December 8, 1931 - Improved  Blow-Out Preventer patented

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.

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.

“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

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

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.

“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 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.”

“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.

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.”

————————————————–

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.