launch vehicles.

Last launched in 1972, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever built.

July 22, 1933 – Phillips sponsors Famous Flight

Record-setting pilot Willey Post was once an oilfield roustabout near Seminole, Oklahoma.

Before 50,000 cheering New York City onlookers, famed aviator Wiley Post lands his Lockheed Vega “Winnie Mae” and becomes the first man to fly solo around the world.

Post’s trademark eye-patch resulted from his days working as an oilfield roustabout near Seminole, Oklahoma. When a metal splinter damaged his eye in 1926, Post used the $1,700 workman’s compensation check to buy his first airplane and launch his aviation career.

Post developed a close relationship with Frank Phillips of the Phillips Petroleum Company — which produced aviation fuels before it produced automotive fuels — and sponsored Post’s high-altitude test flights. His pressure suit and helmet are on display in the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum in Bartlesville.

Post died — along with fellow Oklahoman Will Rogers — when his Lockheed airplane’s engine failed during takeoff on August 15,1935, at Point Barrow, Alaska.

July 22, 2009 – California Discovery
 
Occidental Petroleum Corporation reports it has discovered oil and natural gas in the historic Kern County field that might represent the biggest find in California in decades.

“We believe this to be the largest new oil and gas discovery made in California in more than 35 years,” notes Chairman and CEO Ray R. Irani. The company says it has found the equivalent of 150 million to 250 million barrels of oil, adding that two-thirds of the new resource is believed to be natural gas. “Oxy” has more than 7,500 wells in 90 fields in California, where it has operated for more than 50 years. Learn Kern County’s extensive petroleum history at the West Kern Oil Museum and the Kern County Museum.
 
July 23, 1951 – Desk & Derrick Clubs organize

An early leader in energy education.

The Association of Desk & Derrick Clubs of North America is formed with articles of association signed by presidents of the clubs of New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; Los Angeles, California and Houston, Texas.

Combined membership of the four charter clubs is 883. The association promotes “the education and professional development of individuals employed in or affiliated with the petroleum, energy and allied industries and to educate the general public about these industries.”

Today there are there are 61 clubs in seven regions throughout the United States and Canada.

July 24, 2000 – BP unveils New Logo

London-based BP was founded in 1908 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

When BP — then British Petroleum — merges with Amoco in 1998, the company’s name changes to BP Amoco. U.S. Amoco stations eventually convert to the BP brand.

BP, in 2000 the official name of a group of companies that include Amoco, ARCO and Castrol, unveils its new corporate identity brand — replacing its “Green Shield” logo with a green and yellow sunflower pattern. The company introduces a new corporate slogan: “Beyond Petroleum.”

Last Week in Petroleum History

July 11, 2008 – Record World Oil Price

Oil prices will fall to $36.51 a barrel by January 2009.

World oil prices reach a record high — driven by concerns over Iran and the emergence of China and India competing for world oil supplies. U.S. “light sweet crude” rises to $147.27, before dropping back to $145.08. Prices on the New York Stock Exchange peaked at $145.29 a barrel on July 3, 2008.

As fears subside, world oil prices plummet to $36.51 a barrel on January 16, 2009. Experts debate whether the price spike resulted from a supply crisis — or from commodities market speculation (the rise of non-commercial positions, such as hedge funds). Today’s price is about $95 per barrel, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The United States imports 63 percent its oil. 
 
July 12, 1934 – The Start of “Clark Super 100″

Incorporated in 1934, Emory T. Clark's company will operate almost 1,500 gas stations by 1970.

Two years after paying $14 cash for a closed, one-pump gas station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Emory T. Clark incorporates what will become the Clark Oil & Refining Corporation. He begins building a network of filling stations focused on premium gasoline only — delivering “Super 100 Premium Gasoline.”

Clark’s marketing strategy is to omit many of the common services such as maintenance, engine repair, and tire changing. Sales reach $21.1 million in 1949, notes the Harvard Business School Baker Library. In 1953 Clark operates 158 service stations in the Midwest under the brand name “Clark Super 100.” Sales rise to $38.2 million by 1954 from 326 stations.

In September 1967 Clark purchases a 31,000 barrel per day refinery at Wood River, Illinois. By 1970, his company operates almost 1,500 gas stations and two refineries with combined capacity of almost 100,000 barrels a day. In 1981, the Clark family will sell their company holdings — which began with  Emory T. Clark’s $14 purchase — to Missouri-based Apex Oil for $483 million.

