by Bruce Wells | Dec 16, 2023 | This Week in Petroleum History
December 18, 1929 – California Oil Boom in Venice –
The Ohio Oil Company completed a wildcat well in Venice, California, on the Marina Peninsula, east of the Grand Canal, two blocks from the ocean. The oilfield discovery well produced 3,000 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 6,200 feet. The Ohio Oil Company, which would become Marathon Oil of Ohio, had received a zoning variance permitting exploration within the city limits. Discovery of the Venice oilfield launched another California drilling boom similar to Signal Hill eight years earlier.
“Derricks by the Road” by California artist JoAnn Cowans (1933-2022), who in the early 1960s painted Venice and Brea oilfield derricks before they were dismantled.
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by Bruce Wells | Dec 15, 2023 | Petroleum Products
Petroleum product at bottom of refining process improved American mobility.
As the U.S. centennial neared, President Ulysses S. Grant directed that Pennsylvania Avenue be paved with Trinidad asphalt. By 1876, the president’s paving project covered about 54,000 square yards, according to the National Asphalt Pavement Association.
Pennsylvania Avenue was first paved in 1876-77 with bitumen imported from Trinidad. Thirty-one years later, a better asphalt derived from petroleum distillation was used to repave the famed pathway to the Capitol, above. Photo courtesy the Asphalt Institute.
“Brooms, lutes, squeegees and tampers were used in what was a highly labor intensive process. Only after the asphalt was dumped, spread, and smoothed by hand did the relatively sophisticated horse-drawn roller, and later the steam roller, move in to complete the job,” NAPA noted in its 1992 publication, A Century of Progress: The History of Hot Mix Asphalt. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 19, 2022 | AOGHS Newsletter
