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.

Seneca Oil drilled the first U.S. well. Image courtesy New Haven Museum.

Bissell, who had investigated oil seeps south of Titusville, originated the idea of producing and refining oil to make kerosene lamp fuel. The New Haven investors nevertheless excluded him from the oil exploration company. Learn more in George Bissell’s Oil Seeps.

March 24, 1989 – Exxon Valdez hits Bligh Reef

After almost 12 years of routine passages by oil tankers through Prince William Sound, Alaska, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, resulting in an oil spill affecting 1,300 miles of shoreline. Vessels carrying North Slope oil had safely passed through the sound more than 8,700 times.

Eight of Exxon Valdez’s 11 tanks were punctured, and an estimated 260,000 barrels of oil spilled, affecting hundreds of miles of coastline. Investigators later found that an error in navigation by the third mate, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload, had caused the accident.

Shown being towed away from Bligh Reef, the Exxon Valdez had been outside shipping lanes when it ran aground in March 1989. Photo courtesy Erik Hill, Anchorage Daily News.

When the 987-foot tanker hit the reef that night, “the system designed to carry two million barrels of North Slope oil to West Coast and Gulf Coast markets daily had worked perhaps too well,” noted the Alaska Oil Spill Commission. “At least partly because of the success of the Valdez tanker trade, a general complacency had come to permeate the operation and oversight of the entire system.” Learn more in Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.

March 26, 1930 – “Wild Mary Sudik” makes Headlines

What would become one of Oklahoma’s most famous wells struck a high-pressure formation about 6,500 feet beneath Oklahoma City and oil erupted skyward. The Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company’s Mary Sudik No. 1 flowed for 11 days before being brought under control. It produced about 20,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas daily, becoming a worldwide sensation.

Pressure from the Oklahoma City oilfield Wilcox formation proved difficult to control. Movie newsreels soon featured the 1930 “Wild Mary” gusher nationwide. Photo courtesy Oklahoma History Center.

Efforts to control the well in Oklahoma City’s prolific oilfield (discovered in 1928) were featured on movie newsreels and national radio broadcasts. It was later learned that after drilling more than a mile deep, the exhausted crew did not realize the Wilcox Sand oil formation was permeated with highly pressurized natural gas.

Map of the Wilcox Sands formation of the Oklahoma City oilfield in the 1940s.

Although the first ram-type blowout preventer (BOP) had been patented in 1926, deep oil and natural gas fields would take time to tame. Learn more in “Wild Mary Sudik.” 

March 27, 1855 – Canadian Chemist trademarks Kerosene

Canadian physician and chemist Abraham Gesner (1797-1864) patented a process to distill coal into kerosene. “I have invented and discovered a new and useful manufacture or composition of matter, being a new liquid hydrocarbon, which I denominate Kerosene,” he proclaimed. Because his new illuminating fluid was extracted from coal, consumers called it “coal oil” as often as kerosene.

On March 17, 2000, Canada issued one million commemorative stamps featuring kerosene inventor Abraham Gesner.

Gesner, considered the father of the Canadian petroleum industry, in 1842 established Canada’s first natural history museum, the New Brunswick Museum, which today houses one of Canada’s oldest geological collections. America’s petroleum industry began when it was learned oil could be distilled into a lamp fuel. Learn more in Camphene to Kerosene Lamps.

March 27, 1975 – First Pipe laid for Trans-Alaskan Pipeline

With the laying of the first section of pipe in Alaska, construction began on the largest private construction project in American history at the time. Recognized as a landmark of engineering, the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline system, including pumping stations and the Valdez Marine Terminal, would cost $8 billion by the time it was completed in 1977.

Learn more in Trans-Alaska Pipeline History.

March 27, 1999 – Offshore Platform Rocket Launch Test

The Ocean Odyssey, a converted semi-submersible drilling platform, launched a Russian rocket that placed a demonstration satellite into geostationary orbit.

The Zenit-3SL rocket, fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene rocket fuel, was part of Sea Launch, a Boeing-led consortium of companies from the United States, Russia, Ukraine, and Norway. The platform had once been used by Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) for North Sea exploration. 

With an orbital test on March 27, 1999, the Ocean Odyssey, a converted semi-submersible drilling platform, became the world’s first floating equatorial launch pad. Photo courtesy Sea Launch.

“The Sea Launch rocket successfully completed its maiden flight today,” Boeing announced. “The event, which placed a demonstration payload into geostationary transfer orbit, marked the first commercial launch from a floating platform at sea.”

The Sea Launch consortium provided orbital launch services until 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine. Learn more in Offshore Rocket Launcher.

March 28, 1886 – Natural Gas Boom begins in Indiana

Petroleum exploration companies converged on Portland, Indiana, after the Eureka Gas and Oil Company discovered a natural gas field after drilling just 700 feet deep. The well began producing two months after a spectacular natural gas well about 100 miles to the northeast — the “Great Karg Well” of Findlay, Ohio.

According to industrialist Andrew Carnegie, natural gas daily replaced 10,000 tons of coal for making steel.

Portland foundry owner Henry Sees had followed the news from Findlay. He persuaded local investors to drill for Indiana natural gas. In western Pennsylvania, reserves found near Pittsburg had encouraged industrialists there to replace their coal-fired steel and glass foundries with the first large-scale industrial use of natural gas. 

Indiana would become the world’s largest natural gas producer, thanks to its Trenton limestone stretching more than 5,100 square miles across 17 counties. Within three years, more than 200 companies were drilling, distributing, and selling natural gas. Learn more in Indiana Natural Gas Boom.

March 28, 1905 – Oil Discovered in North Louisiana

A small oil discovery in Caddo Parish launched a drilling boom in northern Louisiana and brought economic prosperity to Oil City. The Offenhauser No. 1 well was completed at a depth of 1,556 feet but yielded just five barrels of oil a day and was abandoned. Far more productive wells quickly followed as the Caddo-Pine Island oilfield 20 miles northwest of Shreveport expanded into 80,000 acres.

The Shreveport Chamber of Commerce in 1955 dedicated a 40-foot monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of Caddo Parish’s first oil well. Photo by Bruce Wells.

“This part of Louisiana, of course, was built on the oil and gas industry, and those visitors interested in the technical aspects of oilfield work will find the museum particularly appealing,” notes the Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum (formerly the Caddo-Pine Island Oil and Historical Museum).

More oilfield history can be found in Shreveport, where natural gas was discovered in 1870 — thanks to an ice plant’s water well. To discourage natural gas flaring, Louisiana passed its first conservation law in 1906. Learn more in Louisiana Oil City Museum.

March 29, 1819 – Birthday of Father of the Petroleum Industry 

Edwin Laurentine Drake (1819-1880) was born in Greenville, New York. Forty years later, he used a steam-powered cable-tool rig to drill the first commercial U.S. oil well at Titusville, Pennsylvania. The former railroad conductor overcame many financial and technical obstacles to make “Drake’s Folly” a milestone in U.S. petroleum history.

Edwin L. Drake (1819-1880) invented a method of driving a pipe down to protect the integrity of the first U.S. oil well. Photo courtesy Drake Well Museum.

Drake pioneered using iron casing to isolate his well from nearby Oil Creek. “In order to overcome the hurdles before him, he invented a ‘drive pipe’ or ‘conductor,’ an invention he unfortunately did not patent,” noted historian Urja Davé in 2008. “Mr. Drake conceived the idea of driving a pipe down to the rock through which to start the drill.”

Determined to find oil for refining into kerosene, Drake drilled near natural seeps and found oil on August 27, 1859, at a depth of 69.5 feet. Learn more in Edwin Drake and his Oil Well.

March 29, 1938 – Magnolia Oilfield found in Arkansas

“Kerlyn Wildcat Strike In Southern Arkansas is Sensation of the Oil Country,” proclaimed the local newspaper when a well drilled by Kerlyn Oil Company revealed the 100-million-barrel Magnolia oilfield, adding to the 1920s giant oilfield discoveries at El Dorado and Smackover. 

Drilling on the Barnett No. 1 well had been suspended because of a lack of money, but geologist and company Vice President Dean McGee urged drilling deeper. He was rewarded with a giant oilfield discovery at the depth of 7,650 feet. McGee later would become an industry pioneer in offshore exploration. Visit the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources in Smackover.

