by Bruce Wells | Jun 22, 2026 | This Week in Petroleum History
June 23, 1921 – Signal Hill brings California Oil Boom –
Another Southern California drilling boom began when a geyser of “black gold” erupted 114 feet high at Signal Hill. The Alamitos No. 1 well revealed a giant oilfield and produced about 600 barrels of oil a day.
The Signal Hill oil discovery helped make California the source of one-quarter of the world’s oil output. Porcupine Hill and the Long Beach field produced 260,000 barrels of oil a day by 1923. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.
Known as “Porcupine Hill” by 1923, oil production from the Signal Hill field 20 miles south of Los Angeles reached almost 260,000 barrels a day. Combined with the 1892 Los Angeles Oilfield discovery and the 1920 Huntington Beach oilfield, California produced one-fourth of the world’s oil. A monument dedicated in 1952 at Discovery Well Park in Signal Hill’s has served “as a tribute to the petroleum pioneers for their success here.”
Learn more in Signal Hill Oil Boom.
June 23, 1947 – Supreme Court limits State Rights to Continental Shelf
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state of California could not claim rights to the Continental Shelf beyond three nautical miles. Litigation had resulted from President Harry Truman’s September 1945 Continental Shelf Proclamation, which placed control with the federal government. The Supreme Court ruling on the Truman Proclamation affirmed federal jurisdiction “with respect to the natural resources of the subsoil and seabed of the continental shelf.” Similar rulings effecting Louisiana and Texas would be made in 1950.
June 24, 1937 – Traces of Oil found in Minnesota
A remote wildcat well drilled in far western Minnesota began producing three barrels of oil a day from a depth of 864 feet. The unlikely discovery in Traverse County prompted more leasing, but no commercial quantities of oil were found.
Traverse County, Minnesota, where oil production peaked in 1937.
The lack of an oilfield reaffirmed geologists’ conclusions since 1889 that conditions for significant petroleum deposits did not exist in Minnesota, despite some water wells in southern Minnesota containing small amounts of natural gas. “Not much oil and gas is obtained from Precambrian rocks, with which Minnesota is very amply blessed,” noted the 1984 book Minnesota’s Geology.
June 25, 1889 – First Oil Tanker catches Fire in California
The first oil tanker built for that purpose, a schooner named W.L. Hardison, burned at its wharf in Ventura, California. The Hardison & Stewart Oil Company (later Union Oil) commissioned the experimental vessel, which offered an alternative to paying for railroad oil tank cars charging one dollar per oil barrel to reach markets in San Francisco.
With oil-fired steam boilers and supplemental sails, the schooner could ship up to 6,500 barrels of oil below deck in specially constructed steel tanks. After the fire, the tanks were recovered and used at the company’s Santa Paula refinery. It took 11 years before the company launched a replacement tanker, the Santa Paula.
Rare photographs of the doomed oil tanker W.L. Hardison and Ventura pier courtesy the Museum of Ventura County.
The Ventura Wharf Company by April 1898 had exported 518,204 barrels of bulk oil during the previous year, according to the Los Angeles Times. The pier remained a working wharf until 1936, when it became the longest recreational wooden pier in California.
Designated a Ventura Historic Landmark in 1976 and now 1,600 feet long, California’s oldest pier was refurbished for $2.2 million in 2000, according to the Museum of Ventura County, which also operates archaeological and agricultural museums. In nearby Santa Paula, the 1890 headquarters building of Union Oil Company was donated to the city in 2023 by Chevron with a $2 million grant to maintain the building, home to the now closed California Oil Museum.
June 25, 1901 – Red Fork Discovery leads to Tulsa Boom
Six years before statehood, Oklahoma witnessed a second oil discovery (some say the third — see Another First Oklahoma Oil Well) when two drillers from the Pennsylvania oil regions discovered an oilfield at Red Fork in the Creek Indian Nation.
John Wick and Jesse Heydrick drilled the Sue A. Bland No. 1 well near the Creek village across the Arkansas River from Tulsa. Sue Bland, a Creek citizen, was the wife of homesteader Dr. John C. W. Bland. Their Red Fork well produced just 10 barrels of oil a day from a depth of 550 feet, but created a drilling boom attracting petroleum companies to nearby Tulsa.
Learn more in Red Fork Gusher.
June 25, 1999 – Texas Post Office named Historic Place
The former U.S. Post Office building in Graham, Texas, with its Great Depression-era oilfield mural by Alexandre Hogue, joined the National Register of Historic Places. Hogue’s 1939 “Oil Fields of Graham” has been joined by other art exhibits in its historic Art Deco building on Third Street.