Editor’s Note – The modern Wood River Manufacturing Complex is a premier refinery serving the vast Midwest market, notes the Wood River Refinery History Museum in Roxana, Illinois.
 
July 13, 1921 – Searching for Improved Mileage
 
“More Miles per Gallon of Petrol” is published by Purdue University professor Otto Carter Berry in the journal Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering. Improved mileage is needed “in view of the shortage of petroleum which is anticipated in the next fifteen years,” notes the author.

Professor Berry offers a “means of economizing fuel consumption in motor-cars” — including improved carburetion and spark timing to achieve efficient combustion. He notes that an automatic device for advancing spark timing has been invented. His petroleum shortage prediction is dispelled by a series of discoveries leading up to the giant East Texas oilfield strike in October 1930. Visit the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

July 14, 1863 – “Tool for Boring Rock” patent

Rodolphe Leschot's cutting-edge technology

French tunnel engineer Rodolphe Leschot patents his “Tool for Boring Rock” — a ring of industrial-grade diamonds fixed on the end of a tubular drill rod and designed to cut a cylindrical core. Water pumped through the drill rod washes away cuttings and cools the bit.

The system proves successful in drilling blast holes for tunneling Mount Cenis on the France-Italy border. By 1865, its use in oil well drilling is being examined in the oil regions of western Pennsylvania. Practical applications for the revolutionary design will take many decades.

“It is not known if there is any connection between the 1865 experimental diamond core drilling in the Pennsylvania oil region and the Leschot blast hole drilling in France in 1863,” notes oil historian Samuel T. Pees. Learn more about the oil region at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville.

July 14, 1891 – Rockefeller expands Oil Tank Car Empire

By 1904, Rockefeller's oil tank car fleet has grown to 10,000.

John D. Rockefeller incorporates Union Tank Line Company in New Jersey and transfers his fleet of several thousand oil tank cars to the Standard Oil Trust. The new company — avoiding state anti-trust litigation — includes a fleet of tank cars from Standard’s purchase of J. J. Vandergrift’s Star Tank Line in 1873.

Rockefeller systematically acquires other oil tank cars and by 1878 controls all but 200 of America’s 3,200 existing tank cars. By 1904, his fleet has grown to 10,000. Union Tank Line Company ships only Standard Oil products until 1911, when a U. S. Supreme Court decision mandates dissolution of his trust.

The newly independent company changes its name to Union Tank Car Company — and its rolling stock “reporting mark” remains UTL or UTLX to this day. Now as a part of the Marmon Group Inc. and Canadian partner Procor Ltd., the company is North America’s leading manufacturer of railroad tank cars for the chemical, petrochemical and food industries. It manages a U. S. fleet of almost 61,000 cars.

July 16, 1926 – Greater Seminole Area Oil Boom

A discovery well near Seminole, Oklahoma, reveals the potential of an oil producing formation, the Wilcox sand — and launches a drilling boom that will make Oklahoma one of today’s leading producing states. The Fixico No. 1 well penetrates the Wilcox sand at 4,073 feet.

By 1935, the oilfield around Seminole will become the largest supplier of oil in the world. More than 60 petroleum reservoirs are found in 1,300 square miles of east-central Oklahoma — and six are giants that produce more than million barrels of oil each.

The Oklahoma Oil Museum in Seminole includes a diorama, maintained by volunteers, of the local communities that become boom towns in the 1930s. The Greater Seminole Area includes six of Oklahoma's 20 "giant" oilfields -- Earlsboro, St. Louis, Seminole, Bowlegs, Little River, Allen, and Seminole City.

The greater Seminole area – several 1920s Oklahoma oilfields — will swing the United States’ oil reserves from scarcity to surplus. Flowing at 6,120 barrels of oil a day from 4,073 feet, the Fixico discovery well of R. F. Garland and Independent Oil Company is among five Seminole-area oil reservoirs discovered by 1927.

Although the area's first discovery came near Wewoka in 1923, and the Cromwell oilfield was developed in 1924, it was the July 16, 1926, Fixico No. 1 in Seminole that launched an oil boom. Drill bits exhibited at the Oklahoma Oil Museum help visitors learn the area's rich petroleum history.