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Recommended Reading: Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Perspectives on Modern World History (2011); The Oklahoma Petroleum Industry (1980); Oil Lamps The Kerosene Era In North America (1978); Amazing Pipeline Stories: How Building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Transformed Life in America’s Last Frontier (1997); The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); Texas Oil and Gas, Postcard History (2013); Early Louisiana and Arkansas Oil: A Photographic History, 1901-1946 (1982). 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. Please 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.

The post This Week in Petroleum History: March 23 – 29 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

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.

When Vacuum Oil and Standard Oil of New York (Socony) combined in 1931, the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company adopted the winged horse trademark and marketed Pegasus Spirits and Mobilgas products.

The original Mobil Pegasus logo was registered in 1911 by the South African subsidiary of New York-based Vacuum Oil Co.

A stylized red gargoyle had advertised the company, which produced petroleum-based lubricants for carriages and steam engines. Created by the Vacuum Oil Company of South Africa, the Pegasus trademark proved to be a far more enduring image.

Learn more in Mobil’s High-Flying Trademark.

March 16, 1914 – “Main Street” Oil Well completed in Oklahoma

A well completed in 1914 produced oil from about 1,770 feet beneath Barnsdall, Oklahoma. The popular TV program Ripley’s Believe It or Not would proclaim the well the “World’s Only Main Street Oil Well.”

The “World’s Only Main Street Oil Well” in Barnsdall, Oklahoma, was visited in 2016 by American Oil & Gas Historical Society volunteer Tim Wells. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The town originally was called Bigheart, named for Osage Chief James Bigheart, who on behalf of the Osage people in 1875 signed the first lease for oil and gas exploration, according to Osage County. In 1922, Barnsdall was renamed for Theodore Barnsdall, owner of the Barnsdall Refining Company, which was later acquired by Baker Hughes. The “Barnsdall Main Street Oil Well” was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.

March 17, 1890 – Sun Oil Company founded

Established in 1886 by Joseph Pew and Edward Emerson to provide light and heat to Pittsburgh, the Peoples Natural Gas Company expanded into production, becoming the Sun Oil Company of Ohio. The new company acquired leases near Findlay and began “producing petroleum, rock and carbon oil, transporting and storing same; refining, purifying, manufacturing such oil and its various products.” 

Sun Oil Company marketed Sun Oils from 1894 to 1920 and its original Sunoco brand from 1920 to 1954.

Sun Oil Company went public in 1925, with its stock appearing for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange. Four years later, a partnership with downhole gyroscope inventor Elmer Sperry created Sperry-Sun Drilling Services. 

March 17, 1923 – Discovery leads to Seminole Oil Boom

The Betsy Foster No. 1 well, a 2,800-barrel-a-day oil gusher near Wewoka, county seat of Seminole County, Oklahoma, launched the Seminole area boom. The discovery south of Oklahoma City was followed by others in Cromwell and Bethel (1924) and Earlsboro and Seminole (1926). Thirty-nine separate oilfields would be found in Seminole and Pottawatomie, Okfuskee, Hughes, and Pontotoc counties. Once among the poorest regions in Oklahoma, by 1935 the greater Seminole area became the largest supplier of oil in the world.

Learn more in Seminole Oil Boom.

March 17, 1949 – First Commercial Application of Hydraulic Fracturing

A team from Halliburton and Stanolind companies converged on an oil well about 12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma, and performed the first commercial application of hydraulic fracturing.

A 1947 experimental well had fractured a natural gas field in Hugoton, Kansas, and proven the possibility of increased productivity. The technique was developed and patented by Stanolind (later known as Pan American Oil Company), and an exclusive license was issued to Halliburton Company to perform the process. Four years later, the license was extended to all qualified oilfield service companies.

The world’s first commercial hydraulic fracturing job (above) occurred on March 17, 1949, about 12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma. Photo courtesy Halliburton.

“Since that fateful day in 1949, hydraulic fracturing has done more to increase recoverable reserves than any other technique,” proclaimed a Halliburton company spokesman in 2009, adding that more than two million fracturing treatments have been pumped without polluting an aquifer.

Erle P. Halliburton patented an efficient well-cementing technology in 1921 that improved oil production while protecting the environment. The earliest attempts to increase petroleum production by fracturing geologic formations began in the 1860s.

Learn more in Shooters – A ‘Fracking’ History. 

March 17, 1949 – “Diamond Glenn” opens Shamrock Hotel

Texas independent producer “Diamond Glenn” McCarthy hosted the grand opening of his $21 million, 18-story, 1,100-room Shamrock Hotel on the outskirts of Houston. McCarthy reportedly spent another $1 million for the hotel’s St. Patrick’s Day opening day gala, including arranging for a 16-car Santa Fe Super Chief train to bring friends from Hollywood.

Glenn McCarthy spent $21 million to construct his 1,100-room Shamrock Hotel — and another $1 million for its St. Patrick’s Day opening gala. From 1949 to 1954, “Saturday at the Shamrock” was the only regularly scheduled national radio show to broadcast from Texas.

The Texas wildcatter, who had discovered 11 oilfields by 1945, also introduced his own label of bourbon at Shamrock, the largest hotel in the United States at the time. Dubbed Houston’s biggest party, the Shamrock’s debut “made the city of Houston a star overnight,” one newspaper reported.

Learn more in “Diamond Glenn” McCarthy.

March 18, 1937 – New London School Explosion Tragedy

With just minutes left in the school day, a natural gas explosion destroyed the New London High School in Rusk County, Texas. Odorless gas (a residual natural gas called casing-head gas) had leaked into the basement and ignited with an explosion heard four miles away. East Texas oilfield workers — many with children attending the school — rushed to the scene, as did a cub reporter from Dallas, Walter Cronkite.

Roughnecks from the East Texas oilfield rushed to the devastated school and searched for survivors throughout the night. Photo courtesy New London Museum.

Despite desperate rescue efforts, 298 people were killed that day (dozens more later died of injuries). The explosion’s source was later found to be an electric wood-shop sander that sparked odorless gas that had pooled beneath and in the walls of the school. As a result of this disaster, Texas and other states passed laws requiring that natural gas be mixed with a malodorant to give early warning of a gas leak.

Learn more about the tragedy in New London School Explosion.

March 18, 1938 — First Offshore Well drilled off Louisiana

Oil production from a well drilled by Pure Oil and Superior Oil companies helped launch the modern offshore industry. The Creole oilfield in Louisiana’s offshore Cameron Parish was the first discovered in the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “A look back at both the Creole platform and others that followed after World War II provides a glimpse of history in the making,” noted Offshore magazine in 2014.

More offshore wells followed, including the Kerr-McGee drilling platform, Kermac Rig No. 16, which in 1947 became the first offshore rig out of sight of land. By the end of 1949, offshore exploration had discovered 11 oil and natural gas fields. 

Learn more in Offshore Oil History.

March 20, 1919 – American Petroleum Institute founded

Tracing its roots to World War I when the petroleum industry and Congress worked together to fuel the war effort, the American Petroleum Institute (API) was founded in New York City. Within two years, the organization had improved an 1876 French scale to measure petroleum density relative to water — a standard later adopted and called API gravity. Based in Washington, D.C., since 1969, API has lobbied on behalf of major oil and natural gas companies while maintaining standards and recommended industry practices.

March 20, 1973 – Pennsylvania Boom Town recognized as Historic

The once-famous oil boom town of Pithole, Pennsylvania, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. An 1865 oilfield discovery at Pithole Creek launched a drilling boom for the early U.S. petroleum industry, which had begun six years earlier in nearby Titusville. The Pithole field’s production would lead to the construction of the nation’s first oil pipeline, but the boom ended after about 500 days.

Learn more in Oil Boom at Pithole Creek.

March 21, 1881 – Earth Scientist becomes USGS Director 

President James Garfield appointed John Wesley Powell director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a scientific agency established two years earlier. Powell, who led USGS for the next decade, laid the foundation for modern earth science research.

