by Bruce Wells | Mar 6, 2024 | Petroleum Pioneers
Cumberland County pioneers drilled for brine, found oil — and bottled and sold it as medicine.
An 1829 well drilled with a spring-pole seeking brine found oil instead. Petroleum from “Kentucky’s Great American Oil Well” would be bottled and sold for medicinal purposes. Also known as the “Old American Well,” the fortuitous discovery was among the earliest commercial oil wells in the United States.
Although drilling specifically for oil would not begin until three decades later in Titusville, Pennsylvania (see First American Oil Well), the Kentucky well struck a highly pressurized geologic formation, making the failed brine well one of the nation’s first oil gushers.
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by Bruce Wells | Aug 21, 2023 | Petroleum Pioneers
The U.S. petroleum industry began in 1859 to meet demand for “Coal Oil” — the popular lamp fuel kerosene.
American oil history began in a valley along a creek in remote northwestern Pennsylvania. Today’s exploration and production industry was born on August 27, 1859, near Titusville when a well specifically drilled for oil found it.
Although crude oil had been found and bottled for medicine as early as 1814 in Ohio and in Kentucky in 1818, these had been drilled seeking brine. Drillers often used an ancient technology, the “spring pole” Sometimes the salt wells produced small amounts of oil, an unwanted byproduct.
Considered America’s first petroleum exploration company – the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York – incorporated in 1854. It reorganized as Seneca Oil Company of New Haven Connecticut in 1858.
The advent of cable-tool drilling introduced the wooden derrick into the changing American landscape. The technology applied same basic idea of chiseling a hole deeper into the earth.
Using steam power, a variety of heavy bits, and clever mechanical engineering, cable-tool drillers continued to become more efficient. (Learn more Making Hole – Drilling Technology.) (more…)