The series of discoveries included strikes in the Hunton lime formation by Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company in March 1926, followed by the July 6 discovery of Wilcox sand production by Amerada Petroleum Company nearby. “In rapid succession came discoveries of the Searight, Earlsboro, Bowlegs and Little River reservoirs,” notes a granite monument near the entrance to Seminole Municipal Park.

The discoveries brought 20,000 oilfield workers to the Seminole County — and created several classic petroleum boom towns, the 1977 monument adds. The prosperity of these discoveries would transform life in many central Oklahoma communities, according to historian and author Louise Welsh. Prior to the oil boom period, the greater Seminole area was one of the poorest economic areas in Oklahoma. The Seminoles were the smallest in numbers and the lowest on the economic scale of the Five Civilized Tribes. 

“By the 1920s, farmers in Seminole County, like those elsewhere, were beginning to feel the pinch of hard times created by falling prices for farm produce. An advertisement of the First National Bank in the Seminole County News urged people to have clear heads, stout hearts and busy hands, and to remember that greater problems had been met and solved,” she says in A History of the Greater Seminole Oil Field.

“It was quite natural that, under such stress, the prospect of finding oil should occasion both excitement and hope, since the prospect of leasing his land might provide the necessary funds with which the hard-pressed farmer could pay off his mortgage,” Welsh says.

Louis Welsh, Willa Mae Townes and John W. Morris published a 1981 book about Seminole's fascinating petroleum history.

Although the area’s first discoverer came near Wewoka in 1923, and the Cromwell oilfield was developed in 1924 — and leasing activity around Seminole in those years — it was not until 1926 that the long hoped-for giant discovery was realized. “It was the independent Oil and Gas Company’s No. 1 Fixico, whose 6,120 barrels a day from the Wilcox created a real bonanza, that precipitated the Seminole boom,” Welsh explains. Seminole county’s population increased from 23,808 in 1920 to 79,621 in 1930.

At its height, the Seminole City oilfield accounted for 2.6 percent of the world’s oil production, she adds, noting that the massive production glutted oil markets and resulted in a price collapse to as low as 15 cents per barrel. The oilfields were then placed under state control.

“Thus, the conservation movement, as far as the oil industry is concerned, started in Oklahoma and largely in the greater Seminole areas,” Welsh concludes.

Editor’s Note — Since 1896, when the first commercial oil well was drilled in Bartlesville, many historic oilfields have been discovered: Glennpool, Cushing, Three Sands, Healdton, Oklahoma City and others — including 20 “giant” oilfields. Few have had the tremendous economic impact as the late 1920s oilfields of greater Seminole area. And as volunteers at the Oklahoma Oil Museum explain to young people, the petroleum industry continues to play an important economic role in Oklahoma.

July 17, 1973 – Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act

Spiro Agnew

After three years of years of contentious congressional debate, legal challenges from environmental groups and Alaska native claims, Vice President Spiro Agnew breaks the deadlocked 49-49 vote in the U.S. Senate. His deciding vote passes the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act.

Construction will begin in March 1975 on the 789-mile pipeline system, the largest private construction project in American history.  Oil from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield will begin flowing to the port of Valdez in June 1977.

Budgeted at $900 million, the controversial pipeline ultimately costs about $8 billion to construct. Oil production tax revenues will earn Alaska $50 billion by 2002.

July 4, 1906 – Louisiana conserves Natural Gas
 
Louisiana enacts conservation measures to prevent waste. The Louisiana State Legislature passes an act “to protect the natural gas fields of this state.”  The conservation law imposes penalties for “failure to cap out of control wells, doing injury to pipe lines, or wastefully burning natural gas from any well into the air.” It empowers the governor to use the state board of engineers to shut down offending wells at the owner’s expense. The conservation measure is a result of lessons learned from Indiana and other early natural gas producing states. See “Indiana Natural Gas Boom.”

July 5, 1883 – Pennsylvania passes Pipeline Law

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania enacts a law “to provide for gauging the petroleum in the custody of, and examination into the condition of, firms associations and corporations engaged in the business of storing and transporting of petroleum by means of pipe lines.”