John Wesley Powell at his desk in Washington, D.C., in 1896. Photo courtesy Smithsonian Institution.

Born in 1834 at Mount Morris, New York, Powell was a Union officer during the Civil War, where he lost an arm at the Battle of Shiloh. After the war, he became a respected geologist and expedition leader, organized early surveys in the West, and helped establish USGS in 1879.

Powell advocated the national mapping standards and geodetic system still in use today. In 1884, Powell testified to Congress, “A government cannot do any scientific work of more value to the people at large than by causing the construction of proper topographic maps of the country.”

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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Oil in Oklahoma (1976); A History of the Greater Seminole Oil Field (1981); The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters (2014).; The Green and the Black: The Complete Story of the Shale Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future of Energy (2016); Corduroy Road: The story of Glenn H. McCarthy (1951); A Texas Tragedy: The New London School Explosion (2012); Offshore Pioneers: Brown & Root and the History of Offshore Oil and Gas (2011); Cherry Run Valley: Plumer, Pithole, and Oil City, Pennsylvania, Images of America (2000); The Powell Expedition: New Discoveries about John Wesley Powell’s 1869 River Journey (2017). 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. Please 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.

The post This Week in Petroleum History: March 16 – 22 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

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.

Construction of the Texas Company’s prototype tanker M/S Carolinian began in 1929. The M/S designation meant it used an internal combustion engine. Photo courtesy Z.P. Liollio.

The tanker’s electric welding eliminated the need for more than 85,000 pounds of rivets, according to the International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH). The success of the prototype led to the standard of welded hulls and internal combustion engines becoming universal in the construction of new vessels.

March 9, 1959 – Barbie is a Petroleum Doll

Mattel revealed the Barbie doll at the American Toy Fair in New York City. More than one billion “dolls in the Barbie family” have been sold since. Eleven inches tall, Barbie owes her existence to petroleum products and the science of polymerization, including several plastic acronyms: ABS, EVA, PBT, and PVC.

Petroleum-based polymers are part of Barbie’s DNA.

Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene (ABS) is known for strength and flexibility. This thermoplastic polymer is used in Barbie’s torso to provide impact and heat resistance. EVA (Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate), a copolymer made up of ethylene and vinyl acetate, protects Barbie’s smooth surface.

The Mattel doll also includes Polybutylene Terephthalate (PBT), a thermoplastic polymer often used as an electrical insulator. A mineral component facilitates PBT injection molding of her “full figure,” according to the company. Barbie’s hair and many of her designer outfits are made from the world’s first synthetic fiber, nylon, invented in 1935 (see Nylon, a Petroleum Polymer).

March 11, 1829 – Kentucky Salt Well Driller discovers Oil

Boring for brine with a simple spring-pole method on a farm near Burksville (today Burkesville), Kentucky,  Martin Beatty found oil at a depth of 171 feet. Disappointed, he searched elsewhere. Beatty drilled brine wells to meet demand from settlers needing salt to preserve food. He bored wells by raising and dropping a chisel suspended from a sapling, an ancient drilling technology.

The 1829 “American Oil Well” of Burksville, Kentucky, drilled to find brine, produced oil later bottled and sold as medicine.

Historian Sheldon Baugh described the scene of Beatty’s 1829 oil discovery: “On that day, well-driller Beatty bragged to bystanders, ‘Today I’ll drill her into salt or else to Hell.’ When the gusher erupted, he apparently thought he’d succeeded in hitting Hell. As the story goes, he ran off into the hills and didn’t come back.”

Beatty’s discovery would be neglected for years until the oil from his well was sent to Pittsburgh, where Samuel Kier bottled and sold it as medicine. Kier would soon build the earliest refineries for turning oil into kerosene for lamps.

Learn more in Kentucky’s Great American Oil Well.

March 11, 1930 – Society of Exploration Geophysicists founded

The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) was founded by 30 men and women in Houston as the Society of Economic Geophysicists to foster “the expert and ethical practice of geophysics in the exploration and development of natural resources.”

The society began publishing its journal Geophysics in 1936 and in 1958 formed a scholarship trust for students of geophysics. In 2021, SEG and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) combined their annual meetings to create IMAGE, the International Meeting for Applied Geoscience & Energy. IMAGE 2025 in Houston included 7,897 attendees from 83 countries. IMAGE 2026 will take place there August 17-20.

March 12, 1912 – Thomas Slick discovers First of Many Oilfields

Once known as “Dry Hole Slick,” Thomas B. Slick discovered a giant oilfield midway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. His No. 1 Wheeler uncovered the Drumright-Cushing field, which produced for the next 35 years and reached 330,000 barrels of oil per day at its peak.

Tom Slick is among those honored at the Conoco Oil Pioneers Plaza at the Sam Noble Museum, University of Oklahoma in Norman.

Following Cushing, Slick began an 18-year streak of discovering oilfields in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. His success during the Greater Seminole Oil Boom of the 1920s made him the leading U.S. independent producer with a net worth of up to $100 million.

By 1930 in the Oklahoma City field, Slick completed 30 wells with the capacity to produce 200,000 barrels of oil a day. When he died suddenly the same year from a stroke at age 46, oil derricks in the Oklahoma City field stood silent for one hour in tribute to Slick.

Learn more in Oklahoma’s King of the Wildcatters.

March 12, 1914 – Last Coal-Powered U.S. Battleship Commissioned

The USS Texas, the last and most powerful American battleship built with coal-fired boilers, was commissioned. Coal-burning boilers, which produced dense smoke and created tons of ash, required the Navy to maintain worldwide coaling stations. Coaling the ship was a major undertaking; battleships carried about 2,000 tons with a crew of “coal passers.”

The USS Texas’ coal-powered boilers were converted to burn fuel oil in 1925. A grand reopening of the floating museum is hoped for in 2027. Photo courtesy Battleship Texas Foundation.

Dramatic improvement in efficiency came when the Navy began adopting fuel oil boilers. By 1916, the Navy had commissioned its first two capital ships with oil-fired boilers, the USS Nevada and the USS Oklahoma. To resupply them, “oilers” were designed to transfer fuel while at anchor, although underway replenishment soon became possible.

Converted to burn fuel oil in 1925, the “Big T” was the first battleship declared to be a U.S. National Historic Landmark (see Petroleum and Sea Power). On March 4, 2025, the Galveston Wharves Board approved making Pier 15 a permanent docking berth for the USS Texas. The Battleship Texas Foundation expects a grand reopening of the floating museum in 2027.

March 12, 1943 – WWII Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest

A top-secret team of 42 American drillers, derrickhands, roustabouts, and motormen boarded the troopship HMS Queen Elizabeth. They were volunteers from two Oklahoma companies, Noble Drilling and Fain-Porter Drilling. Their mission was to drill wells in England’s Sherwood Forest and help relieve the crisis caused by submarines sinking Allied oil tankers.

Volunteer roughnecks from two Oklahoma drilling companies embarked for England in March 1943. Derrickhand Herman Douthit would not return.

Four rotary drilling rigs were shipped on separate transport ships — with one sunk by a U-boat. The American roughnecks increased the British drilling rate to an average of one well per week, adding vital oil to the war effort. Learn more in Roughnecks of Sherwood Forest.

March 12, 1968 – Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay Oilfield Discovered

Two hundred and fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle, Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay oilfield was discovered by Richfield Oil (ARCO) and Humble Oil Company (Exxon). The Prudhoe Bay State No. 1 exploratory well arrived more than six decades after the first Alaska oil well. It followed Richfield Oil’s discovery of the Swanson River oilfield on the Kenai Peninsula in 1957.

Beginning in 1979 and continuing until early 1989, the Prudhoe Bay field’s maximum production rate reached 1.5 million barrels of oil a day. Map courtesy Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. Circa 1969 wellsite courtesy Atlantic Richfield Company.

At more than 213,000 acres, the Prudhoe Bay field was the largest oilfield in North America, surpassing the 140,000-acre East Texas oilfield discovery of 1930. Prudhoe Bay’s remote location prevented oil production beginning in earnest until 1977, after completion of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Prudhoe Bay field’s production exceeded an average rate of one million barrels of oil a day by March 1978, according to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. It peaked in January 1987 at more than 1.6 million barrels of oil per day.

