Joseph “Buckskin Joe” Cullinan and Arnold Schlaet established The Texas Company in Beaumont to transport and refine oil from Spindletop Hill, a giant oilfield discovered in January 1901. The new company constructed a kerosene refinery in Port Arthur — and discovered an oilfield at Sour Lake Springs, where its Fee No. 3 well produced 5,000 barrels of oil a day in 1903. (more…)
A massive gale in the North Sea capsized a floating accommodation platform for Phillips Petroleum Company workers, killing 123 people. The Alexander L. Kielland, 235 miles east of Dundee, Scotland, housed 208 men who worked on a nearby rig in the Ekofisk field. The converted semi-submersible drilling platform served as housing space for the Phillips production platform 300 yards away. Most of the Phillips Petroleum workers were from Norway.
The wind was gusting to 40 knots with waves up to 12 meters high when anchor cables broke, according to a 2019 SAFETY4SEA article. “The rig had just been winched away from the Edda production platform. At about 6:30 p.m., most men were off duty in the accommodation on Alexander L. Kielland when they felt a ‘sharp crack’ followed by ‘some kind of trembling,’ survivors said. Within seconds, the platform tilted between 35 and 40 degrees.”
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Investors from New Haven, Connecticut, organized the Seneca Oil Company with $300,000 in capital after purchasing the Titusville leases of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, which had been founded in 1854 by George Bissell. (more…)
A Vacuum Oil Company subsidiary in Cape Town, South Africa, trademarked a flying horse logo inspired by Pegasus of Greek mythology. Based in Rochester, New York, Vacuum Oil had built a successful lubricants business long before gasoline was a branded product. (more…)
An oil tanker became the world’s first electrically welded commercial vessel when the Texas Company (later Texaco) tanker M/S Carolinian was completed in Charleston, South Carolina. The World War I shipbuilding boom had encouraged new electric welding technologies. Naval architect Richard Smith designed the Texas Company’s pioneering 226-ton vessel. (more…)
