by Bruce Wells | Apr 6, 2026 | Petroleum Companies
The brief oilfield journey of a “staveless” wooden barrel maker.
The U.S. petroleum industry was barely a decade old, and as oil discoveries spread from northwestern Pennsylvania’s first commercial well, efficiently transporting the resource became critical. In Brooklyn, New York, the Staveless Barrel and Tank Company organized. The company hoped to exploit a new patent for making barrels.
Capitalized in 1867 at $500,000 with 5,000 shares at $100 each, Staveless Barrel and Tank’s barrel-making process included “application of scale-boards or veneers in layers, the direction of whose grain is crossed or diversified, and which are connected together, forming a material for the construction, lining, or covering of land and marine structures.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 10, 2026 | Petroleum Transportation
Skilled 19th-century coopers made barrels of many capacities: hogsheads, puncheons, tierces, butts, and tuns.
Soon after America’s first commercial oil well of 1859, a small group met in northwestern Pennsylvania and decided a 42-gallon wooden barrel was best for transporting their oil.
When filled with oil instead of fish or other commodities, a 42-gallon “tierce” weighed 300 pounds. The 42-gallon oil barrel was officially adopted in 1866. Today, a barrel’s refined products include about 20 gallons of gasoline, 12 gallons of diesel, and four gallons of jet fuel (and rocket fuel) and other products, including asphalt.
By the 1860s, barges floated barrels of oil down the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh to be refined into a highly demanded product — kerosene for lamps. Image from an early oil company stock certificate.
In August 1866 a handful of America’s earliest independent oil producers met in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and agreed that henceforth, 42 gallons would constitute a barrel of oil. Pennsylvania led the world in oil production as demand soared for kerosene lamp fuel. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Nov 15, 2025 | Petroleum Transportation
The Elizabeth Watts shipped hundreds of barrels of petroleum from Philadelphia to London during the Civil War.
The 19th-century U.S. petroleum industry launched many new industries for producing, refining, and transporting the highly prized resource. With oil demand rapidly growing worldwide, America exported oil (and kerosene) during the Civil War when a small Union brig sailed across the Atlantic.
Soon after Edwin L. Drake drilled the first American oil well in 1859 along a creek in northwestern Pennsylvania, entrepreneurs swept in, and wooden derricks sprang up in Venango and Crawford counties. (more…)
