by Bruce Wells | Jun 8, 2026 | This Week in Petroleum History
June 8, 1969 – First LNG Export from Alaska –
Richfield Oil Company, predecessor of ARCO, exported liquefied natural gas to Japan from the Kenai Peninsula, where Richfield discovered the Swanson River oilfield in July 1957 (see First Alaska Oil Wells). Until it stopped exporting in 2015, the Kenai Peninsula plant was the longest, continuously operating LNG terminal in the world.
Marathon Petroleum mothballed the Kenai Peninsula plant in 2017 because of a lack of LNG buyers.
When ARCO was acquired by BP in 2000, federal antitrust concerns led to the sale of the Kenai Peninsula LNG plant to Phillips Petroleum (ConocoPhillips), which in 2017 mothballed the facility after failing to find LNG buyers. Marathon Petroleum acquired the Kenai LNG plant one year later, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
Although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2020 approved modifying the facility to import LNG, Houston-based Harvest Midstream and Marathon Petroleum in 2025 agreed to reconvert the facility to an LNG export terminal by December 2028. The ARCO brand remains the property of Marathon.
June 9, 1894 – Water Well finds Oil in Corsicana, Texas
A contractor hired by the town of Corsicana to drill a water well on 12th Street found oil instead, launching the Texas petroleum industry seven years before the more famous Spindletop Hill gusher hundreds of miles to the southeast. Corsicana’s well produced just 2.5 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 1,035 feet but inspired a rush of exploration companies.
A colorized postcard depicts the Corsicana oilfield circa 1910. The boom town, which became an oilfield service and manufacturing center, today annually celebrates its oil patch heritage.
By 1898, about 300 produced oil in and around the boom town, which also became a center for technological innovation. A Corsicana company patented and manufactured the rotary rig that drilled the 1901 Spindletop discovery well near Beaumont.
Despite Corsicana’s oilfield discovery well bringing petroleum riches and a drilling boom, city officials paid the contractor only half of the $1,000 fee, citing the agreement for completing a water well. Corsicana has hosted an annual Derrick Days since 1976.
Learn more in First Texas Oil Boom.
June 9, 2023 — California Pump Jack added to Historic Register
An eccentric-wheel oilfield pumping unit that operated in California’s largest oilfield joined the National Register of Historic Places, thanks to research by Mark Smith, who submitted the application. Installed by the Engineers Oil Company in 1913, the Kern County jack plant’s eccentric wheels pumped oil until 1990.
In operation until 1990, California’s Midway-Sunset Jack Plant used eccentric-wheel technologies from the late 19th century. The Kern County plant pumped more than 1.5 million barrels of oil. Photos courtesy John Harte. Illustration courtesy San Joaquin Geological Society.
“The Midway-Sunset Jack Plant is an extremely rare example of central power and ‘jack-line’ oil pumping technology on its original site and housed in its original building,” Smith noted in his 45-page draft application to the State Historical Resources Commission and later approved by the National Park Service. “Its design and operational history reflect significant advancements in oil extraction technology.”
June 11, 1816 – Manufactured Gas lights Art Museum in Baltimore
The first commercial gas lighting of residences, streets and businesses began when Rembrandt Peale impressed Baltimore civic leaders by illuminating a room in his Holliday Street Museum by burning “manufactured gas.” His display (using gas distilled from coal, tar or wood) dazzled them with a “ring beset with gems of light.”
Lighted with manufactured gas, this Baltimore museum opened in 1814, America’s first building erected as a museum. Photo courtesy Maryland Historical Trust.
The Baltimore museum became the first U.S. public building to use gas lighting, according to the Maryland Historical Trust. Within a week, the city council approved plans to illuminate the city’s streets. Peale and a group of investors founded the Gas Light Company of Baltimore — the first gas company in America (today Baltimore Gas and Electric).
Learn more about “town gas” in Illuminating Gaslight.
June 11, 1911 – E.W. Marland discovers Ponca Nation Oilfield
Ernest W. Marland, founder of the 101 Ranch Oil Company in 1908, discovered an oilfield near Ponca City, Oklahoma, after reorganizing the company in his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Almost broke after drilling eight uneconomical wells, Marland had turned to childhood friend John McCaskey of Pittsburgh, known as the “Sauerkraut King.”
