This Week in Petroleum History: August 5 – 11
August 5, 1882 – Rockefeller founds Standard Oil of New Jersey –
Twelve years after launching Standard Oil Company of Ohio (bp America), John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (ExxonMobil) as a refining and marketing arm of the Standard Oil Trust, which would reorganize as Standard Oil Interests in 1892, two years after the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
“Taking advantage of New Jersey laws that allowed corporations to own stock in other corporations, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey became a holding company that effectively replaced the Standard Oil Trust. In this capacity, it provided administrative coordination to Standard Oil Interests and held stock in forty-one other oil companies,” notes the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 ordered Standard Oil of New Jersey to separate from its subsidiaries.
August 7, 1933 – Permian Basin inspires “Alley Oop” Comic Strip
Although the comic strip “Alley Oop” began syndication with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, the caveman character began in Permian Basin oilfields of the 1920s. A small, West Texas oil town would proclaim itself the inspiration for cartoonist Victor Hamlin.
A 1995 stamp commemorated “Alley Oop” by Victor Hamlin, who once worked in oilfields at Yates, Texas.
Iraan (pronounced eye-rah-ann) began as a company town following the October 1926 discovery of the giant Yates oilfield. The town’s name combined the names of Ira and Ann Yates. As petroleum drilling in the Permian Basin boomed, future Alley Oop cartoonist Hamlin worked as an oil company cartographer. He developed a lifelong interest in geology and paleontology that helped inspire his popular Depression Era comic strip.
Learn more in Alley Oop’s Oil Roots.
August 7, 1953 – Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act generates Revenue
The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act designated the Secretary of the Interior responsible for the administration of mineral exploration and development of America’s outer continental shelf. Forty-four Gulf of Mexico wells already were operating in 11 oilfields by 1949. As the offshore industry evolved in the 1950s, petroleum production became the second-largest revenue generator for the country, after income taxes.
Since 1982, the Interior Department has disbursed more than $371.3 billion in mineral leasing revenues. The Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR ) in 2023 reported a disbursement of $18.24 billion generated from energy production on federal and Tribal lands and federal offshore areas. ONRR made most disbursements monthly from the royalties, rents, and bonuses collected from energy and mineral companies operating on federal lands and waters.
August 7, 2004 – Death of a Famed “Hellfighter”
Famed oilfield well control expert and firefighter Paul “Red” Adair died at age 89 in Houston. The son of a blacksmith, Adair was born in 1915 in Houston. He served with a U.S. Army bomb disposal unit during World War II.
Famed oilfield firefighter Paul “Red” Adair of Houston, Texas, in 1964.
Adair had begun his oilfield career working for Myron Macy Kinley, who patented a technology for using charges of high explosives to snuff out well fires. Kinley, whose father had been an oil well shooter in California in the early 1900s, mentored many other firefighters, including Asger “Boots” Hansen and Edward “Coots” Mathews (Boots & Coots International Well Control).
After founding the Red Adair Company in 1959, Adair developed new techniques as his company extinguished over 2,000 well fires worldwide — onshore and offshore. The oilfield firefighter’s skills, dramatized in the 1968 film “Hellfighters,” were put to the test in 1991, when his company extinguished 117 well fires set in Kuwait by the retreating Iraqi army. Innovative oilfield firefighting technologies began as early as the 1860s.
August 9, 1921 – Reflection Seismography reveals Geological Structure
A team led by University of Oklahoma geophysicist John C. Karcher conducted the world’s first reflection seismograph measurement of a geologic formation, pioneering the use of reflection seismic technology. The geological section measurement followed limited tests in June and July at Oklahoma City. His work led to the discovery of many of the world’s largest oil and natural gas fields.
A roadside sign on I-35 south of Oklahoma City includes a geologic illustration of the Arbuckle Anticline, A nearby marker describes how using reflection seismography for oil exploration began here. Photo by Bruce Wells.
The new geophysical method recorded reflected seismic waves as they traveled through the earth, helping to define oil-bearing formations. The Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma were selected for testing the technique and new equipment, according to a roadside marker at the site south of Oklahoma City on I-35.
August 9, 1922 – Major Oilfield found in Luling, Texas
After drilling six dry holes near Luling, Texas, the United North & South Oil Company completed its Rafael Rios No. 1 well. Company President Edgar B. Davis had been determined to find oil in the Austin chalk formation. His discovery revealed an oilfield 12 miles long and two miles wide. By 1924, the Luling field was annually producing 11 million barrels of oil.