“Oil Fields of Graham” by Alexandre Hogue, a 1939 mural in the Old Post Office Museum & Art Center of Graham, Texas. The white-haired gentleman was the mayor of Graham.
Hogue’s artwork included many Southwestern scenes as part of the New Deal Federal Arts Program. His murals on the walls of public buildings often portrayed scenes of the Texas petroleum industry. In Graham’s historic building on Third Street, “Oil Fields of Graham,” 12 feet wide and 7 feet high, is among exhibits at the Old Post Office Museum & Art Center, which opened in 2002.
Learn more in Oil Art of Graham, Texas.
June 26, 1885 – Natural Gas Utility established in Pennsylvania
Peoples Natural Gas Company incorporated — the first Pennsylvania natural gas company chartered by the state to regulate production, transmission, and distribution of natural gas. A similar utility incorporation had taken place a year earlier in New York City when six competing companies combined to form Consolidated Edison.
By 1891, the Pittsburgh-based limited liability company had consolidated the pipelines and facilities of Pittsburgh Natural Gas, Lawrence Natural Gas, Conemaugh Gas, and Columbia Natural Gas companies. More than a dozen more companies would be acquired between 1903 and 1961. The utility acquired Equitable Gas in 2017, expanding natural gas services in West Virginia and Kentucky.
June 28, 1887 – Kansans celebrate First Natural Gas Jubilee
After erecting flambeau arches at the four corners of the town square, Paola, Kansas, hosted what local leaders described as “the first natural gas celebration ever held in the West.” Excursion trains from Kansas City brought about 2,000 people, “to witness the wonders of natural gas,” according to the Miami County Historical Museum, which preserves the region’s petroleum history.
Paola’s giant natural gas field attracted more petroleum exploration to Miami County, including this circa 1920 oil well. Photo courtesy Kansas Historical Society.
Five years before the 1892 first Kansas oil well, Paola experienced a “grand illumination” of natural gas street lights, where “gas was attached to a yard sprinkler by a rubber hose, and when it was ignited there appeared nests of small blazes, which were beautiful and attractive.”
June 28, 1967 – Hall of Petroleum opens in Smithsonian Museum
The Hall of Petroleum opened at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of History and Technology in Washington, D.C. Exhibits featured early offshore technologies, historic cable-tool rigs, and modern rotary drilling methods. Petroleum-production exhibits in the museum’s west wings offered examples of counterbalanced pumping units.
A giant mural by Delbert Jackson of Tulsa, Oklahoma, greeted visitors to what in 1980 became the National Museum of American History. Jackson spent two years creating a 13-foot by 56-foot painting featuring detailed scenes of oil and natural gas exploration, production, refining, and transportation.
A “Panorama of Petroleum” once greeted visitors to the Smithsonian’s American History Museum in Washington, D.C. The 13-foot by 56-foot mural is on exhibit in the Tulsa International Airport.
Jackson’s “Panorama of Petroleum” featured industry pioneers and served as a visual map to the hall’s oilfield technology exhibits. “If the hall can increase the public’s knowledge of and respect for the technical skill and know-how of those who make this energy available, it will have served its purpose,” noted the exhibit’s 1967 catalog. The mural ended up in storage for three decades, until finding a home at Tulsa International Airport.
Learn more in Smithsonian’s “Hall of Petroleum.
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Recommended Reading: Signal Hill, California, Images of America
(2006); Minnesota’s Geology (1982) Tulsa Oil Capital of the World, Images of America
(2004); Oil in West Texas and New Mexico
(1982); Minnesota’s Geology (1982); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry 
(2016); Early California Oil: A Photographic History, 1865-1940
(1985); Tulsa Oil Capital of the World, Images of America (2004); Oil in West Texas and New Mexico (1982); Official Guide to the Smithsonian
(2016). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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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 | Jun 15, 2026 | This Week in Petroleum History
June 15, 1954 – Launch of First Mobile Offshore Rig –
The offshore barge oil drilling platform Mr. Charlie left its Louisiana shipyard and went to work for Shell Oil Company in a new oilfield in East Bay, near the mouth of the Mississippi River. The vessel’s design, which would revolutionize the offshore industry, originated with Alden “Doc” Laborde, a marine superintendent for the Kerr-McGee Company in Morgan City, Louisiana.
Beginning in 1954 and capable of drilling wells in water up to 40 feet in depth, Mr. Charlie became the first mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU). Photos courtesy Murphy Oil Corp.
