by Bruce Wells | Nov 11, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
November 11, 1884 – Gas Companies merge into Con Edison –
The largest U.S. gas utility company at the time was created in New York City when six gas-light companies — using manufactured coal gas — combined to form the Consolidated Gas Company. The Consolidated Edison Company, “Con Ed,” began six decades earlier as the New York Gas Light Company, which received a charter from the state legislature in 1823.
“Bird’s-eye view” illustrates New York and Brooklyn in 1873. The Brooklyn Bridge, then under construction, can be seen at the right. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
Like most early manufactured gas companies, New York Gas Light focused early efforts on public street lighting (see Illuminating Gaslight), replacing whale oil lamps installed by the city beginning in the 1760s.
Prior to the 1884 merger of the competing companies, streets often were being torn up by competing workmen installing or repairing their own company’s lines — and removing those of a rival. “Sometimes these work crews would meet on the same street and brawl, giving rise to the term “gas house gangs.”
Learn more in History of Con Edison.
November 11, 1926 – Route 66 officially commissioned
Five years after the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921, U.S. Highway 66 was commissioned as a major thoroughfare in the national highway system. America’s “Mother Road” from Chicago to Los Angeles connected rural and urban communities along its almost 2,500 miles — until the interstate system incrementally replaced it.
Extended from Los Angeles to Santa Monica in 1935, Route 66 lost its highway status 50 years later when the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials officially decertified it. In 2019, Oklahoma established the Route 66 Centennial Commission, assisted by the Oklahoma Historical Society, to plan events celebrating the historic highway’s centennial in 2026.
November 12, 1899 – New York World features Mrs. Alford and her Nitro Factory
An 1899 article in the New York World profiled Mrs. Byron Alford — the “Only Woman in the World who Owns and Operates a Dynamite Factory.”
A laminated (though wrinkled) newspaper page from 1899 was part of a school project of a Mrs. Alford descendant, according to the Penn-Brad Oil Well Park and Museum in Bradford, Pennsylvania.
Mrs. Alford’s dangerous business operated on five acres outside of Bradford, Pennsylvania, with a daily production of 3,000 pounds of nitroglycerin and 6,000 pounds of dynamite. Local drillers used the explosives for “shooting” wells to boost production.
The article noted “the astute businesswoman” manufactured her volatile mixtures in 12 separate buildings, all made of wood and unpainted.
Learn more in Mrs. Alford’s Nitro Factory.
November 12, 1916 – Forest Oil Company formed
Forest Oil Company incorporated and began operations in the Bradford oilfield of northern Pennsylvania. The company, after adopting a “yellow dog” lantern logo, launched an important new technology: water-flooding (injecting water into oil-bearing formations) to stimulate production from depleted wells.
Forest Oil’s “yellow dog” lantern logo beside the oilfield lantern.
Water-flooding technology for enhanced recovery spread throughout the petroleum industry – and extended many wells’ lives by as much as a decade.
After merging in 1924 with four independent oil companies (January Oil Company, Brown Seal Oil, Andrews Petroleum, and Boyd Oil), Forest Oil was headquartered in Denver before being acquired in 2014 by a privately held Houston company.
November 12, 1999 – Plastics designated Historic Landmark
The American Chemical Society designated the discovery of a high-density polyethylene process as a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a ceremony at the Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The oil company had entered the plastics business in 1951 after discovering a catalyst for creating solid polymers.
“The plastics that resulted — crystalline polypropylene and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) — are now the core of a multibillion-dollar, global industry,” the society noted. Among the first customers for Phillips Petroleum plastics was Wham-O, which used it to make Hula Hoops and Frisbees in the 1950s.
November 13, 1943 – Death during Secret WWII Drilling Project
Derrickhand Herman Douthit of Caddo Mills, Texas, died from a fall at Well Number 148 in England’s Sherwood Forest, where he was part of a top-secret group of Americans drilling to expand production from the Eakring field. The roughnecks of Sherwood Forest increased production faster than their British counterparts while working 12-hour shifts in four crews. “Rigs shut down for one shift for his funeral, then back to work,” recalled Lewis Dugger of Louisiana. Forty-one of the volunteers returned safely in March 1944. Douthit was buried near Cambridge with full military honors.
November 14, 1947 – First Oil Well drilled Out of Sight of Land
The modern offshore oil and natural gas industry began in the Gulf of Mexico with the first oil well successfully completed out of sight of land. Brown & Root Company built the experimental freestanding platform 10 miles offshore for Kerr-McGee and partners Phillips Petroleum and Stanolind. The platform, Kermac 16, was designed to withstand winds as high as 125 miles per hour.
The Kermac 16 platform was featured in a 1954 Bell Helicopter advertisement encouraging use of helicopters for offshore transportation.