Circa 1910 newspaper promotion of the 101 Ranch Oil Company following discoveries near Ponca (City), west of Osage Nation leases and oilfields.
Partnered with McCaskey and the owners of the 101 Ranch, Marland received permission from White Eagle, chief of the Ponca Nation, to drill near a reservation burial ground. The oilfield discovery well and many that followed produced oil on a reservation allotment owned by Willie-Cries-For-War, age 19, who had leased his 160 acres to Marland for $1,000 a year and 12.5 cents per barrel of oil produced.
Marland would found Marland Oil Company in 1917, merge it with Continental Oil in 1928, and become governor of Oklahoma in 1935. ConocoPhillips opened a Conoco Museum in Ponca City in 2007.
June 11, 1929 – Independent Producers get Organized
Ninety-five years ago, Wirt Franklin of Ardmore, Oklahoma, spoke on behalf of small exploration and production companies during President Herbert Hoover’s Oil Conservation Conference at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Franklin and other independent producers opposed creating a federal commission that could restrict production and allow more imported foreign oil.
“If this condition should be brought about, it would mean the annihilation and destruction of the small producer of crude oil, ” proclaimed Franklin, who had found success in the shallow but prolific Healdton oilfield. Before returning to Ardmore, Franklin and other independents established today’s Washington, D.C.-based Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).
June 12, 1879 – Allegheny Oilfield discovered by O.P. Taylor
Orville “O.P.” Taylor completed the Triangle No. 1 well at a depth of 1,177 feet in Allegheny County, New York, revealing an oilfield that extended into Pennsylvania. His discovery came after two failed wells were drilled near oil seeps first reported by a French missionary in 1627. The Allegheny oilfield drilling boom created the town of Petrolia.
The Confederate Army veteran had worked in the cigar manufacturing business in Virginia before catching “oil fever” after reading of oil discoveries along the Allegheny River (see Derricks of Triumph Hill). Early success led to his election as mayor of Wellsville, New York, and the title of “Father of the Allegheny Oilfield.” A Liberty Ship would be named for him during World War II.
June 13, 1917 – Phillips Petroleum Company founded
During the early months of America’s entry into World War I, as oil prices rose above $1 per barrel, Phillips Petroleum Company was founded in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Brothers Frank and Lee Eldas “L.E.” Phillips consolidated their oil companies and began operating throughout Oklahoma and Kansas. Assets rose from $3 million to $100 million within a few years.
Brothers L.E. Phillips (left) and Frank Phillips established Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville in 1917. Photo courtesy ConocoPhillips.
In 1927, Phillips Petroleum began selling its gasoline in Wichita, Kansas, the first of more than 10,000 Phillips 66 service stations. Phillips chemists received thousands of U.S. patents, including one in 1954 for Marlex, a high-density polyethylene. The Wham-O toy company was the first to buy the new plastic (see Petroleum Product Hoopla). The oil company’s high-octane Nu-Aviation fuel played an important role in winning World War II.
Phillips Petroleum merged with Conoco in 2002 to become ConocoPhillips, which in 2007 established petroleum museums in Ponca City and Bartlesville as part of the 100th anniversary of Oklahoma statehood.
June 13, 1928 – Hobbs Oilfield discovered in New Mexico
The modern New Mexico petroleum industry began with the discovery of the Hobbs oilfield near the southeastern corner of the state. After months of difficult cable-tool drilling, the Midwest State No. 1 well produced oil for the Midwest Refining Company, which had drilled the state’s first oil well in 1922.
A June 1928 oilfield discovery brought many decades of petroleum prosperity to downtown Hobbs, New Mexico.
The Hobbs well revealed a giant oilfield, later described by the New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources as “the most important single discovery of oil in New Mexico’s history.” But after months of drilling, the well had reached a depth of 1,500 feet when an engine house fire consumed the wooden derrick. “Men with less vision would have given up, but not the drillers of Midwest,” noted the state geologist.
As the Great Depression approached, oil production from the Hobbs field attracted investors and drilling companies, quickly transforming Hobbs from “sand, mesquite, bear grass and jackrabbits” to the fastest-growing town in the nation.
Learn more in First New Mexico Oil Wells.