On July 6, 1988 — North Sea disaster

Occidental Petroleum Corporation’s Piper Alpha offshore production platform in the North Sea is destroyed “when an out of service gas condensate pump is started with its pressure safety valve removed. The subsequent gas leak, explosion and fire results in the deaths of 167 workers.” It remains the world’s most deadly offshore disaster.

July 8, 1937 – Gulf of Mexico Drilling Pier

The future Exxon, Humble Oil Company was founded in 1911 in Humble, Texas.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of War approves an ambitious plan to build a one-mile pier into the Gulf of Mexico to explore for oil.

War Secretary Harry Hines Woodring approves an application to drill near McFaddin Beach, Texas, by the Humble Oil and Refining Company. The 60-acre lease is about eight miles east of Galveston County’s High Island. Humble Oil builds the pier into the Gulf and erects three drilling rigs (above what geologist describe as a shallow salt dome).

All three wells are dry holes and a hurricane destroys the pier and rigs in 1938. Visit the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig Museum and Education Center on Galveston Island 

July 9, 1815 – Early Natural Gas Discovery

Digging a well using a "spring pole."

Natural gas is discovered accidentally by Capt. James Wilson during the digging of a salt brine well within the present city limits of Charleston, West Virginia (Virginia in 1815).

The site is near where George Washington noted “burning springs” along the Kanawha River in his 1775 diary. Washington was awarded tracts of the land in Wirt County, which in the 1860s would experience one of America’s earliest oil booms.

Visit the Oil & Gas Museum in Parkersburg, West Virginia. The first commercial discovery of natural gas will be in 1821 in Fredonia, New York.

July 9, 1883 – Oil in the Land of Oz

The future world-famous author of the children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz starts a business selling petroleum products in Syracuse, New York.

L. Frank Baum and his brother Benjamin begin their enterprise by offering lubricants, oils, greases – and Baum’s Castorine, “the great axle oil.”

L. Frank Baum -- whose father found great success in Pennsylvania oilfields -- would serve as chief salesman for Baum's Castorine Company, which he founded with his brother on July 9, 1883, but sold only a few years later. The petroleum products company today operates in Rome, New York.

Reporting on the July 9, 1883, opening, the Syracuse Daily Courier newspaper notes that Baum’s Castorine is a rust-resistant axle grease concoction for machinery, buggies, and wagons. The grease is advertised to be “so smooth it makes the horses laugh.”
 

Although his oil products company would fail, L. Frank Baum's sales trips may have influenced this future writing. "On one of these trips, while installing a window display for a customer, the idea of the Tin Woodman came to him," claims one historian.

Although it will eventually fail, Baum’s Castorine Company prospers with L. Frank Baum serving as superintendent and chief salesman for the next four years. “He was a traveling salesman for the company,” notes an exhibit at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in Michigan.

“On one of these trips, while installing a window display for a customer, the idea of the Tin Woodman came to him,” the museum claims. “The company enjoyed some success but came to an end when the bookkeeper gambled away the profits.”

L. Frank Baum writes of Baum’s Castorine Company, “I see no future in it to warrant my wasting any more years of my life in trying to boom it.” He sells the business and in May 1900, publishes his children’s classic. The Baum’s Castorine Company retains the name — and today operates from Rome, New York. 

The Kalamazoo museum exhibit notes that Baum was born in Chittenango, New York, on May 15, 1856, the seventh of nine children of Cynthia Stanton and Benjamin Ward Baum — one of only five of the children to survived into adulthood. He would have many job experiences — as a newspaper publisher, actor and the lubricant salesman. His connection to the oil and natural gas industry began earlier.

L. Frank Baum wasn’t a true oilman — but his father was. Thanks to Benjamin Ward Baum’s financial success in the newly born Pennsylvania petroleum industry, the young Baum grew up in an environment where his imagination and love of reading flourished.

In 1860, just one year after America’s first commercial oil discovery, Benjamin Ward Baum closed the family barrel-making business to risk his fortunes in the western Pennsylvania oilfields. His son L. (Lyman) Frank was then only four and a half years old. Productive oil wells drilled near Titusville and Cherry Tree Run will bring Benjamin Ward Baum great wealth.

"At Baum's Castorine, we take pride in formulating superior lubricant products that are designed to extend machine life and reduce your maintenance costs."