After investing $450,000, Kerr-McGee completed the well in about 20 feet of water off Louisiana’s gradually sloping Gulf coast. The Kermac No. 16 well initially produced 40 barrels of oil per hour.
Kerr-McGee had purchased 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 were sunk 104 feet into the ocean floor to secure a 2,700-square-foot wooden deck. The Kermac No. 16 platform withstood several 1947 hurricanes and tropical storms.
Learn more about offshore technologies in Offshore Drilling History.
November 14, 1947 – WW II “Big Inch” and “Little Big Inch” Pipelines Sold
Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, a company established 11 months earlier to acquire the World War II surplus 24-inch “Big Inch” and 20-inch “Little Big Inch” pipelines, won ownership of them with a bid of $143,127,000. It was America’s largest sale of war surplus material to the private sector.
War Emergency Pipelines, Inc., in 1942 began construction of the longest U.S. petroleum pipeline construction ever undertaken in the United States — two pipelines spanning 1,200 miles. Photo Courtesy Library of Congress.
By the 1950s, Texas Eastern Transmission converted both oil product pipelines to natural gas, which was needed for the Appalachian region. By the 2000s, transmission would become bi-directional for carrying natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale to mid-west markets. The Big Inch Pipelines of WW II were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
November 15, 1906 – Justice Department seeks Breakup of Standard Oil
U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte filed suit to compel dissolution of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Despite an 1892 court decision ordering the Standard Oil Trust to be dissolved, John D. Rockefeller reorganized it and continued to operate from New York. The Justice Department won the latest suit and Standard Oil appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which affirmed the lower court’s decision on May 15, 1911, and mandated dissolution of Standard Oil into 34 separate companies.
November 15, 1952 – Williston Basin produces Millionth Barrel of Oil
The Williston Basin produced its millionth barrel of oil, which came from five fields in three counties in North Dakota, where Amerada Petroleum had launched a 1951 drilling boom northeast of Williston (see First North Dakota Oil Well). By the end of 1952, the Williston Basin’s production reached 356,000 barrels of oil a month.
by Bruce Wells | Jul 29, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
July 29, 1918 – “World’s Wonder Oil Pool” discovered in Texas
Less than a year after the “Roaring Ranger” discovered an oilfield to the south, the Fowler No. 1 well at the cotton farming community of Burkburnett, Texas, revealed a new giant field at a depth of 1,734 feet. Within three weeks 56 rigs were drilling near the Fowler Farm Oil Company site along the Red River in North Texas.
Circa 1919 photo captioned, “Burkburnett, Texas, the World’s Wonder Oil Pool,” showing eight months phenomenal development, viewed from the northwest side, opposite Fowler farm.” A. Newman Photographic Company photo courtesy Library of Congress.
Fowler’s decision to drill a well on his Wichita County farm had been called “Fowler’s Folly” until his oil discovery brought hundreds of oil companies to the county. By January 1919, Burkburnett’s population reached more than 8,000 people — with a line of derricks two-miles long greeting new arrivals.
As the “World’s Wonder Oil Pool” made national headlines, teenager Clark Gable was a 17-year-old roustabout working in Oklahoma. Gable and Spencer Tracy would star in Hollywood’s version of Burkburnett oil history, the popular 1940 movie “Boom Town.”
Learn more in Boom Town Burkburnett.
July 29, 1957 – Eisenhower limits Oil Imports
As America’s reliance on foreign oil continued to grow — discouraging domestic production — President Dwight D. Eisenhower established a Voluntary Oil Import Program with import quotas by region. The intent was to ensure adequate domestic petroleum in case of a national emergency.
Using a presidential proclamation two years later, Eisenhower made the program mandatory. By 1962, oil imports were limited to 12.2 percent of U.S. production. The program continued until suspended by President Richard Nixon in 1973 as domestic oil production reached new highs during the OPEC oil embargo.
July 30, 1942 – U-166 sinks in Gulf of Mexico
A Navy patrol boat attacked and sank a German U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico after the submarine had torpedoed a U.S. freighter. Despite being depth charged, the U-166 was believed to have escaped — until a natural gas pipeline survey revealed it 59 years later.
The U-166’s identity was not learned until advanced geophysical survey technologies arrived in 2001, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The discovery resulted from an archaeological survey prior to construction of a natural gas pipeline by the British company BP and Shell Offshore Inc.
A natural gas pipeline survey revealed the U-166 about 45 miles off the Louisiana coast in 2011.
Remotely operating vehicles (ROVs) and an autonomous side-scan sonar revealed U-166 separated from its last victim, the Robert E. Lee, by less than a mile. BP and Shell altered their proposed pipeline to preserve the site.
