by Bruce Wells | Mar 14, 2025 | Petroleum Technology
Ever since the earliest U.S. oil discoveries, detonating dynamite or nitroglycerin downhole helped increase a well’s production. The geologic “fracking” technology commonly used in oilfields after the Civil War would be significantly enhanced when hydraulic fracturing arrived in 1949.
Modern hydraulic fracturing — popularly known as petroleum well “fracking” — can trace its roots to April 1865, when Civil War Union veteran Lt. Col. Edward A. L. Roberts received the first of his many patents for an “exploding torpedo.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 12, 2025 | Petroleum History Almanac
Horrific East Texas oilfield tragedy of 1937.
At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, with just minutes left in the school day and more than 500 students and teachers inside the building, a massive explosion leveled most of what had been the wealthiest rural school in the nation.
Hundreds died at New London High School in Rusk County after odorless natural gas leaked into the basement and ignited. The sound of the explosion was heard four miles away. Parents, many of them roughnecks from the East Texas oilfield, rushed to the school.
Despite immediate rescue efforts, 298 died, most from grades 5 to 11 (dozens more later died of injuries). After an investigation, the cause of the school explosion was found to be an electric wood-shop sander that sparked the residue gas vapors (also called casinghead gas) that had pooled beneath and in the walls of the school. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 12, 2025 | Energy Education Resources
Petroleum geologist and postcard collector drills into exploration and production history.
For anyone interested in learning more about Texas oil and natural gas history and oilfield photography found in vintage postcards, a book by petroleum geologist Jeff A. Spencer offers both in 128 pages. Published by Arcadia Publishing in 2013, Texas Oil and Gas is a gusher of information, images, and a valuable resource for teaching social studies.
Published in 2013, Texas Oil and Gas is part of Arcadia Publishing’s series of books featuring historic oil-patch postcards.
A longtime geologist in the Houston area, Spencer has authored or co-authored more than 20 oilfield history papers. His petroleum-related vintage postcard collection includes images from West Virginia, California, Ontario, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and of course Texas. The majority of the book’s more than 200 images are from the author’s private collection. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 11, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
The Texas independent producer who “rocketed into the national imagination in the late 1940s.”
As giant oilfield discoveries created Texas millionaires after World War II, people started calling “Diamond Glenn” McCarthy the reigning King of the Wildcatters. Some historians have said a $21 million hotel McCarthy opened in 1949 put Houston on the map.
Glenn H. McCarthy’s petroleum career began with a 1935 well 50 miles east of Houston when he and partner R.A. Mason completed their No. 1 White well with production of almost 600 barrels of oil a day. The well extended by three miles to the north the already productive Anahuac field — which McCarthy had earlier discovered.
After discovering 11 Texas oil fields, Glenn McCarthy appeared on the February 13, 1950, cover of TIME.
By 1945, McCarthy had gone on to discover 11 new oilfields and extend others. In Brazoria County a year later he drilled the highest-pressure gas well drilled to that time. Described as a “bombastic, plucky Irishman best known for building the famous Shamrock Hotel,” the Texas independent oilman would be featured on the February 13, 1950, cover of TIME. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Mar 10, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
Giant oilfields bring Oklahoma petroleum boom during Great Depression.
Many oil and natural gas discoveries followed the Indian Territory’s first oil well drilled at Bartlesville in 1897, and especially after statehood came a decade later. None of Oklahoma’s 1920s oilfields compared to the economic impact of the greater Seminole area oil boom.
Although oil from the 1897 discovery in Indian Territory could not get to refineries for two years (lacking transportation infrastructure), the first Oklahoma oil well brought a surge in exploratory drilling. More oilfield discoveries followed, including the Red Fork Gusher of 1901, which helped in Making Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World,” but Seminole area oilfields eclipsed them all. (more…)