Just two years later, the elder Baum owns Carbon Oil Company — and is a well-established oilman. His success helps finance diversification into dry goods and other mercantile businesses. Son Frank finds employment in several of these family ventures as a young man. When his father purchases the Cynthia Oil Works in Bolivar, New York, Frank operates a retail outlet for awhile.

“The Cynthia Oil Works, the first refinery in Bolivar Township, was erected on the Porter Cowles flats at the north end of Bolivar village in 1882,” explains historian Ronald G. Taylor. Visit the Pioneer Oil Museum in Bolivar.

“The plant, owned by B. W. Baum & Son, dealers in oil leases and managers of the first opera house at Richburg, was designed as a lubricating oil works and for the manufacture of ship oil of 300 fire test for illuminating on board ships,” Taylor adds in his post for the Allegany County Historical Society. “The capacity of the stills was 85 barrels a day. It advertised to manufacture ‘just as good quality machine oil as the big Eclipse refinery at Franklin.’”

"Sometimes, when researching history, you find places where it's still alive," declares Oz historian and author Evan L. Schwartz on his website. "My search for the Tin Man's mythic oil-can led me to such a spot."

In 1887, after almost 30 years in the oil business, Benjamin Ward Baum died in New York. His father’s prosperity in the petroleum business permitted Frank to pursue his interests in writing, publishing, acting, and even raising poultry (he published a magazine called The Poultry Record). 

From the time he was able to write, L. Frank Baum had done so. At age 15, he and his younger brother Harry had published The Rose Lawn Home Journal with short stories, poems, riddles, articles, and advertising for one of his father’s companies, Neal, Baum & Company.

Baum continued to learn his craft by writing for newspapers, journals, and the stage. His first book, a poultry manual called The Book of the Hamburgs, was published in 1886, the year before his father died. It would be 13 years and several careers later, however, before Baum would forever secure his place in children’s’ dreams with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. 

Editor’s Note — “Sometimes, when researching history, you find places where it’s still alive,” declares Evan L. Schwartz in his March 17, 2009, Finding the Mythic Oil-Can website post.

"And in 1939, why wasn't Baum's Castorine given the chance to pony up for some choice product placement?"

“My search for the Tin Man’s mythic oil-can led me to such a spot,” he says. “L. Frank Baum sold cans of buggy wheel oil for a living as the co-owner of Baum’s Castorine Co. of Syracuse, New York.”

Schwartz, the  author of Finding Oz, L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story, notes the company’s troubles that led to Baum’s selling it in 1888. He describes discovering that the company still manufactures industrial oils and lubricants under the Baum’s brand name.

“So I visited the current location in Rome, New York, and sat down for a peek into the archives with owner Charles Mowry, whose grandfather was one of the investors who bought the company from Frank Baum himself,” Schwartz explains. “The smells of fine lubricant wafted in the air as I perused the collection of historic oil cans and heard the legend of Baum’s magic balms.”

He concludes: “What if Frank had never sold oil cans? Would we have never met the heartless Tin Man? And in 1939, why wasn’t Baum’s Castorine given the chance to pony up for some choice product placement?”"

June 28, 1967 – Hall of Petroleum opens in Smithsonian Museum

The Hall of Petroleum opens at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of History and Technology on the National Mall in Washington, D. C. The exhibit features exploration and production technological advancements and the resulting oil and natural gas discoveries essential to development of America’s energy supplies.

In 1967, “Panorama of Petroleum,” a mural by Delbert Jackson, greets visitors to the Smithsonian Institution's Hall of Petroleum in the Museum of History and Technology, Washington, D.C. Today, the 13-foot by 56-foot painting is a permanent exhibit at the Tulsa International Airport.

Visitors to the Hall of Petroleum — in what will become the National Museum of American History in 1980 — are greeted by a 13-foot by 56-foot mural painted by artist Delbert Jackson, a well known Tulsa, Oklahoma, artist and illustrator. He has spent two years creating the painting, which portrays oil exploration, production, refining, and delivery. Jackson’s “Panorama of Petroleum” features the faces of 22 Tulsa oilmen. The mural serves as a key to the contents of Hall of Petroleum. Read the rest of this entry »

June 20, 1977 -  Oil flows in Trans-Alaskan Pipeline

Construction of the 789-mile Alaskan Pipeline began on March 9, 1975.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline begins carrying oil from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean 789 miles to Prince William Sound. The oil arrives 38 days later, culminating the world’s largest privately funded construction project at the time. The 48-inch diameter pipeline, under construction for three years, cost $8 billion. Its annual flow will account for about 20 percent of U.S. oil production.

