by Bruce Wells | Sep 14, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Deeper wells launched Utah’s petroleum industry in 1948.
After decades of expensive failed exploration attempts (and a few small producers), the first significant Utah oil well was competed on September 18, 1948, in the Uinta Basin. The Ashley Valley No. 1 well about 10 miles southeast of Vernal produced 300 barrels a day from a depth of 4,152 feet.
“The honor of bringing in the state’s first commercial oil well went not to the ‘Majors’ but to an ‘Independent’ — the Equity Oil Company,” noted a Utah historian in 1963.
The Uinta Basin witnessed Utah’s first drilling boom following a 1948 oil discovery. A modern boom would return thanks to coalbed methane gas. Photo courtesy Utah State Historical Society.
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by Bruce Wells | Sep 9, 2024 | This Week in Petroleum History
September 10, 1969 – Second Nuclear Fracturing Test –
A 40-kiloton nuclear device was detonated about eight miles southeast of present-day Parachute, in Garfield County, Colorado. Project Rulison was the second of three natural-gas-reservoir stimulation tests that were part of Operation Plowshare, a government program to study uses of nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes.
The first nuclear fracturing test, Project Gasbuggy, detonated a 29-kiloton device in a New Mexico well in December 1967. The third unconventional test to increase production was Project Rio Blanco, a 1973 detonation in a Rio Blanco County, Colorado, natural gas well. (more…)