With the petroleum industry the principle user of advanced underwater technologies for seafloor mapping, other World War II vessels have been discovered during oil and natural gas surveys.
Learn more in Petroleum Survey discovers U-boat.
August 1, 1872 – Iron Pipeline delivers Pennsylvania Natural Gas
The first large-scale delivery of natural gas by pipeline began when gas was piped to more than 250 residential and commercial customers in Titusville, Pennsylvania, home of America’s first oil well, drilled in 1859. An iron pipeline two inches wide carried the natural gas five miles from a well producing four million cubic feet of gas a day.
Investors, including the mayor of Titusville, had formed the Keystone Gas & Water Company to construct the pipeline and deliver, “the most powerful and voluminous gas well on record.” The well produced into the 1880s, according to the Drake Well Museum and Park.
August 2, 1956 – Missouri builds First U.S. Interstate Highway
Missouri became the first state to award a contract with interstate construction funding authorized two months earlier by the Federal-Aid Highway Act. The highway commission agreed to begin work on part of Route 66, now Interstate 44.
Missouri launched the U.S. interstate system after “inking a deal for work on U.S. Route 66.” Today, I-44 stretches across south central Missouri and is a major corridor linking the Midwest and the West Coast.
“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,” proclaimed the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Learn more transportation and oil history in America on the Move.
August 3, 1769 – La Brea Asphalt Pits discovered
A Spanish expedition discovered what would be called La Brea (the tar) pits on the West Coast. “We debated whether this substance, which flows melted from underneath the earth, could occasion so many earthquakes,” noted the expedition’s Franciscan friar in his diary.
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 called the “tar pits,” the pools are actually asphalt.
The friar, Juan Crespi, was 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. Native Americans used the substance for centuries to waterproof baskets and caulk canoes.
Sticky pools form when crude oil seeps to the surface through fissures in the earth’s crust.
Although popularly called the tar pits, the pools at Rancho La Brea are actually asphalt — not tar, which is a by-product made by the distillation of woody materials, such as peat. Asphalt is a naturally formed substance comprised of hydrocarbon molecules (see Asphalt Paves the Way).
Learn more in Discovering the Le Brea Tar Pits.
August 3, 1942 – War brings “Big Inch” and “Little Big Inch” Pipelines
War Emergency Pipelines Inc. began 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 were extolled as “the most amazing government-industry cooperation ever achieved.”
The longest petroleum pipeline project ever undertaken led to construction of a 24-inch pipeline from East Texas to Illinois, and a 20-inch line as far as New York City.
With a goal of transporting 300,000 barrels of oil per day, the $95 million project called 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. The pipelines would reach more than 1,200 miles (the Trans-Alaska pipeline system is 800 miles long).
Learn more in Big Inch Pipelines of WWII.
August 4, 1913 – Discovery of Oklahoma’s “Poor Man’s Field”
The Crystal Oil Company completed its Wirt Franklin No. 1 well 20 miles northwest of Ardmore, Oklahoma. The well revealed the giant Healdton field, which became known as “the poor man’s field,” because of its shallow depth and low cost of drilling. The area attracted many independent producers with limited financial backing.
Exhibits at the Healdton Oil Museum include the 1920 Pierce-Arrow owned by Wirt Franklin, founder of the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
Another oil discovery in 1919 revealed the Hewitt field, which extended production in 22 miles across Carter County. The Greater Healdton-Hewitt oilfield produced, “an astounding 320,753,000 barrels of crude by the close of the first half of the 20th century,” reported historian Kenny Franks.
Erle P. Halliburton perfected his method of cementing oil wells in “the poor man’s field” (see Halliburton and the Healdton Oilfield). Wirt Franklin of Ardmore in 1929 became the first president of the then Tulsa-based Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).
August 4, 1977 – U.S. Department of Energy established
President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act, establishing the twelfth cabinet-level department by consolidating a dozen federal agencies and energy programs. The Act combined the Federal Energy Administration and the Energy Research and Development Administration, making the new Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for nuclear weapon programs and national labs. James Schlesinger was sworn in as first Secretary of Energy.
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Recommended Reading: Early Texas Oil: A Photographic History, 1866-1936
(2000); Eisenhower: Soldier and President
(1968); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Torpedoes in the Gulf: Galveston and the U-Boats, 1942-1943
(1995). The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
(2012); Monsters Of Old Los Angeles – The Prehistoric Animals Of The La Brea Tar Pits
(2008); Oil: From Prospect to Pipeline
(1971); Ragtown: A History of the Greater Healdton-Hewitt Oil Field
(1989); The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations (1999). Amazon purchases benefit the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyrihttp://homeght © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