June 21, 1893 – Birth of Electric Submersible Pump Inventor

Armais Arutunoff, inventor of a revolutionary oilfield electric submersible pump, is born to Armenian parents in Tiflis, Russia. He will develop an electrical centrifugal submersible pump in 1916. But after emigrating to America in 1923, Arutunoff cannot find financial support for his down-hole oil production technology.

In 1928, with the help of Phillips Petroleum Company, Arutunoff moves to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and forms a manufacturing company. A 1936 Tulsa World newspaper describes his invention as “an electric motor with the proportions of a slim fencepost which stands on its head at the bottom of a well and kicks oil to the surface with its feet.” Read the rest of this entry »

June 13, 1917 -  Phillips Petroleum founded in Bartlesville, Oklahoma

Phillips Petroleum Company is founded in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, during the early months of World War I — when the price of oil climbs above $1 per barrel.

The Phillips Petroleum Company Museum in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, opened in May 2007.

Brothers Frank and L. E. (Lee Eldas) Phillips consolidate their Anchor Oil & Gas Company and Lewcinda Oil Company holdings into the new company, which begins operating with assets of $3 million, 27 employees, and oil and natural gas leases throughout Oklahoma and Kansas.

Assets grow to $103 million by 1924 as Phillips Petroleum becomes the nation’s principal supplier of natural gas liquids. In the coming years the company drills the deepest wells onshore and among the farthest wells offshore — while also making petrochemical advances.

Marlex, a revolutionary polypropylene plastic, is developed by Phillips chemists initially researching gasoline additives. In 1998, the company is awarded its 15,000th patent.

The company’s advances in aviation fuel will play a vital role in World War II. Phillips 66 gasoline will become a popular advertising brand. In 2002, Phillips Petroleum merges with Conoco to become today’s ConocoPhillips. Learn more petroleum history by visiting the Phillips Petroleum Company Museum in Bartlesville. Also read “Petroleum Product Hoopla” and “Flight of the Woolaroc.”

June 13, 1928 – Major Oilfield discovery in Hobbs, New Mexico

The most important single discovery of oil in New Mexico history is made with the discovery of the Hobbs oilfield. Drilling of the Midwest State No. 1 well — spudded in late 1927 using a standard cable-tool rig — “strikes pay” for the Midwest Refining Company. Read the rest of this entry »

Increased U.S. oil production offsets a 1967 Middle East embargo.

June 6, 1967 – Oil Embargo Attempt

One day after the Six-Day War begins, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya and Algeria pledge to stop supplying oil to the nations friendly to Israel — the United States, Great Britain, and West Germany. A lack of uniformity in enforcing the embargo and increased U.S. production results in the embargo ending after two months.

June 6, 1976 – J. Paul Getty Dies

J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)

With a fortune estimated to be as high as $4 billion, J. Paul Getty dies at 83 at his country estate near London. He held a majority or controlling interest in the Getty Oil Company and nearly 200 other concerns, including petroleum reserves, refineries and retail businesses.

Getty (1892-1976)  was born into his father’s oil wealth from the Minnehoma Oil Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and made his first million in oil leasing by the time he was 23. “I started in September 1914, to buy leases in the so-called red-beds area of Oklahoma,” Getty is quoted in the New York Times. “The surface was red dirt and it was considered impossible there was any oil there. My father and I did not agree and we got many leases for very little money which later turned out to be rich leases.”

Getty credited his fortune to his father’s foresight and his own luck and ingenuity. After World War II and contrary to conventional wisdom, he bought oil rights in Saudi Arabia and reputedly became the richest man in the world. An astute art collector, he established the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and left over $661 million of his estate to the museum.

June 9, 1894 – Birth of Texas Oil Industry

The first major oilfield in Texas is discovered in Corsicana — by a water-well contractor hired by the city. Some consider this well on South 12th Street the first commercial discovery west of the Mississippi. The American Well and Prospecting Company makes the strike at a depth of 1,035 feet. The city council, still wanting water for its growing community, pays only half of the contracted $1,000 fee. Read the rest of this entry »

May 30, 1911 – First Indy 500

By 1912, the Indianapolis 500 becomes the highest paying sporting event in the world, according to race fans (and historians) in Hagerstown, Indiana.

