by Bruce Wells | May 12, 2025 | This Week in Petroleum History
May 12, 2007 – Oil Museums open in Oklahoma –
ConocoPhillips opened two petroleum museums as part of the 2007 Oklahoma statehood centennial celebrations (see ConocoPhillips Petroleum Museums). The company reportedly spent $10 million on state-of-the-art museums in Bartlesville and Ponca City.
Conoco began in the 1880s as the Continental Oil Company, a grease and kerosene distributor in Utah, before merging with Ponca City-based Marland Oil Company in 1929. Conoco merged with Phillips Petroleum Company of Bartlesville in 2002. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Apr 9, 2024 | Petroleum 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.
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