All Pumped Up – Oilfield Technology
From eccentric wheels to the counter-balanced “nodding donkey,” inventing ways to produce oil.
In a remote northwestern Pennsylvania valley on August 27, 1859, Edwin L. Drake completed America’s first commercial oil well — launching the U.S. petroleum industry. Drake borrowed a common kitchen hand-pump to retrieve the important new resource from a depth of 69.5 feet.
Seeking oil for the Seneca Oil Company for refining into a popular lamp fuel, kerosene, Drake’s shallow well created a new exploration and production industry, it wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient for producing oil from a well.