The first Indianapolis 500-mile race begins with a 40-car field; only a dozen will finish the grueling test of automotive technology. The winner averages almost 75 mph.

All the cars – except the No. 32 Marmon “Wasp” – have two seats. Drivers travel with “riding mechanics,” who manually pump oil, notes an article in Smithsonian magazine. Created to showcase the new sport of automobile racing, early contests are more about engine endurance than speed.

Ray Harroun, driver of the winning Marmon Wasp, is more engineer and inventor than professional driver. He develops a kerosene carburetor declaring, “Let the fuel people fight it out amongst themselves, I’ll have a car soon that will burn anything they send.” Read the rest of this entry »

May 23, 1937 — John D. Rockefeller Dies

John Rockefeller, 1839-1937

Almost 70 years after founding Standard Oil Company in Ohio - and 40 years after retiring from the company in 1897 - John D. Rockefeller dies in Ormond Beach, Florida, at age 97. His fortune peaked in 1912 at almost $900 million, although by then he had already given away hundreds of millions of dollars.

Born July 8, 1839, in Richford, New York, Rockefeller attends high school in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1853 to 1855 – and at age 16 he becomes an assistant bookkeeper with a produce shipping company. He forms his own company in 1859 – the same year as oil is discovered in western Pennsylvania – and studies the oil refining business. In 1865, at the age of 24, he takes control of his first refinery, which will be the largest in the world in three years.

After retiring decades later, Rockefeller uses his unprecedented wealth to fund endeavors such as the University of Chicago, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, General Education Board (now the Rockefeller Foundation), the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, and Spelman College in Atlanta. Read the rest of this entry »

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, 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 is dedicated to one of the largest natural gas fields in North America. It serves “as a memento of the Hugoton gas field and the progressive development of Stevens County.” Read the rest of this entry »

May 9, 1863 — Confederate Raid on Burning Springs, West Virginia

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."

George Washington acquired 250 acres in what is now West Virginia 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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 (patent no. 47,458).

A year later, Roberts will receive a patent for what becomes known as the Roberts Torpedo, which uses nitroglycerin detonations as the “fracing” 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 onto percussion caps. In later models, nitroglycerin replaces gunpowder. The invention is among the major technological achievements of the U.S. petroleum industry.

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April 18, 1939 – Patents issued for “Device for Perforating Casing”

In 1939, Ira J. McCullough of Los Angeles patents "a device for perforating casing after it has been installed in a well..."

Ira J. McCullough of Los Angeles receives two patents for his multiple bullet-shot casing perforator and mechanical firing system. His patents note the “object of my invention (is) to provide a device for perforating casing after it has been installed in a well in which projectiles or perforating elements are shot through the casing and into the formation.” This innovation of simultaneous firing at several levels in the borehole greatly enhances the flow of oil. See the June 2008 Petroleum Age article “Downhole Bazooka.”

April 19, 1892 – Gasoline-Powered Automobile

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 follow the Duryea example.

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 Petroleum Age article “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. See the Petroleum Age article “All Pumped Up.”

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

Visits to downtown well sites highlighted a popular 2009 field trip 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 over 30,000 active wells here 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.”

Learn more from the Los Angeles Basin Section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Visit the California Oil Museum and the Brea Museum and Heritage Center.

April 20, 2010 – Deepwater Horizon Explodes; Massive Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

A Joint Investigation Team of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard is investigating the semi-submersible rig's explosion and the oil spill.

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 British Petroleum well causes a massive oil spill until capped in mid-July. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (known as the Minerals Management Service until June 21, 2010) and the U.S. Coast Guard Joint Investigation Team, is investigating the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the oil spill.

April 11, 1957 – William G. Skelly Dies (1878-1957)

William Grove Skelly, founder of Skelly Oil Company, dies in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 78. Starting as a 15-year-old, $2.50-a-day tool dresser in Venango County, Pennsylvania, Skelly will find great success in the El Dorado field outside Wichita, Kansas. He 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.” Learn about his legacy at the Tulsa Historical Society.

