July 11, 2008 – Record World Oil Price

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″

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.