March 13, 1974 – OPEC ends Oil Embargo

A five-month oil embargo against the United States was lifted by Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a cartel formed in 1960. The embargo, imposed in response to America supplying the Israeli military during the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, created gasoline shortages, prompting President Richard M. Nixon to propose voluntary rationing and a ban of gas sales on Sundays. OPEC ended the embargo after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai.

March 14, 1910 – Lakeview No. 1 Well erupts in California

The Union Oil Company Lakeview No. 1 well erupted a geyser of oil at dawn in Kern County, California (some sources give the date as March 15). With limited technologies for managing the deep, highly pressured formation of the Midway-Sunset field, drillers had experienced several accidental oil spills, including the Shamrock gusher in 1896 and the 1909 Midway gusher.

A marker and remnants of a sand berm north of Maricopa, California, mark the site of a 1910 Union Oil gusher that flowed uncontrolled for 18 months. Photo courtesy San Joaquin Valley Geology.

“But none of these wells came close to rivaling the Lakeview No. 1, which flowed, uncapped and untamed, at 18,000 barrels a day for 18 months,” noted a San Joaquin Valley geologist. Surrounded by berms and sandbags to contain the oil, the well collapsed and died in September 1911, after producing 9.4 million barrels of oil (about half was contained and sold).

Oil erupted in California’s Midway-Sunset oilfield on March 14, 1910. Contained by sandbags by October, the Lakeview No. 1 well produced 9.4 million barrels during the 544 days it flowed. Photo courtesy San Joaquin Valley Geology.

The environmental impact of the Lakeview well, still the largest oil spill in U.S. history, was less destructive due to evaporation and levees of sandbags that prevented contamination of Buena Vista Lake.

Kern County erected a historic marker in 1952 at the site, today about seven miles from the West Kern Oil Museum. The ram-type blowout preventer to seal well pressure was invented in Lufkin, Texas, in 1922.

March 15, 1946 – Texas Independents produce TIPRO

With oilfield discoveries resulting in overproduction, declining prices, oilfield thefts, and policy disagreements with the major oil companies, Texas independent producers formed an association to lobby federal and state lawmakers. The Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association (TIPRO) was established “to preserve the ability to explore and produce oil and natural gas and to promote the general welfare of its members.”

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Recommended Reading: Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century Hardcover (1996); American Fads (1985); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); A Geophysicist’s Memoir: Searching for Oil on Six Continents (2017); “King of the Wildcatters:” The Life and Times of Tom Slick, 1883-1930 (2004); Historic Battleship Texas: The Last Dreadnought (2007); The Secret of Sherwood Forest: Oil Production in England During World War II (1973); Discovery at Prudhoe Bay Oil (2008); San Joaquin Valley, California, Images of America (1999); The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (2009).

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please 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.

The post This Week in Petroleum History: March 9 – 15 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

Under the broad crown of a giant elm next to the Osage Council House in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, Skelly Oil and Phillips Petroleum Company jointly bid more than one million dollars for a 160-acre tract of land.

Colonel Elmer Ellsworth Walters (striped shirt), the “Auctioneer of the Osage Nation,” by the 1930s earned the tribe millions from petroleum companies.

The 1922 auction — Oklahoma’s first million-dollar mineral lease — took place in the shade of what became known as the “Million Dollar Elm.” Independent producers such as Frank Phillips, Harry Sinclair, Bill Skelly, J. Paul Getty, and E.W. Marland were frequent bidders for promising leases. The Osage would erect a statue of their auctioneer, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth Walters, in his hometown of Skedee. Learn more in Million Dollar Elm.

March 3, 1879 – United States Geological Survey established

President Rutherford B. Hayes signed legislation creating the United States Geological Survey (USGS) within the Department of the Interior. The legislation resulted from a report by the National Academy of Sciences, which had been asked by Congress to provide a plan for surveying the country.

Original logo for the U.S. Geological Survey and the current one. The motto “science for a changing world” was added in 1997.

The new agency’s mission included “classification of the public lands and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources, and products of the national domain,” according to USGS, which since 1974 has been headquartered on a 105-acre site in Reston, Virginia. The USGS maintains the world’s largest library collection dedicated to earth and natural sciences, including more than one million books, 600,000 maps, and 500,000 photographs.

March 3, 1886 – Natural Gas brings light to Paola, Kansas

Paola became the first town in Kansas to use natural gas commercially for illumination. To promote its natural gas resources and attract businesses from nearby Kansas City, civic leaders erected four flambeaux arches in the town square. Pipes were laid for other illuminated displays.

“Pearl Street Looking South, Paola, Kansas,” is among images preserved by the Miami County Kansas Historical Society & Museum. An annual Paola Roots Festival began in 1990.

“Paola was lighted with Gas,” proclaimed an exhibit at the Miami County Historical Museum. “The pipeline was completed from the Westfall farm to the square, and a grand illumination was held.” By the end of 1887, several Kansas flour mills were fueled by natural gas. Paola’s gas wells would run dry, but more mid-continent oil discoveries would follow.

March 4, 1918 – West Virginia Well sets World Depth Record

Hope Natural Gas Company completed an oil well at a depth of 7,386 feet on the Martha Goff farm in Harrison County, West Virginia. The cable-tool well became the world’s deepest until surpassed by a 1919 well in nearby Marion County. The previous world record had been a well in Germany at 7,345 feet deep.

Drilled with cable tools near Clarksburg, this 1918 West Virginia well was the world’s deepest until one drilled in a neighboring county. Photo courtesy West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association.

In 1953, the New York State Natural Gas Corporation claimed the world’s deepest cable-tool well at a depth of 11,145 feet at Van Etten, New York. A rotary rig depth record was set in 1974 by the Bertha Rogers No. 1 well at 31,441 feet, and a Soviet Union experimental well in 1989 reached 40,230 feet — the current world record.

March 4, 1933 – Oklahoma City Oilfield under Martial Law

Oklahoma Governor William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray declared martial law to enforce his regulations strictly limiting production in the Oklahoma City oilfield, discovered in December 1928. Two years earlier, Murray had called a meeting of fellow governors from Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico to create an Oil States Advisory Committee “to study the present distressed condition of the petroleum industry.”

Oklahoma Gov. William “Alfalfa Bill” Murray in 1932.

Elected in 1930, the controversial politician was called “Alfalfa Bill” because of speeches urging farmers to plant alfalfa to restore nitrogen to the soil. By the end of his administration, Murray had called out the National Guard 47 times and declared martial law more than 30 times. He was succeeded as Oklahoma governor by E.W. Marland in 1935.

March 4, 1938 – Giant Oilfield discovery in Arkansas

The Kerr-Lynn Oil Company (a Kerr-McGee predecessor) completed its Barnett No. 1 well east of Magnolia, Arkansas, discovering the giant Magnolia oilfield, which would become the largest producing field (in volume) during the early years of World War II, helping to fuel the American war effort.

Crew members stand in front of their 1938 giant oilfield discovery well at Magnolia, Arkansas. Photo courtesy W.B. “Buzz” Sawyer.

The southern Arkansas gusher launched a Columbia County oil boom similar to Union County’s Busey-Armstrong No. 1 well southwest of El Dorado in January 1921 (see First Arkansas Oil Wells).

March 5, 1895 – First Wyoming Refinery produces Lubricants

Near the Chicago & North Western railroad tracks in Casper, Civil War veteran Philip “Mark” Shannon and his Pennsylvania investors opened Wyoming’s first refinery. It could produce 100 barrels a day of 15 different grades of lubricant, from “light cylinder oil” to a heavy grease. Shannon and his associates incorporated as the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Company.

The original Casper oil refinery in Wyoming, circa 1895. Photo courtesy Wyoming Tales and Trails.

By 1904, Shannon’s company owned 14 wells in the Salt Creek field, about 45 miles from the company’s refinery (two days by wagon). Each well produced up to 40 barrels of oil per day, but transportation costs meant Wyoming oil could not compete for eastern markets. The state’s first petroleum boom began in 1908 with Salt Creek’s “Big Dutch” well.

Learn more in First Wyoming Oil Wells.