Despite Kerr-McGee’s experience with many post-World War II offshore technologies, including drilling the first oil well out of sight of land in 1947, the company decided against Laborde’s idea for a transportable, submersible drilling barge. The inventor, a Navy veteran, eventually found support from Charles Murphy Jr., founder of Murphy Oil Company.
With its transportable, column-stabilized design, Mr. Charlie was a self-sufficient drilling rig on a barge that in 1954 became an offshore technology milestone.
LaBorde established Ocean Drilling & Exploration and contracted with J. Ray McDermott Company to convert a 220-foot barge into a drilling platform — the world’s first mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU). Today moored in Morgan City as an international petroleum museum, in December 2024 the Secretary of the Interior added Mr. Charlie to the National Register of Historic Places. Learn more in Mr. Charlie, First Mobile Offshore Drilling Rig.
June 16, 1903 – Ford Motor Company Incorporated
After successfully testing his gasoline-powered Quadricycle in 1896, Henry Ford and a group of investors (including machinist John Dodge) filed articles of association for the Ford Motor Company. Ford’s contributions included machinery, drawings, and several patents. The first sale was a Ford Model A to a Chicago physician in July as the Detroit-based automaker began ordering carriages, wheels, and tires for a low-cost car that would become the Model T by 1908, according to the Henry Ford Heritage Association (HFHA).
June 18, 1889 – Standard Oil of New Jersey adds Indiana
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey incorporated a subsidiary, Standard Oil Company of Indiana, and began processing oil at its new refinery in Whiting, Indiana, southeast of Chicago. In 1910, the refinery added pipelines connecting it to Kansas and Oklahoma oilfields. When the Supreme Court mandated the breakup of John D. Rockefeller’s empire in 1911, Standard Oil of Indiana emerged as an independent company. Amoco-branded service stations arrived in the 1950s. Amoco merged with British Petroleum (BP) in 1998, the largest foreign takeover of a U.S. company at the time.
June 18, 1946 – Truman establishes National Petroleum Council
At the request of President Harry S. Truman, the Department of the Interior established the National Petroleum Council to make policy recommendations relating to oil and natural gas. Transferred to the new Department of Energy in 1977, the council became a privately funded advisory committee with 200 members appointed by the Secretary of Energy. “The NPC does not concern itself with trade practices, nor does it engage in any of the usual trade association activities,” notes the NPC, which held its 134th meeting on April 23, 2024, in Washington, D.C.
June 18, 1948 – Service Company celebrates 100,000th Perforation
Fifteen years after its first well-perforation job, the Lane-Wells Company returned to the well at Montebello, California, to perform its 100,000th perforation. The return to Union Oil Company’s La Merced No. 17 well included a ceremony hosted by Walter Wells, chairman and company co-founder.
Designed by architect William E. Mayer and completed in 1937, Lane-Wells’ Los Angeles headquarters was exceptional, “even in a city full of Streamline Moderne buildings,” notes Decopix.com.
In 1930, Wells and oilfield tool salesman Bill Lane developed a practical multiple-shot perforator that could shoot steel bullets through casing. After many tests, success came at the La Merced No. 17 well. By late 1935, Lane-Wells established a small fleet of trucks for well-perforation services. The company merged with Dresser Industries in 1956 and later became part of Baker-Atlas.
Learn more in Lane-Wells 100,000th Perforation.
June 20, 1977 – Oil begins Flowing in Trans-Alaska Pipeline
The Trans-Alaska Pipeline began carrying oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the Port of Valdez at Prince William Sound. The oil arrived 38 days later, culminating in the world’s largest privately funded construction project. The Prudhoe Bay field had been discovered in 1968 by Atlantic Richfield and Exxon about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Construction of the controversial pipeline began in 1974. Photo courtesy Alaska Pipeline Authority.
After years of controversy, construction of the 48-inch-wide pipeline began in April 1974. Above-ground sections of the pipeline (420 miles) were built in a zigzag configuration to allow for expansion or contraction and include heat pipes. Oil throughput of the $8 billion pipeline peaked in 1988 at just over 2 million barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), adding that since 2003, deliveries have been less than 1 million barrels per day and averaged a record low of 464,748 barrels per day in 2024.
“That creates challenges for the pipeline’s operators, including the formation of ice and the buildup of wax that is in the oil on the inside pipeline wall,” EIA notes. “The amount of time it takes for oil to travel the 800 miles through the pipeline from the North Slope to the Valdez port increased from 4.5 days in 1988 to about 19 days in recent years.”
