by Bruce Wells | Jan 27, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
January 28, 1921 – “Vaseline Well” erupts in Oklahoma –
After reaching a depth of 3,710 feet, drillers of the W.C. Newman well near Lamar, Oklahoma, “hit into a strata of oil, the like of which never before, nor since has been found,” reported the Daily Oklahoman in a 1933 retrospective of the well, which “caused oil men to marvel then, as today, since it produces the same Vaseline-like content.” (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 21, 2025 | 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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