Technology and the “Conroe Crater”
Texas well disaster of 1933 helped bring advancements in directional drilling.
A Great Depression-era disaster in a giant oilfield near Conroe, Texas, brought together the inventor of portable drilling rigs and the father of directional drilling. George E. Failing and H. John Eastman employed new technologies that allowed “the bit burrowing into the ground at strange angles.”
Early Conroe oil wells revealed shallow but “gas charged” oil-producing sands in what would prove to be the third largest oilfield in the United States at the time. By the end of 1932, more than 65,000 barrels of oil flowed daily from 60 wells in the region north of Houston. (more…)
