by Bruce Wells | Mar 11, 2026 | Petroleum Art
A red Pegasus soared into Dallas petroleum history in 1934.
The Mobil Oil Pegasus perched atop the Magnolia Petroleum building in Dallas from 1934 until 1999, when rust and growing structural issues forced its removal. On the first day of 2000, a carefully crafted duplicate returned to the Dallas skyline.
Thanks to its widespread popularity, Mobil Oil’s high-flying trademark returned to its Texas home with one red Pegasus on each side of a sign painstakingly recreated by the American Porcelain Enamel Company. As the year 1999 drew to a close, the duplicated Pegasus soared again. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Sep 8, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
September 8, 1891- Patent issued for “Flexible Driving Shafts” –
The modern concept of horizontal drilling may have begun with 19th-century patents by John Smalley Campbell of London. After receiving a British patent for his “useful improvements in flexible driving shafts or cables” in 1889, Campbell received a U.S. patent (no. 459,152) for his drilling method.
While Campbell described his directional drilling patent as ideal for dental engines, “the patent also carefully covered use of his flexible shafts at much larger and heavier physical scales,” reported geologist and oil historian Stephen M. Testa in a 2015 article for Pacific Petroleum Geology.
“The modern concept of non-straight line, relatively short-radius drilling dates back at least to September 8, 1891,” Testa added. Directional drilling pioneer H. John Eastman in 1933 applied the technology to save the Conroe oilfield.
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…)