March 6, 1935 – Search for First Utah Oil proves Deadly

More than a decade before Utah’s first commercial oil wells, residents of St. George had hoped the “shooting” of a well drilled by Arrowhead Petroleum Company would bring black gold prosperity. A crowd had gathered to watch as workers prepared six 10-foot-long explosive canisters to fracture the 3,200-foot-deep Escalante No. 1 well.

The Escalante well heralded new prosperity for residents of nearby St. George, Utah, in 1935 — until an attempt to shoot the well went wrong and canisters of TNT and nitroglycerin exploded. Photo courtesy Washington County Historical Society.

An explosion occurred as the torpedoes, “each loaded with nitroglycerin and TNT and hanging from the derrick,” were being lowered into the well. Ten people died from the detonations, which “sent a shaft of fire into the night that was seen as far as 18 miles away.”

The 1935 accident has remained the worst oil-related disaster in Utah, according to The Escalante Well Incident, a 2007 historical account.

March 6, 1981 — Shale Revolution begins in North Texas

Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation drilled its C.W. Slay No. 1 well, the first commercial natural gas well of the Barnett shale formation. Over the next four years, the vertical well in North Texas produced nearly a billion cubic feet of gas, but it would take almost two decades to perfect cost-effective shale fracturing methods combined with horizontal drilling.

Production from the Barnett shale formation extends from Dallas west and south, covering 5,000 square miles, according to the Texas Railroad Commission. Chart courtesy Dan Plazak.

Mitchell Energy’s 7,500-foot-deep well and others in Wise County helped evaluate seismic and fracturing data to understand deep shale structures. “The C.W. Slay No. 1 and the subsequent wells drilled into the Barnett formation laid the foundation for the shale revolution, proving that natural gas could be extracted from the dense, black rock thousands of feet underground,” the Dallas Morning News later declared.

By the end of 2012, with almost 14,000 wells drilled in the largest natural gas field in Texas, production started to decline, but the Barnett field still accounted for 6.1 percent of Texas natural gas production and 1.8 percent of the U.S. supply, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. At the start of 2024, Barnett natural gas still accounted for 5.4 percent of Texas’s natural gas production and 1.7 percent of the U.S.’s supply.

March 7, 1902 – Oil discovered at Sour Lake, Texas

Adding to the giant oilfields of Texas, the Sour Lake field was discovered about 20 miles west of the world-famous Spindletop gusher of January 1901. The spa town of Sour Lake quickly became a boom town where major oil companies, including Texaco, got their start.

The resort town of Sour Lake, 20 miles northwest of Beaumont, “was transformed into an oil boom town when a gusher was hit in 1902,” according to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Photo courtesy the archive’s W.D. Hornaday Collection.

Originally settled in 1835 and called Sour Lake Springs because of its “sulphureus spring water” known for healing, the sulfur wells attracted many exploration companies. Some petroleum geologists predicted a Sour Lake salt dome formation similar to that revealed by Pattillo Higgins, the Prophet of Spindletop.

Sour Lake’s 1902 discovery well was the second attempt of the Great Western Company. The well, drilled “north of the old hotel building,” penetrated 40 feet of oil sands before reaching a total depth of about 700 feet. The Hardin County’s salt dome oilfield yielded almost nine million barrels of oil by 1903, when the Texas Company made its first major oil find at Sour Lake.

Learn more in Sour Lake produces Texaco.

March 7, 2007 – Expansion of National Artificial Reef Plan

The National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), approved a comprehensive update of the 1985 National Artificial Reef Plan, popularly known as the “rigs to reefs” program.

A typical platform provides almost three acres of feeding habitat for thousands of species. Photo courtesy U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

The agency worked with interstate marine commissions and state artificial reef programs “to promote and facilitate responsible and effective artificial reef use based on the best scientific information available.” The revised National Artificial Reef Plan included guidelines for converting old platforms into reefs. A typical four-leg structure provides up to three acres of habitat for hundreds of marine species.

“As of December 2021, 573 platforms previously installed on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf have been reefed in the Gulf of Mexico,” according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).

Learn more in Rigs to Reefs.

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Recommended Reading: The Osage Oil Boom (1989); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); History of Paola, Kansas (1956); Where it all began: The story of the people and places where the oil & gas industry began: West Virginia and southeastern Ohio (1994); Oil And Gas In Oklahoma: Petroleum Geology In Oklahoma (2013); Kettles and Crackers – A History of Wyoming Oil Refineries (2016); Utah Oil Shale: Science, Technology, and Policy Perspectives (2016); George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet (2019); Sour Lake, Texas: From Mud Baths to Millionaires, 1835-1909 (1995); Rigs-to-reefs: the use of obsolete petroleum structures as artificial reefs (1987). 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. Please support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History: March 2 – 8 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

A small town in southeastern Kansas found itself making headlines when a natural gas well erupted into flames after a lightning strike. The 150-foot burning tower could be seen at night for 35 miles.

Firefighters struggled to subdue the 1906 well at Caney, Kansas. Photo courtesy Jeff Spencer.

Drilled by the New York Oil and Gas Company, the well became a tourist attraction. Newspapers as far away as Los Angeles regularly updated their readers as technologies of the day struggled to extinguish the highly pressurized well, “which defied the ingenuity of man to subdue its roaring flames.”

A Denver publishing company sold postcards of the blazing Caney well, which took five weeks to smother using a specially designed and fabricated steel hood. Learn more in Kansas Gas Well Fire.

February 23, 1942 – Japanese Submarine shells California Oil Refinery

Less than three months after the start of World War II, a Japanese submarine attacked a refinery and oilfield near Los Angeles. The shelling caused little damage but created the largest mass sighting of UFOs ever in American history.

A Japanese postcard of Imperial Navy submarine I-17 shelling the oil refinery at Ellwood, California, north of Santa Barbara. The shelling continued for 20 minutes. Image courtesy John Geoghegan.

The Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-17 fired armor-piercing shells at the Bankline Oil Company refinery in Ellwood City, California. The shelling north of Santa Barbara continued for 20 minutes before I-17 escaped into the night. The first Axis attack on the continental United States resulted in UFO sightings, mass hysteria, and the “Battle of Los Angeles.”

Learn more in Japanese Sub attacks Oilfield.

February 24, 1938 – First Nylon Bristle Toothbrush

The Weco Products Company of Chicago, Illinois, “Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft” toothbrush went on sale — the first to use synthetic nylon developed three years earlier by a former Harvard professor working at a DuPont research laboratory in New Jersey.

August 1938 Life magazine advertisement for “Dr. West’s Miracle Tuft” — the first nylon bristle toothbrush.

“Until now, all good toothbrushes were made with animal bristles,” noted a 1938 Weco Products ad in Life magazine. “Today, Dr. West’s new Miracle-Tuft is a single exception. It is made with EXTON, a unique bristle-like filament developed by the great DuPont laboratories, and produced exclusively for Dr. West’s.”

Guaranteed for “no bristle shedding” and selling for 50 cents ($10.96 in 2025 dollars), the toothbrush became the first commercial use of nylon.

February 25, 1918 – Pawnee Bill’s Oklahoma Oil Companies

As World War I neared its end, Gordon William “Pawnee Bill” Lillie entered the oil business in Yale, Oklahoma. Despite not being as famous as his Wyoming friend Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Lillie was a widely known showman and promoter of his state.

Pawnee Bill Oil Company operated a refinery in Yale, Oklahoma, after World War I. Some stock certificates are collectible, but most are preserved as family keepsakes.

During World War I, the Pawnee Bill Oil Company operated a refinery in Yale and leased 25 railroad tank cars. After the war, reduced demand for refined petroleum products forced the company to operate at half capacity as other Oklahoma refineries began closing.

Although his oil exploration company remained, Pawnee Bill had to shut down his Yale refinery in March 1921. A decade earlier, friend and fellow western showman Col. William Cody had unsuccessfully searched for Wyoming petroleum wealth (see Shoshone Oil Company).

Learn more in Pawnee Bill Oil Company. 