June 14, 1865 – First Daily Oil Region Newspaper
Pennsylvania’s oil region got its first daily newspaper when brothers William and Henry Bloss published a four-page broadsheet, the Titusville Herald, which soon exceeded a circulation of 300. The first edition’s articles included a reference to visits to the oil region by John Wilkes Booth to look into his oil interests.
The “First Daily Newspaper in the Pennsylvania Oil Region” noted John Wilkes Booth’s petroleum interests.
“John Wilkes Booth purchased a one-thirteenth interest in the territory in August 1864,” the newspaper reported. “We are credibly informed that this Homestead well (see Dramatic Oil Company) in which Booth was interested was destroyed by fire on the day he assassinated President Lincoln.”
June 14, 1938 – United States regulates Natural Gas
The federal government for the first time assumed regulatory control of U.S. natural gas sales to limit the growing market power of interstate pipeline companies.
Although the Natural Gas Act of 1938 did not apply to production, gathering or local distribution, it sought to establish “just and reasonable rates” for pipeline company transmission or sales of natural gas in interstate commerce. Regulatory functions were assigned to the Federal Power Commission (established in 1920), which became the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 1977.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Corsicana (2010); Texas Oil and Gas Postcard History (2013); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry 
(2016); In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860 (1993); Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language (2012); Oil And Gas In Oklahoma: Petroleum Geology In Oklahoma
(2013); Oil Man: The Story of Frank Phillips and the Birth of Phillips Petroleum
(2014); Oil in West Texas and New Mexico
(1982); Around Titusville, Pa., Images of America
(2004). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Support this energy education website, our monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
by Bruce Wells | May 11, 2026 | This Week in Petroleum History
May 11, 1880 – Dresser patents Oil Well Device –
Solomon Dresser of Bradford, Pennsylvania, patented a rubber “packer” for sealing downhole pressure in wells. The technology behind the patent (no. 227419) helped confine gas, “which enters the well from the lower rocks and utilizes its force or pressure to expel the oil from the well.”
Detail from Solomon R. Dresser’s innovative 1880 patent for a rubber “packer” to seal downhole pressure in wells.
With the success of his Dresser “Cap Packer” in the giant Bradford oilfield, the inventor founded the S.R. Dresser Manufacturing Company. In 1885, he patented a flexible coupling known as a “Dresser Joint,” a widely adopted pipeline coupling method using rubber for tight seals, which permitted long-range transmission of natural gas.
After expanding into manufacturing oilfield pumps, engines, and compressors, Dresser’s company went public in 1928, moving its headquarters from Bradford to Dallas in 1950. Dresser Industries merged with oilfield supply rival Halliburton for about $7.7 billion in stock in 1998 (also see Halliburton cements Wells).
May 11, 1947 — Helicopter used for Oil Survey
A Bell 47B helicopter costing $75 per hour to operate was used for a gravity-meter survey in the Terrebonne Parish area of Louisiana. “The very first helicopter-aided oil survey in the Gulf took place between May 11 and August 12, 1947,” reported a 2009 article in Vertical Rewind, adding that helicopters replaced “marsh buggies used along the mosquito-infested coast of Louisiana.”
Petroleum-Bell Helicopter pilot Phil Fillingham in front of a Bell 47D-1 in March 1954. Bell 47s were the first helicopters used to transport personnel to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo courtesy Phil Fillingham/Vertical Rewind.
With the Bell helicopter based at Houma Airport, the survey was completed in three months, “while it took a year to do working with marsh buggies,” the article explained (also see First Florida Oil Well). Due to maintenance and repairs, the helicopter flew only 115 hours over the contract’s 93 days. “Even with those problems, this first use of a helicopter in oil exploration was considered a success.” Petroleum-Bell Helicopter Services, known as “Pet Bell,” was established in Lafayette in 1949. Learn more in Offshore Petroleum History.
May 12, 2007 – Oil Museums open in Oklahoma
ConocoPhillips opened two petroleum museums as part of the 2007 Oklahoma statehood centennial celebrations. The company spent $10 million on the museums in Bartlesville and Ponca City. Conoco merged with Phillips Petroleum Company in 2002, after beginning in the 1880s as the Continental Oil Company, a grease and kerosene distributor in Utah. Continental Oil merged with Ponca City-based Marland Oil Company in 1929.