April 14, 1865 – The Dramatic Oil Company

Failed oilman John Wilkes Booth

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. His “Dramatic Oil Company’” Wilhelmina No. 1 well failed when he and his partners tried to increase its production.

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 about Booth’s failed oil days in “The Dramatic Oil Company.”

April 14, 1922 – Blowout Preventer Patented

On April 14, 1922, James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron file patent no. 1,569,247 for a hydraulic ram-type blowout preventer.

In 1922, it takes a Texas wildcatter’s experience and ingenuity to bring an end to the days of oil gushers.

On April 14, James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron file a patent for a hydraulic ram-type blowout preventer designed to stop dangerous and wasteful oil gushers. Their concept uses rams — hydrostatic pistons — to close on the drill stem and form a seal against well pressure.

Abercrombie sketches his idea on the sawdust floor of the Cameron Iron Works machine shop in Humble, Texas. The original design (No. 1,569,247) can withstand pressures up to 3,000 psi, an industry record in 1922. Later patents improve performance and the new technology becomes an industry standard.

In 2003, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers recognizes the “Cameron Ram-Type Blowout Preventor” as an “Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.” – From the July 2003 ASME designation ceremony. Read more in the historical society article “Ending Oil Gushers.”

April 15, 1897 – Birth of the Oklahoma Oil and Natural Gas Industry

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 era.

By the time of statehood in 1907, Oklahoma will lead the world in oil production. Today, a 184-foot derrick and education center, renovated in 2008, tells the story in Bartlesville’s Discovery 1 Park. Read more at “Discovering Oklahoma Oil.”

April 16, 1855 – Report says Kerosene can Light America

Benjamin Silliman Jr., professor of chemistry at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, delivers his “Report on Rock Oil or Petroleum” after analysis of samples from Cherrytree Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania. His analysis banishes any doubts about the potential new uses for “rock oil” and is a turning point in establishing the modern petroleum industry.

A report from Yale chemist Benjamin Silliman Jr. says Pennsylvania "Rock Oil" can be distilled into a very high-quality illuminating oil. "Gentlemen," he writes to his clients, "it appears to me that there is much ground for encouragement..."

Silliman, himself the son of a great American chemist, reports the new resource can be distilled into a very high-quality illuminating oil. “Gentlemen,” he writes to his clients, “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.”

Importantly, Silliman’s conclusion attracts investors to George Bissell and Jonathan Eveleth’s fledgling Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company. Four years later, Edwin L. Drake rewards investors by bringing in America’s first commercial oil well near Titusville. Kerosene soon lights the nation.

April 4, 1951 – Uncovering Oil Shale Resources

On the Clarence Iverson farm, near Tioga, North Dakota, the Amerada Petroleum Corporation brings in the discovery well for the Williston Basin, which stretches from North and South Dakota into Canada. Almost two dozen previous exploratory wells were “dry holes.”

Although the company’s 1951 wildcat drilling attempt was regarded with great skepticism, about 30 million acres are under lease within two months following the historic discovery. Read the rest of this entry »

March 28, 1886 – Indiana Natural Gas Boom Begins

“Flambeaux” street lighting promotes natural gas use in factories. An economic boom arrives in central Indiana -- thanks to a discovery at 700 feet in the Trenton limestone formation.

A natural gas boom comes to Portland, Indiana, when the Eureka Gas and Oil Company finds gas at 700 feet. For a time, the state becomes the world’s leading natural gas producer.

By April 1887, five miles of pipe supplies natural gas to offices, residences — and 50 large torches or “flambeaux” for street lighting. Indiana is among the earliest states to legislate conservation when in 1891 it passes an act forbidding the burning of natural gas in the wasteful lights. See Petroleum Age article “Indiana’s Natural Gas Boom.”
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March 24, 1989 – Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

After nearly 12 years of daily tanker passages through Prince William Sound, Alaska, the 987-foot-long Exxon Valdez runs aground, spilling about 257,000 barrels of oil and affecting hundreds of miles of coastline.

Since the supertanker’s accident, ExxonMobil has spent more than $4.3 billion in compensatory and cleanup payments, settlements and fines. Field and laboratory studies continue to examine the effects of the spill, which resulted in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Read the rest of this entry »