February 25, 1919 – Oregon enacts First Gasoline Tax

Oil was selling for just $2 a barrel when Oregon enacted the one-cent gas tax to be used for road construction and maintenance. It was the first U.S. state to impose a gasoline tax. Less than two months later, Colorado and New Mexico followed Oregon’s example.

A circa 1930s service station owner explains why gas costs 20 cents a gallon in this Library of Congress photo.

By 1930, every state would add a gasoline tax of up to three cents per gallon. Faced with a $2.1 billion federal deficit, President Herbert Hoover tacked on another one-cent-per-gallon federal excise tax in 1932.

National average tax rates have remained steady, with gasoline taxes increasing in seven states and decreasing in six, according to the Department of Energy.

In August 2024, federal taxes included excise taxes of 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents per gallon on diesel fuel, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). State-imposed gasoline taxes have varied from a low of 8.9 cents per gallon (Alaska) to a high of 69.8 cents per gallon (California). The federal tax has not changed since 1993.

February 25, 1926 – Wyatt Earp’s California Oil Wells

A Kern County, California, oil well invested in by former lawman Wyatt Earp began producing 150 barrels of oil a day, confirming his belief in the field five miles north of Bakersfield. As early as 1901, drilling by the Shasta Oil Company had stirred local excitement, but the company went bust after three dry holes. In July 1924, Getty Oil Company began drilling on the Earp lease.

Wyatt Earp, circa 1887, about 39 years old.

“Old Property Believed Worthless for Years West of Kern Field Relocated by Old-Timer,” declared the San Francisco Examiner, describing Earp, 75, as the “pioneer mining man of Tombstone.” The newspaper also reported, “Indications are that a great lake of oil lies beneath the surface in this territory.”

Working on his memoirs, Earp turned over management of his oil properties to his sister-in-law, and his wife noted, “I was in hopes they would bring in a two or three hundred barrel well. But I must be satisfied, as it could have been a duster, too.”

Learn more in Wyatt Earp’s California Oil Wells.

February 27, 1925 – Congress passes Osage Indians Act

As a result of murders and a “reign of terror” in the Osage Nation, the U.S. Congress passed the Osage Indians Act of 1925, prohibiting non-Osages from inheriting headrights of tribal members possessing more than one-half Osage blood. The Osage people’s sudden wealth from oil royalties (see Million Dollar Auctioneer) had brought criminal conspiracies to the Oklahoma Indian Reservation, with dozens of Osage killed for the headrights to their land.

February 27, 1962 – California Voters approve Offshore Drilling

Voters in Long Beach, California, approved the “controlled exploration and exploitation of the oil and gas reserves” underlying their harbor south of Los Angeles. The city’s charter had prohibited drilling there since a 1956 referendum, but advances in technology offered new and environmentally sensitive opportunities to exploit an additional 6,500 acres of the Wilmington oilfield.

Los Angeles Association of Professional Landmen members toured THUMS in 2017. Photo courtesy LAAPL.

Four artificial islands were soon constructed at a cost of $22 million by a consortium of companies called THUMS: Texaco (now Chevron), Humble (now ExxonMobil), Union Oil (now Chevron), Mobil (now ExxonMobil) and Shell Oil. The islands in 1967 were named Grissom, White, Chaffee, and Freeman in honor of lost NASA astronauts. Occidental Petroleum purchased THUMS in 2000.

Eventually operated by the California Resources Corporation, the four “Astronaut Islands” are designed to appear to be occupied by upscale condominiums, thanks to Disneyland architect Joseph Linesch, whose integration of oil production structures the Los Angeles Times described as “part Disney, part Jetsons, part Swiss Family Robinson.”

Learn more in THUMS – California’s Hidden Oil Islands.

February 28, 1935 – DuPont Chemist invents Nylon

A former Harvard professor working in a DuPont research laboratory discovered the world’s first synthetic fiber, the petroleum product nylon. After experimenting with artificial materials for more than six years, Professor Wallace Carothers created a long molecule chain — a stretching plastic. The inventor earlier discovered neoprene (commonly used in wetsuits).

Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms strung in a chain create manmade fibers. Each molecule contains six carbon atoms.

Carothers produced the fibers when he formed a polymer chain using a process to join individual molecules. Each molecule consisted of 100 or more repeating units of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms, strung in a chain. DuPont patented nylon in 1935, but it was not revealed until 1938.

Originally called “Fiber 66,” the polyamide resulted from 12 years and $27 million in research. Several marketing names were considered for the “artificial silk” before nylon was chosen. The first commercial use was for toothbrush bristles. After World War II, nylon hosiery for women would make a fortune for the Delaware chemical company. Learn more in Nylon, a Petroleum Polymer.

February 28, 1982 – Getty Museum becomes Richest in World

Following years of legal battle by his relatives, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles became the most richly endowed museum in the world after receiving a $1.2 billion bequest left to it by oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, who died in 1976.

The J. Paul Getty Museum opened in Los Angeles in 1954. The museum’s art collection is housed at the Getty Center (above in 2009) and the Getty Villa on the Malibu coast.

After working in his father’s oilfields in Oklahoma, Getty founded his first oil company in Tulsa and drilled the Nancy Taylor No. 1 well near Haskell, where oil and natural gas production began in 1910. Getty’s oil wealth philanthropy also established the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Research Institute, according to the J. Paul Getty Trust.

March 1, 1921 – Halliburton improves Well Cementing

Erle P. Halliburton patented his “Method and Means for Cementing Oil Wells,” improving a key oilfield technology. “It is well known to those skilled in the art of oil well drilling that one of the greatest obstacles to successful development of oil-bearing sands has been the encountering of liquid mud, water, and the like during and after the process of drilling the wells,” he noted in his patent application.

The Halliburton 1921 cementing process isolated geologic zones while protecting casing integrity.

Halliburton’s well cementing process isolated downhole zones, guarded against collapse of the casing, and allowed control of the well, helping to protect the environment. His patent application noted that typical oil production, “hampered by water intrusion that required time and expense for pumping out…has caused the abandonment of many wells, which would have developed a profitable output.”

In March 1949, Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company and Stanolind Oil completed the first commercial application of hydraulic fracturing at a well near Duncan. Learn more in Halliburton cements Wells.

March 1, 1921 – Houdini patents Improved Diving Suit

As early offshore technologies evolved from piers to platforms to pioneering underwater operations, commercial divers faced many challenges and hazards while drilling and completing wells. Magician and daredevil Harry Houdini came up with a way to help these intrepid deep-sea roughnecks escape from their cumbersome suits. The world-famous escapologist invented a diving suit with a quick-release mechanism, which received a U.S. patent (No. 1370316). 

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Recommended Reading: Caney, Kansas: The Big Gas City (1985); The Battle of Los Angeles, 1942: The Mystery Air Raid (2010); Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon (2005); Pawnee Bill: A Biography of Major Gordon W. Lillie (1958); Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend (2012); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry (2016); Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (1984); The Great Getty: The Life and Loves of J. Paul Getty – Richest Man in the World (1986); Erle P. Halliburton, Genius with Cement (1959). Your Amazon purchases benefit 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. Please support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells.. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History, Feb. 23 – March 1 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

A multi-state government agency that would become the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission was organized in Dallas, Texas, with the adoption of an “Interstate Compact to Preserve Oil and Gas.” Plans for creating the commission were developed in December 1934 at the home of Oklahoma Governor-elect Ernest W. Marland. Approved by Congress in August, the commission established its headquarters in Oklahoma City.

The Oklahoma City headquarters of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) has been on property adjacent to the governor’s mansion since the 1930s.

Representatives from Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas began planning initiatives “to conserve oil and gas by the prevention of physical waste thereof from any cause.” Oklahoma Gov. E.W. Marland, founder of Marland Oil Company in 1921, was elected the first chairman. Thirty states were active members by 1966.

“Faced with unregulated petroleum overproduction and the resulting waste, the states endorsed and Congress ratified a compact to take control of the issues,” according to IOGCC, which added the word “gas” to its name in 1991.

February 17, 1902 – Lufkin Industries founded in East Texas

The Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company was founded in Lufkin, Texas, as a repair shop for railroad and sawmill machinery. When the pine region’s timber supplies began to dwindle, the company discovered new opportunities in the burgeoning oilfields following the 1901 discovery at Spindletop Hill.