In central Texas, the Luling Oil Museum is a restored 1885 mercantile store near an oilfield a renowned psychic supposedly helped locate in 1922.
Davis later sold his Luling leases to the Magnolia Petroleum Company for $12 million – the biggest oil deal in Texas at the time. Success also produced tales of Davis finding the giant oilfield only after consulting a psychic. The bogus oil patch reading came from self-proclaimed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, who reportedly helped Davis other wildcatters, but failed in Texas oilfields after forming his own company and drilling dry holes.
Learn more by visiting the Central Texas Oil Patch Museum in Luling.
On August 9, 1949 – Oil discovered in Western Nebraska
An oilfield discovery in western Nebraska ended decades of unsuccessful searching and helped start the state’s modern petroleum industry. The Marathon Oil Company Mary Egging No. 1 well five miles southeast of the town of Gurley produced 225 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 4,429 feet.
According to a nearby historical marker, the first exploratory well drilled in the area near Harrisburg failed in 1917. The success in western Nebraska came nine years after the first Nebraska oil well was completed in 1940 in the southeastern corner of the state.
Marathon Oil in May 2024 announced it was being acquired by ConocoPhillips in an all-stock transaction valued at $22.5 billion.
August 10, 1909 – Hughes patents Dual-Cone Roller Bit
“Fishtail” drill bits became obsolete after Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas, patented the dual-cone roller bit consisting of two rotating cones. By pulverizing hard rock, his bit led to faster and deeper rotary drilling.
Historians have noted that several men were trying to improve bit technologies at the time, but it was Hughes and business associate Walter Sharp who made it happen. Just months before receiving the 1909 drill patent, they established the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company to manufacture the new bit (see Carl Baker and Howard Hughes).
Howard Hughes Sr. of Houston, Texas, received a 1909 patent for “roller drills such as are used for drilling holes in earth and rock.”
“Instead of scraping the rock, as does the fishtail bit, the Hughes bit, with its two conical cutters, took a different engineering approach,” reported the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), which in 2009 designated the invention as an Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.
“By chipping, crushing, and powdering hard rock formations, the Hughes Two-Cone Drill Bit could reach vast amounts of oil in reservoirs thousands of feet below the surface,” ASME explained. “This new drilling technology would revolutionize the industry.”
Hughes engineers invented the modern tri-cone bit in 1933, and Frank and George Christensen in 1941 developed the earliest diamond bit. The use of bits utilizing tungsten carbide arrived in the early 1950s. Synthetic diamonds in the early 1970s led to the fixed cutter, polycrystalline diamond compact bit.
Learn more in Making Hole – Drilling Technology.
August 11, 1891 – Oil Well brings prosperity to Sistersville, West Virginia
The discovery well of the Sistersville oilfield was drilled at the small West Virginian town on the Ohio River just north of Parkersburg. “The bringing in of the ‘Pole Cat’ well, which pumped water for a year before it pumped oil, brought in a sudden influx of oil men, drillers, leasers, speculators, followers, floaters, wildcatters, and hangers-on,” a local historian noted.
Bird’s-eye-view artist Thaddeus M. Fowler created maps of prospering towns and cities during the industrial revolution, including many oil boom towns like his 1896 lithograph of Sistersville, West Virginia. Map courtesy Library of Congress.
The petroleum wealth changed Sistersville from a rural village of 300 people, “to a rip-roaring” metropolis of 15,000 people almost overnight. At the height of its oil prosperity, Sistersville was featured among the popular maps created by artist Thaddeus M. Fowler of Massachusetts (see Oil Town “Aero Views”).
Today with a population of about 1,300, the Tyler County town proudly hosts an annual, three-day celebration of the 1891 Pole Cat well (later renamed the Sistersville well). The 56th West Virginia Oil and Gas Festival, featuring oilfield-related contests and 2024 Oil and Gas Queen Mia Bailey, will take place September 13-15, at Sistersville City Park.
August 11, 1998 – Amoco announces BP merger
Amoco announced plans to merge with British Petroleum in a stock swap valued at about $48 billion — then the world’s largest industrial merger. Amoco began in 1889 as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company of Indiana. The company officially changed its name to Amoco in 1985.
BP closed all of its Amoco stations in 2001.
Finalized on December 31, the combined company, BP Amoco PLC, became 60 percent owned by BP shareholders, marking the transaction as the largest foreign takeover of an American company. BP in 2001 announced the closure or renaming of Amoco stations to the BP brand.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Yates: A family, A Company, and Some Cornfield Geology
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an annual AOGHS supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
