Arkansas Oil Ventures
Arkansas oil discoveries as early as the 1920s created boom towns and launched the state’s petroleum industry. In the 1950s, Arkansas Oil Ventures would try but fail to be part of a drilling resurgence.
Arkansas’ first commercial oil well was drilled in 1921 at El Dorado in Union County, 15 miles north of the Louisiana border. The 68-square-mile field will lead U.S. oil output by 1925 – with production reaching 70 million barrels.
When another well revealed the Smackover field, Arkansas oil fever began. It would last for decades. The Fayetteville Shale, a 50-mile-wide formation across central Arkansas, promised large quantities of natural gas. Petroleum technologies of the time could not economically produced it (learn more more in First Arkansas Oil Wells).
Although glory days of Arkansas oil production dropped from about 58 million barrels of oil in 1926 to 12 million barrels by 1932, a dozen more major fields were discovered between 1936 and 1947. (more…)