A Lufkin counterbalanced oil pump near Beaumont, Texas, in 2003. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Inventor Walter C. Trout was working for this East Texas company in 1925 when he came up with a new idea for pumping oil. His design would become an oilfield icon known by many names — nodding donkey, grasshopper, horsehead, thirsty bird, and pumpjack, among others.

By the end of 1925, a prototype of Trout’s pumping unit was installed on a Humble Oil and Refining Company well near Hull, Texas. “The well was perfectly balanced, but even with this result, it was such a funny-looking, odd thing that it was subject to ridicule and criticism,” Trout explained.

Learn more in All Pumped Up – Oilfield Technology.

February 17, 1944 – H.L. Hunt discovers First Alabama Oilfield

Alabama’s first oilfield was discovered in Choctaw County when independent producer H.L. Hunt of Dallas, Texas, drilled the No. 1 Jackson well. Hunt’s 1944 wildcat well revealed the Gilbertown oilfield. Prior to this discovery, 350 dry holes had been drilled in the state.

Alabama’s major petroleum-producing regions are in the west. Map courtesy Encyclopedia of Alabama.

According to research by petroleum geologist Ray Sorenson, an 1858 report first noted Alabama natural oil seeps about six miles from Oakville in Lawrence County (see Exploring Earliest Signs of Oil). Hunt’s discovery well was drilled in Choctaw County, where he revealed the Gilbertown oilfield at a depth of 3,700 feet.

Although it took 11 years for another oilfield discovery, new technologies and deeper wells in the late 1980s led to the prolific Little Cedar Creek and Brooklyn fields. By the mid-2000s, geologic assessments were underway for the potential of the shales of St. Clair and neighboring counties.

Learn more in First Alabama Oil Well.

February 19, 1863 – First Pipeline Attempt to link Oilfield to Refinery

With teamsters dominating oil transportation in Pennsylvania, independent producer James L. Hutchings designed and constructed a pipeline to transport oil from a well on a farm at Oil Creek to a refinery 2.5 miles away. He had patented a rotary pump, which he used for moving the oil through two-inch piping from the Tarr Farm to the Humboldt Refinery at Oil City. His pumps worked, but the cast-iron pipeline proved impractical when the joints leaked.

The 1863 pipeline attempt began from an oil well on the Tarr Farm (above) north of Oil City, Pennsylvania. December 1861 photograph by John A. Mather courtesy Library of Congress.

Hutchings’ concept of driving fluids with a rotary pump brought a key innovation for pipeline construction. In 1865, Samuel Van Syckel would break the teamsters’ monopoly by constructing a wrought iron pipeline with threaded joints that could transport 2,000 barrels of oil a day more than five miles — the first practical oil pipeline.

“It kind of shows you how multiple failures lead to success,” noted pipeline engineer Claudia Farrell in 2002. “The idea of driving fluids with a rotary pump sparked an innovation in the pipeline industry.”

February 20, 1959 – First LNG Tanker arrives in England

After a 27-day voyage from a processing facility just south of Lake Charles, Louisiana, the world’s first liquefied natural gas tanker arrived at Canvey Island in England’s Thames estuary, the world’s first LNG terminal. The experimental Methane Pioneer demonstrated that large quantities of LNG could be transported safely across the ocean.

The world’s first liquefied natural gas tanker, the Methane Pioneer, was a converted World War II Liberty freighter.

The first-of-its-kind vessel, a converted World War II Liberty freighter, included five 7,000-barrel aluminum tanks supported by balsa wood and insulated with plywood and urethane. Owned by Comstock Liquid Methane Corporation, the 340-foot ship kept its methane cargo refrigerated to minus 285 degrees Fahrenheit. In June 1964, the first purpose-built commercial LNG carrier — the nine LNG tank, 618-foot Methane Princess — began regular delivery to the same Canvey Island port.

February 20, 1993 – Oil Pipe Saxophone erected in Houston

Petroleum pipelines became a work of art when offbeat Texas sculptor Bob “Daddy-O” Wade debuted his blue, 70-foot saxophone at the opening of Billy Blues Bar & Grill on Houston’s west side.

Petroleum pipeline segments contributed to a 1993 offbeat saxophone sculpture by Bob “Daddy-O” Wade for the Billy Blues Bar & Grill in Houston.

Wade transformed two 48-inch-wide pipes into the free-standing sculpture, adding an upside-down Volkswagen, chrome hubcaps, beer kegs, and assorted parts to complete his blue creation. After much debate, the Houston City Council deemed the oilfield pipeline saxophone to be art rather than signage. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram described Wade as a “connoisseur of Southwestern kitsch.”

Learn more in “Smokesax” Art has Pipeline Heart.

February 21, 1887 – Refining Process brings Riches to Rockefeller

Mining engineer and chemist Herman Frasch applied to patent a new process for eliminating sulfur from “skunk-bearing oils.” The former employee of Standard Oil of New Jersey was quickly rehired by John D. Rockefeller, who owned oilfields near Lima, Ohio, that produced a thick, sulfurous oil.

Standard Oil Company, which had accumulated a 40-million-barrel stockpile of the inexpensive, sour “Lima oil,” bought Frasch’s patent for its copper-oxide refining process to “sweeten” the oil.

Herman Frasch (1851-1914), inventor of a key refinery process, by 1911 earned more wealth as the “Sulfur King.”

By the early 1890s, Standard Oil’s giant Whiting oil refinery east of Chicago was producing odorless kerosene from desulfurized oil, making Rockefeller another fortune.

Paid in Standard Oil shares and becoming very wealthy, Frasch moved to Louisiana — where the chemist made yet another fortune. By 1911, he was known as the “Sulfur King” after inventing a method for extracting sulfur from underground deposits by injecting superheated water into wells.

February 22, 1923 – First Carbon Black Factory in Texas

Texas granted its first permit for a carbon black factory to J.W. Hassel & Associates in Stephens County after scientists  discovered carbon black increased the durability of rubber used in tires. Produced by the controlled combustion of petroleum products, carbon black could be used in many rubber products.

Early cars like the 1919 Pierce-Arrow had white rubber tires until B.F. Goodrich discovered carbon black improved durability. Photo courtesy Peter Valdes-Dapena.

Automobile tires were white until B.F. Goodrich Company in 1910 discovered that adding carbon black to the vulcanizing process improved strength and durability. An early Goodrich supplier was crayon manufacturer Binney & Smith Company (see Carbon Black and Oilfield Crayons).

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Recommended Reading: Oil in Oklahoma (1976); Lufkin, from sawdust to oil: A history of Lufkin Industries, Inc. (1982); Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks: A Guide (2000); Petrolia: The Landscape of America’s First Oil Boom (2003); Natural Gas: Fuel for the 21st Century (2015); Daddy-O’s Book of Big-Ass Art (2020); Herman Frasch — The Sulphur King (2013); The B.F. Goodrich Story Of Creative Enterprise 1870-1952 (2010). Your Amazon purchases benefit 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. Please support AOGHS to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly email newsletter, This Week in Oil and Gas History News, and expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History, February 16 – 22 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

Myron M. Kinley — born in 1896 in Santa Barbara, California, the son of an oil well shooter — was featured in a TIME magazine article about a blowout and fire on a drilling platform 14 miles off the coast of Louisiana. “The oilmen knew what to do. They put in a hurry call to the world’s most famous oil-fire fighter,” the article noted.

A 1965 Daily Oklahoman photo with Myron Kinley demonstrating “the courage and coolness under fire that won him fame and fortune during an almost legendary 40-year career of fighting oil well fires throughout the world.” Photo by Frank Granger courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society.

Kinley developed many oil well firefighting tools and techniques — and trained many others in their use, including Red Adair, “Boots” Hansen and “Coots” Mathews (Boots & Coots). Any company in the oilfield firefighting business today can trace its roots to Myron Kinley, who died at home in Chickasha, Oklahoma, in 1978.

February 9, 2013 – First Well drilled on Mars

Images transmitted from NASA’s robotic rover Curiosity confirmed it successfully drilled on the Martian surface, accomplishing “history’s first ever drilling and sampling into a pristine alien rock on the surface of another planet in our solar system,” according to Universe Today.