An 1880s tank-wagon exhibit at the Conoco Museum in Ponca City, Oklahoma, today open by appointment only. Photo by Bruce Wells.
ConocoPhillips in 2012 separated its downstream operations into a separate company, Phillips 66, which in 2025 closed the Bartlesville museum, citing a decline in attendance. The Ponca City Conoco Museum has remained open with limited hours and appointments required for visiting. Learn more in ConocoPhillips Petroleum Museums.
May 14, 1906 – Louisiana Law conserves Natural Gas
Joining the growing number of states producing natural gas, Louisiana enacted conservation measures for preventing waste. Lawmakers passed an “Act to Protect the Natural Gas Fields of this State” empowering the governor “to close, cap, or plug offending wells” at the owner’s expense.
Expanded in 1910, the act marked the beginning of legislative control of the state’s petroleum industry, according to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Penalties were imposed for “failure to cap out-of-control wells, doing injury to pipe lines, or wastefully burning natural gas from any well into the air.” The conservation law sought to prevent the excessive practices that had depleted fields during the Indiana gas boom.
May 14, 1953 – Golden Driller debuts at Petroleum Exposition
A golden, 76-foot statue of a roughneck first appeared at the 30th annual International Petroleum Exposition in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sponsored by the Mid-Continent Supply Company of Fort Worth, the giant attracted crowds and returned refurbished for the 1959 exposition. Mid-Continent Supply then donated it to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, where it was completely rebuilt in 1966. The “golden driller” would be refurbished several more times by 1980.
The original Golden Driller of 1953, left, proved so popular that a more permanent version (supported with steel rods) returned for the 1966 Petroleum Expo. Photos courtesy Tulsa Historical Society.
Today a Tulsa tourist attraction, the mustard-shaded driller, weighing 43,500 pounds, is one of the largest freestanding statues in the world, according to city officials. Promotional t-shirts, ties, and scarfs — and in 2020 a Covid-19 mask — have occasionally adorned the statue. Learn more in Golden Driller of Tulsa.
May 14, 2004 – Museum Opens in Oil City, Louisiana
Louisiana’s first publicly funded museum dedicated to the petroleum industry opened in Oil City, about 20 miles north of Shreveport. The Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum, originally called the Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Museum, opened at a former depot of the Kansas City Southern Railroad.
Louisiana’s Caddo Parish petroleum museum includes outdoor exhibits of modern oil production technology.
The museum has since preserved the Caddo Parish oilfield discoveries in 1905, which brought economic prosperity to North Louisiana. Museum exhibits reveal the technologies behind the earliest Louisiana oil wells — and a 1911 well drilled by Gulf Refining Company that is considered one of the earliest “offshore” oil wells. Completed on Caddo Lake, the well produced 450 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 2,185 feet. Learn more in Louisiana Oil City Museum.
May 15, 1911 – Supreme Court mandates Breakup of Standard Oil
After reviewing 12,000 pages of court documents, the Supreme Court issued its majority opinion mandating dissolution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey into 34 separate companies. The Justice Department had filed an antitrust lawsuit against Standard Oil in 1909. The Supreme Court’s ruling upheld a circuit court decision that Standard Oil’s practices violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The company was given six months to spin off its subsidiaries.
May 15, 1940 — Nylon Stockings Go on Sale
One year after being unveiled at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, nylon stockings went on sale for the first time at Gimbels Department Store in Manhattan. Promoted as “strong as steel, as fine as spiderweb,” first-year sales reached about 64 million pairs at $1.35 each for the DuPont Company’s petroleum product, according to ABC News.
“Women’s love affair with nylon stockings has had a long run,” the network proclaimed in 2010. Nylon had been used for toothbrush bristles for “Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft” as early as February 1938 (see Nylon, a Petroleum Polymer).
May 16, 1817 – U.S. Geology Described and Mapped
Scottish-American geologist William Maclure presented his detailed study of U.S. geology to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. He would be named president of the Academy, a post he would hold for 22 years, and become known as the “father of American Geology.”
An 1818 map by William Maclure provided a more detailed version of a geological map he published in 1809. Image courtesy the Historic Maps Collection, Princeton Library.