Learn more in Trans-Alaska Pipeline History.
June 21, 1893 – Submersible Pump Inventor born
Armais Arutunoff, inventor of the electric submersible pump for oil wells, was born to Armenian parents in Tiflis, Russia. He invented the world’s first electrical centrifugal submersible pump in 1916. At first, Arutunoff could not find financial support for his oilfield production technology after emigrating to the United States in 1923.
Russian engineer Armais Arutunoff, inventor of the first electric submersible pumps.
Thanks to help from Frank Phillips, president of Phillips Petroleum, Arutunoff moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in 1928 and established a manufacturing company. The Tulsa World described the Arutunoff pump as “an electric motor with the proportions of a slim fencepost which stands on its head at the bottom of a well and kicks oil to the surface with its feet.”
REDA Pump Company manufactured pump and motor devices — and employed hundreds during the Great Depression. The name stands for Russian Electrical Dynamo of Arutunoff, the cable address of his first company in Germany and since 1998 a subsidiary of SLB (Schlumberger).
Learn more in Inventing the Electric Submersible Pump.
June 21, 1932 – Oklahoma Governor battles “Hot Oil”
Thirty National Guardsmen marched into the Oklahoma City oilfield when Governor William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray took control of oil production after creating a proration board despite objections from independent producers.
The Oklahoma History Center in Oklahoma City includes petroleum equipment on display in the Devon Energy Park, which opened in 2005. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Murray declared martial law again in March 1933 to enforce his regulations preventing the sale or transport of oil produced in excess of the quota, referred to as “hot oil.”
The state legislature passed a law in April giving the Oklahoma Corporation Commission authority to enforce its rules — taking away Murray’s power to regulate the petroleum industry. The commission had been established in 1907 to regulate railroad, telephone, and telegraph companies.
June 21, 1937 – “Great Karg Well” Marker dedicated in Ohio
Similar to the Indiana natural gas boom, discoveries in Ohio brought petroleum prosperity, as evidenced by a 1937 historic marker at one well — “erected in humble pride by the people of Findlay, Ohio,” in celebration of the “Great Karg Well” that revealed a giant natural gas field in January 1886.
Marker dedicated in 1937 at the wellhead of the famous 1886 natural gas discovery at Findlay, Ohio. Photo by Michael Baker, courtesy Historical Marker Database.
“At that time gas was simply a by-product of oil drilling, and with no way to store it they ended up piping it away for free to heat homes and drive industrial machinery,” notes the historic marker inscription at the wellhead. Many companies promoted Ohio’s natural gas supplies, which “attracted glass companies from around the world” — until the gas ran out.
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Recommended Reading: Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas
(2011); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019); From Here to Obscurity: An Illustrated History of the Model T Ford, 1909 – 1927
(1971); Standard Oil Company: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Famous Monopoly
(2016); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power
(2008); Wireline: A History of the Well Logging and Perforating Business in the Oil Fields
(1990)
; The Great Alaska Pipeline
(1988); Artificial Lift-down Hole Pumping Systems
(1984); Oil in Oklahoma
(1976); Ohio Oil and Gas, Images of America
(2008). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.
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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 | 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, according to Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Marathon Petroleum acquired the Kenai LNG plant one year later.
Although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2020 approved modifying the facility to import LNG, Houston-based Harvest Midstream and Marathon in 2025 agreed to reconvert the facility to an LNG export terminal by December 2028. The ARCO brand remains the property of Marathon Petroleum.
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.
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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 | Jun 1, 2026 | This Week in Petroleum History
June 1, 1860 – First Book about Oil published –
Less than 10 months after Edwin L. Drake completed the first commercial U.S. oil well at Titusville, Pennsylvania, Thomas A. Gale published an 80-page pamphlet many regard as the first book about America’s petroleum resources. The Wonder of the Nineteenth Century: Rock Oil in Pennsylvania and Elsewhere described the advantages of the new fuel source for kerosene lamps. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | May 25, 2026 | This Week in Petroleum History
May 26, 1891 – Carbon Black Patent leads to Crayola –
Edwin Binney of New York City received a patent for his “Apparatus for the Manufacture of Carbon Black.” The process allowed the “manufacture lamp-black from oil in an improved and economical manner.” It created a fine, intensely black soot-like substance — a pigment blacker than any other available at the time. Its success led to a partnership with C. Harold Smith and another petroleum product, Crayola crayons. (more…)
