Giant rigs drilled to record depths in Oklahoma in the 1970s.
The Anadarko Basin, extending more than 50,000 square miles across west-central Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, includes some of the most prolific natural gas reserves in the United States — and a 1974 drilling record.
Beginning in the late 1950s, when technological advances allowed it, Anadarko Basin wells in Oklahoma began to be drilled more than two miles deep in search of highly pressurized natural gas zones.
By the 1960s, a few companies began risking millions of dollars and pushing rotary rig drilling technology to reach beyond the 13,000-foot level in what geologists called “the deep gas play.”
After a long career, Parker Drilling Rig No. 114, was placed on display in 1991 to welcome Route 66 travelers to Elk City, Oklahoma. The 180-foot-high derrick, among the tallest in the world, has been refurbished several times. 2003 photo by Bruce Wells.
Although many experts disagreed, Robert Hefner III believed immense natural gas reserves resided even deeper, three miles or more. Hefner and other independent producers formed GHK (Glover-Hefner-Kennedy) Company, Oklahoma City, to drill expensive, ultradeep wells in the Anadarko Basin.
The first GHK deep well attempt began in 1967, and it took two years to reach what at the time was a record depth, 24,473 feet. The well found large natural gas reserves, according to historian Robert Dorman, “but because of price controls, the sale of the gas could not cover the high cost of drilling so deeply — $6.5 million, as opposed to a few hundred thousand dollars for a conventional well.”
The Federal Power Commission, which had regulated natural gas prices since 1954, struggled to create a system of wellhead price regulation that worked. Undeterred and “in hopes that the economic equation would change,” Hefner drilled another ultra-deep well.
In 1972, the Baden No. 1 well near Elk City, Oklahoma, set a new world-record depth of 30,050 feet. The steel pipe alone that went into the ultradeep well weighed more than 1.5 million pounds. Drilling at such great depths required new technologies — and very big rigs.
Drilling Six Miles Deep
“Hefner and his associates learned a good deal from the Baden well, which they proceeded to apply to their next, most renowned project: Bertha Rogers No. 1,” Dorman explained in his 2006 book, It Happened in Oklahoma.
Drilled by the largest land rig in the world (Tulsa-based Loffland Brothers Rig 32), the Bertha Rogers No. 1 well, “pushed the technology envelope even further.”
Using specially designed extra-wide pipe, GHK and partner Lone Star Producing Company began drilling in November 1972, averaging about 60 feet per day.
Fourteen-inch-wide casing weighing in excess of 106 pounds per foot was cemented in the well at 14,198 feet. The well’s 1.5 million pounds of casing was the heaviest ever handled by any drilling rig in U.S. petroleum industry history.
A 1974 souvenir of the Bertha Rogers No. 1 well, which sought natural gas almost six miles deep in Oklahoma’s Anadarko Basin.
On April 13, 1974, Bertha Rogers No. 1 reached a total depth of 31,441 feet — where it encountered liquid sulfur. Lone Star Producing Company later estimated bottom hole pressure and temperature of 24,850 pounds per square inch and 475 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. It took about eight hours for bottom hole cuttings to reach the surface six miles above.
“It was the deepest hole in the world until it was surpassed by a well in the Soviet Union several years later,” Dorman reported. “Even so, Bertha Rogers reigned as the deepest well in the United States for three decades, finally exceeded in 2004.”
Drilling strained the Bertha Rogers rig’s equipment to the limit — and the well had to be “fished” 16 months after drilling began (see Fishing in Petroleum Wells). Because of dangerous downhole conditions, including corrosive pockets of hydrogen sulfide, the historic well had to be completed at a shallower depth.
Elk City’s most noteworthy well eventually produced natural gas from about 13,000 feet (production ended in July 1997). But like its costly predecessors, “the Bertha Rogers as a business venture was a losing proposition,” Dorman reported.
“It cost $7 million but yielded relatively little gas,” he added. “Some observers classified it as an ultradeep dry hole.”
Meanwhile, Robert Hefner’s belief in the deep Anadarko Basin would prove true as drilling technologies improved. Drilling time in the 1990s fell as much as two-thirds, helping contain costs.
By 2002, Oklahoma’s deep wells would produce more than six trillion cubic feet of natural gas — with trillions more to be found. Two years later, natural gas passed oil as the most valuable energy commodity in Oklahoma.
