by Bruce Wells | Sep 23, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
The Roxana Petroleum Company Wood River (Illinois) facility began refining crude oil — processing more than two million barrels of oil from Oklahoma oilfields in its first year of operation. Roxana Petroleum was the 1912 creation of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which also founded the American Gasoline Company in Seattle to distribute the fuel on the West Coast. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Sep 18, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
“It was desolate country – sand, mesquite, bear grass and jack rabbits. Hobbs was a store, a small school, a windmill, and a couple of trees.” — New Mexico roughneck.
Although the Hobbs discovery came six years after the first oil production (seven years after the first natural gas well), petroleum geologists soon called it the most important single oil find in New Mexico history.
The Midwest State No. 1 well — spudded in late 1927 using a standard cable-tool rig — saw its first signs of oil from the giant oilfield at a depth of 4,065 feet on June 13, 1928. It had been a long journey. (more…)