The American Philosophical Society published Maclure’s detailed study in 1818 as “Observations on the Geology of the United States of North America.”
May 16, 1934 – National Stripper Well Association established
The National Stripper Well Association (NSWA) organized in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to represent operators of stripper wells — marginal wells that produce less than 15 barrels of oil a day or less than 90 thousand cubic feet of natural gas a day. In 2024, about 400,000 oil stripper wells accounted for more than 7.4 percent of U.S. oil production, according to NSWA. About 360,000 natural gas stripper wells accounted for 8.2 percent of gas production.
May 16, 1961 – Museum opens over Natural Gas Field
In southwestern Kansas, the Stevens County Gas & Historical Museum in Hugoton opened above a natural gas-producing formation extending 8,500 square miles into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. The town’s museum has since educated visitors about one of the largest natural gas fields in North America — the Hugoton field. A well drilled in 1945 still produces natural gas outside the small museum.
A Stevens County natural gas museum in Hugoton, Kansas, preserves the history of a giant natural gas field.
Although the Hugoton field’s once-dominant natural gas production gave way to gas shale and coalbed methane regions, including production from Fayetteville, Arkansas (2004), and Haynesville, Louisiana (2008), the Hugoton-Panhandle gas continues to be a leading source of helium. Learn more in Hugoton Natural Gas Museum.
May 17, 1882 – Mystery Well Production revealed
The true oil production of a closely guarded discovery well in the Warren County, Pennsylvania, township of Cherry Grove was revealed to be 1,000 barrels of oil a day. News about Jamestown Oil Company’s “Mystery Well” sent shock waves through petroleum market centers.
“The excitement in the oil exchanges was indescribable,” noted Paul H. Giddens in his 1938 classic, The Birth of the Oil Industry. “Over 4,500,000 barrels of oil were sold in one day on the exchanges in Titusville, Oil City and Bradford.”
Cherry Grove, Pennsylvania, oil patch historians and volunteers built a derrick to celebrate their historic 1882 “Mystery Well.”
Although the Cherry Grove discovery demoralized the market and drove oil prices down to less than 50 cents per barrel, hundreds of derricks appeared around Cherry Grove, and thousands of people moved there while the boom lasted. It was short-lived, according to volunteers of the Cherry Grove Old Home and Community Day Committee, which has kept the “Oil Excitement” alive. Learn more in Cherry Grove Mystery Well.
May 17, 1901 – Gulf Oil begins at Spindletop Hill
James M. Guffey organized Guffey Petroleum Company to buy the famous “Lucas Gusher” well drilled the previous January at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas. Guffey purchased about half of the oilfield discovery well’s production (the Mellon family of Pittsburgh owned the remainder). Guffey created the Gulf Refining Company to refine and market the oil produced by Guffey Petroleum. In 1907, Andrew Mellon acquired J.M. Guffey Petroleum and Gulf Refining companies of Texas and reorganized them as Gulf Oil.
May 17, 1973 – Last Nuclear fracturing of Natural Gas Well
Atomic Energy Commission scientists conducted the last experiment of the Plowshare Program with a nearly simultaneous detonation of three 33-kiloton devices in a Colorado natural gas well. Project Rio Blanco was the third and final underground detonation to test nuclear fracturing of gas wells.
The first had been Project Gasbuggy in 1967 when a 29-kiloton nuclear device fractured a New Mexico well. A second experiment, Project Rulison, detonated a 40-kiloton device in a Colorado well in 1969. All three projects improved production, but the natural gas proved too radioactive.
_______________________
Recommended Reading: Groundbreakers: The Story of Oilfield Technology and the People Who Made it Happen (2015); Conoco: 125 Years of Energy
(2000); Phillips, The First 66 Years
(1983); Louisiana’s Oil Heritage, Images of America
(2012); Oil in Oklahoma
(1976); Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
(2004); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Cherry Run Valley: Plumer, Pithole, and Oil City, Pennsylvania
(2000); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); The Birth of the Oil Industry (1938); Ohio Oil and Gas, Images of America
(2008); History Of Oil Well Drilling
(2007); Drilling Technology in Nontechnical Language
(2012). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
_______________________
The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Support this energy education website, our monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
