by Bruce Wells | Jan 22, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Once called night riders of the hemlocks, petroleum sleuths separated oil well fact from fiction.
In the hard winter of 1888, 37-year-old oil scout Justus C. McMullen succumbed to pneumonia — contracted while investigating oil production from a well in densely wooded hills near Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.
McMullen, publisher of the Bradford “Petroleum Age” newspaper, already had contributed much to America’s early petroleum industry as a journalist and oilfield detective.
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by Bruce Wells | Jul 24, 2023 | This Week in Petroleum History
July 24, 2000 – BP unveils New Green and Yellow Logo –
BP the official name of a group of companies that included Amoco, ARCO and Castrol, unveiled a new corporate identity brand, replacing the “Green Shield” logo with a green and yellow sunflower pattern.
The company also introduced a new corporate slogan: “Beyond Petroleum.” When BP — then British Petroleum — merged with Amoco in 1998, the company’s name briefly changed to BP Amoco before all stations converted to the BP brand. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jul 6, 2023 | Petroleum Pioneers
After early 1920s discoveries, Oklahoma’s giant oilfields revealed.
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 the state’s 1920s oilfields compared to the economic impact of the greater area Seminole 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.
Other oilfield discoveries soon followed, including the Red Fork Gusher of 1901, which helped in Making Tulsa “Oil Capital of the World.” The Seminole oil boom eclipsed them all. (more…)
