by Bruce Wells | Apr 17, 2025 | Petroleum History Almanac
Standard Oil curbed the excitement of unruly speculators trading oil and pipeline certificates.
In a sign of the growing power of John D. Rockefeller at the end of the 19th century, Standard Oil Company brought a decisive end to Pennsylvania’s highly speculative — and often confusing — trading markets at oil exchanges.
On January 23, 1895, the Standard Oil Company’s purchasing agency in Oil City, Pennsylvania, notified independent oil producers it would only buy their oil at a price “as high as the markets of the world will justify” and not necessarily “the price bid on the oil exchange for certificate oil.” The action would bring an end to the “paper oil” markets of brokers and buyers.
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by Bruce Wells | Apr 15, 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 | Apr 11, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
Onlookers gathered for the 1897 “shooting” of the Nellie Johnstone oil well at Bartlesville in Indian Territory.
After securing rights to explore in the Cherokee Nation, a small group of businessmen drilled on the west bank of the Caney River and found oil on March 25, 1897, at a depth of about 1,300 feet. A few weeks later, Bartlesville residents gathered at the site to watch the “shooting” of the Nellie Johnstone No. 1, the future state of Oklahoma’s first commercial oil well.
Soon after the Civil War, America’s search for oil to refine into kerosene for lamps prompted entrepreneurs, speculators, and the new petroleum industry’s “wildcatters” to seek their fortunes on the great plains of the Indian Territory.
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by Bruce Wells | Apr 10, 2025 | Petroleum Pioneers
Natural oil seeps, giant oilfields, and the beginning of the California petroleum industry.
“Everyone thinks of Los Angeles as the ultimate car city, but the city’s relationship with petroleum products is far more significant than just consumption.” — Center for Land Use Interpretation
When struggling prospector Edward L. Doheny and his mining partner Charles Canfield decided to dig a well in 1892, they chose a site already known for its “tar” pools that bubbled to the surface. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Apr 9, 2025 | Petroleum Companies
John Wilkes Booth and his actor friends drilled for Pennsylvania oil in 1864 — and found it.
After forming an oil company and drilling for “black gold” in booming northwestern Pennsylvania, the actor’s dreams of a petroleum fortune collapsed in June 1864. He then sought fame as a martyr to the Confederacy. A failed oilman turned assassin.
As the Civil War approached its bloody conclusion, John Wilkes Booth in January 1864 made the first of several trips to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where he purchased an oil lease on the Fuller farm. Maps reveal the three-acre strip of land on the farm, about one mile south of Franklin and on the east side of the Allegheny River. (more…)