Rig No. 114 and Atomic Wells
In western Oklahoma, another towering rig has a noteworthy oil patch history. With one of the tallest masts in the world, the 180-foot Parker Drilling Company Rig No. 114 has attracted Elk City tourists since 1991.
Parker Rig No. 114 was one of three drilling rigs designed for drilling deep wells to test atomic bombs.
Parker Drilling No. 114’s story began in 1969, when the Tulsa-based company signed a contract with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to drill a series of holes up to 120 inches in diameter and 6,500 feet in depth in Alaska and Nevada for experimental tests. The advanced drilling rig and two sister rigs were built to drill atomic wells.
Founded in 1934 by Gifford C. Parker, by the 1960s Parker Drilling had set numerous world records for deep and extended-reach drilling. The company developed and tested new deep-drilling technologies that would become industry standards. With the Cold War at its height, the government sought Parker Drilling’s expertise for drilling wide-bore wells needed to test nuclear bombs.
Parker Drilling Rig No. 114 drilled wells for nuclear bomb tests. It later drilled conventional wells to record-breaking depths. Erected in 1991 beside the historic Casa Grande Hotel (1925-1949), the rig today welcomes visitors to Elk City, Oklahoma.
A separate government program used down-hole nuclear devices in New Mexico and Colorado as part of a wider set of experiments. That nuclear well fracturing program, which included Project Gasbuggy for increasing petroleum production from shale, was established by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1957.
The Project Plowshare grogram was part of a wider effort to explore peaceful, constructive uses of nuclear explosive devices. Learn more in Project Gasbuggy tests Nuclear “Fracking.”
Tourist Attraction
Recognizing a potential city landmark and tourist attraction, Elk City decided to preserve the Parking Drilling rig.
Since 1991, the 180-foot drilling rig — still one of the tallest in the world — has welcomed visitors traveling to Elk City via Route 66 (or I-40). It stands next to the Casa Grande Hotel building, constructed in 1928 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
Because the lot next to the hotel was small, “the rig could not be laid out and assembled on the ground, then raised into position, as rigs are built in the oilfields,” noted the Oklahoman newspaper in 1991. “Instead, pieces were raised by crane and pinned by Parker employees who climbed the rig as it grew taller.”
Local independent oil and gas producer John West once used the historic hotel’s lobby to exhibit oilfield artifacts in the Anadarko Basin Museum of Natural History, but a lack of funding led to the museum being closed by 2005.
Oilfield art and models of drill bits were among the exhibits in the former Anadarko Museum of Natural History once inside the Casa Grande Hotel building. Photo by Bruce Wells.
Superman’s “World’s Deepest Oil Well”
The risk of drilling too deep highlighted the theatrical release of the first full-length Superman movie on November 23, 1951. “Superman and the Mole Men,” which earned good reviews, featured reporters Clark Kent (George Reeves) and Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates) on assignment in the town of Silsby, “Home of the World’s Deepest Oil Well.”
The National Oil Company had been making news at its “Havenhurst Experimental Number One” drilling site — especially after the drill bit had “broken into clear air” at a depth of 32,742 feet. “Good heavens, that’s practically to the center of the earth!” Lois exclaimed (the deepest U.S. well in 1951 was 20,521 feet deep).
Mole men emerged from a National Oil Company experimental well drilled more than six miles deep in the 1951 feature film “Superman and the Mole Men.”
After finding organisms on the drilling equipment, oil company executives concluded there must be life, perhaps even a civilization, far below the surface. Alarmed, the company attempted to cap the well — but small humanoid creatures emerged from the borehole.
The townspeople feared a mole-men invasion. It would take the steady nerves and compassion of Superman to resolve the crisis. He calmed the mob, saved the mole men, and returned them to the safety of the well. In a spectacular conclusion, the derrick collapsed in flames, forever closing the connection between the two worlds.
In the real world, the “Kola Superdeep Borehole,” an experimental well drilled in the Soviet Union in 1989, reached a vertical depth of 40,230 feet, the current world record.
The 1974 Bertha Rogers No. 1 well drilled in Washita County, Oklahoma — a 31,441 foot dry hole of the Anadarko Basin — remains the deepest well ever drilled in the United States.
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Recommended Reading: It Happened in Oklahoma (2019); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century
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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2024 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.
Citation Information – Article Title: “Anadarko Basin in Depth.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/technology/anadarko-basin-depth. Last Updated: April 3, 2024. Original Published Date: July 24, 2014.