by Bruce Wells | May 12, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
May 12, 2007 – Oil Museums open in Oklahoma –
ConocoPhillips opened two petroleum museums as part of the 2007 Oklahoma statehood centennial celebrations (see ConocoPhillips Petroleum Museums). The company reportedly spent $10 million on state-of-the-art museums in Bartlesville and Ponca City.
Conoco began in the 1880s as the Continental Oil Company, a grease and kerosene distributor in Utah, before merging with Ponca City-based Marland Oil Company in 1929. Conoco merged with Phillips Petroleum Company of Bartlesville in 2002. (more…)
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…)