Mars rover Curiosity tested its rotary-percussion bit by drilling a shallow hole (at right) before completing the first well on another planet. Photo courtesy NASA.

While exploring the Red Planet’s Yellowknife Bay Basin, Curiosity paused to drill for the first time, making a hole .63 inches wide and 2.5 inches deep. A rotary-percussion drill bit at the end of a seven-foot robotic arm penetrated a “red slab of fine-grained sedimentary rock with hydrated mineral veins of calcium sulfate.”

The “rotary-percussion” bit of Curiosity measured .6 of an inch wide. Photo courtesy NASA/JPL.

Images beamed from the site included a drill test next to the historic borehole. After completing Mars No. 1 (unofficial name), the one-ton rover drilled many others using its slow, “low-percussion” technique. Learn about terrestrial drilling methods in Making Hole – Drilling Technology.

February 10, 1910 – Discovery of Giant California Oilfield

Honolulu Oil Corporation discovered the Buena Vista oilfield in Kern County, California. The well, originally known as “Honolulu’s Great Gasser,” drilled deep into oil-producing sands for production of 3,500 barrels of oil a day. Steam injection operations helped the field produce “heavy” (high viscosity) oil from depths near 4,000 feet.

In 1912, as the Navy began converting its warship boilers from coal to oil (see Petroleum & Sea Power), the San Joaquin Valley oilfield was designated Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2. The Department of Energy leased 90 percent of the 30,000-acre Buena Vista reserves to private oil companies in 2020.

February 10, 1917  – Petroleum Geologists Organize in Tulsa

About 90 geologists gathered in Oklahoma to form an association where “only reputable and recognized petroleum geologists are admitted.” They met at Henry Kendall College, now Tulsa University, to establish the Southwestern Association of Petroleum Geologists, today’s American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).

AAPG began in Oklahoma as the Southwestern Association of Petroleum Geologists.

Adopting its current name in 1918, AAPG also launched its peer-reviewed scientific journal, the Bulletin. By 1920, industry trade magazines were praising the association’s professionalism and success in combating “unscrupulous and inadequately prepared men who are attempting to do geological work.”

AAPG in 1945 formed a committee to assist the Boy Scouts of America with a geology merit badge and the AAPG Foundation supports a Distinguished Lecture program. The association’s 2025 membership has reached almost 40,000 members, including 8,000 students, in 129 countries. Learn more in AAPG – Geology Pros since 1917.

February 10, 1956 – Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Prairie Skyscraper”

Harold C. Price Sr., founder of the pipeline construction company H.C. Price, dedicated his headquarters building in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The 19-story concrete and copper office tower remains the only skyscraper designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Established in 1921, H.C. Price specialized in field welding oil storage tanks and electric welding of pipelines. The company helped construct the “Big Inch” pipelines during WWII and built large sections of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Once a pipeline company headquarters, the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Wright — who in 1954 designed the Price family residence in Phoenix, Arizona — created the Bartlesville “Prairie Skyscraper” in four quadrants, “based on the geometry of a 30-60-90 degree double parallelogram module” with one quadrant for apartments and three for offices, according to the current occupant, Price Tower Arts Center. The National Register of Historic Places added the former pipeline company headquarters building in 1974.

February 12, 1954 – First Nevada Oil Well

After hundreds of dry holes (the first drilled near Reno in 1907), Nevada became a petroleum-producing state. Shell Oil Company’s second test of its Eagle Springs No. 1 well in Nye County produced commercial amounts of oil. The routine test revealed petroleum production from depths between 6,450 feet and 6,730 feet.

Nevada’s annual oil production peaked in 1990 at about 4 million barrels of oil. The state produced about 175,000 barrels of oil in 2024. Chart courtesy Nevada Division of Minerals.

The Eagle Springs oilfield eventually produced 3.8 million barrels of oil. It took 20 more years to find Nevada’s second oilfield took two more decades. In 1976, the Northwest Exploration Company completed its Trap Spring No. 1 well in Railroad Valley, five miles west of the Eagle Springs oilfield. Learn more in First Nevada Oil Well.

February 12, 1987 – Texaco Fine upheld for Getty Oil Takeover Attempt

A Texas court upheld a 1985 decision against Texaco for having initiated an illegal takeover of Getty Oil after Pennzoil had made a bid for the company. By the end of the year, the companies settled their historic $10.3 billion legal battle for $3 billion when Pennzoil agreed to drop its demand for interest. The compromise was vital for Texaco emerging from bankruptcy, a haven it had sought to stop Pennzoil from enforcing the largest court judgment ever awarded at the time, according to the Los Angeles Times.

February 13, 1924 – Forest Oil adopts Yellow Dog Logo

Forest Oil Company, founded in 1916 as an oilfield service company by Forest Dorn and his father Clayton, adopted a logo featuring the two-wicked “yellow dog” oilfield lantern. The logo included a keystone shape to symbolize the state of Pennsylvania, where Forest Oil pioneered water-flooding methods to improve production from the 85,000-acre Bradford oilfield.

Forest Oil Company adopted the “yellow dog” lantern logo in 1924. eight years after being founded in Bradford, Pennsylvania,

Forest Oil Company‘s oilfield water-injection technology, later adopted throughout the petroleum industry, helped keep America’s first billion-dollar oilfield producing to the present day. Patented in 1870, the popular derrick lamp’s name was said to come from the two burning wicks resembling a dog’s eyes glowing at night.

February 13, 1977 – Texas Ranger “El Lobo Solo” dies

“El Lobo Solo” — The Lone Wolf — Texas Ranger Manuel T. Gonzaullas died at age 85 in Dallas. During much of the 1920s and 1930s, he had earned a reputation as a strict law enforcer in booming oil towns.

Texas Ranger Manuel Gonzaullas’ .45 “working pistols” featured his initials and the trigger guards cut away.

When Kilgore became “the most lawless town in Texas” after the discovery of the East Texas oilfield in 1930, Gonzaullas was chosen to tame it. “Crime may expect no quarter in Kilgore,” the Texas Ranger once declared. He rode a black stallion named Tony and sported a pair of 1911 .45 Colts with his initials on the handles.

“He was a soft-spoken man, and his trigger finger was slightly bent,” noted independent producer Watson W. Wise in 1985. “He always told me it was geared to that .45 of his.” Learn more in Manuel “Lone Wolf” Gonzaullas, Texas Ranger.

February 15, 1982 – Deadly Atlantic Storm sinks Drilling Platform

With rogue waves reaching as high as 65 feet during an Atlantic cyclone, offshore drilling platform Ocean Ranger sank on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Canada, killing all 84 on board. At the time, the world’s largest semi-submersible platform, the Ocean Ranger, had been drilling a third well in the Hibernia oilfield for Mobil Oil of Canada.

The deadly weather system also engulfed a Soviet container ship 65 miles east of the platform, resulting in the loss of 32 crew members. A 1983 Coast Guard Marine Casualty Report about Ocean Ranger led to improved emergency procedures, lifesaving equipment, and manning standards for Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) operations.

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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity’s Chief Engineer (2017); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry (2016); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Building Bartlesville, 1945-2000, Images of America: Oklahoma (2000); Roadside Geology of Nevada (2017); The Taking of Getty Oil: Pennzoil, Texaco, and the Takeover Battle That Made History (2017); Images of America: Around Bradford (1997); Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, Texas Ranger (1998); The Ocean Ranger: Remaking the Promise of Oil (2012). 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. Become an annual supporter to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly newsletter, this week in oil and gas history, and expand historical research. Please contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History, February 9 – 15 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

The world’s first anti-knock gasoline containing a tetra-ethyl lead compound went on sale at the Refiners Oil Company service station in Dayton, Ohio. Discovered two years earlier by General Motors scientists, “Ethyl” vastly improved engine performance. The company initially provided service stations with bolt-on adapters called “Ethylizers” to meter the proper proportion of the new additive.

“Ethyl” gasoline goes on sale for the first time at this Refiners Oil Company service station in Dayton, Ohio. Photo courtesy Kettering/GMI Alumni Foundation.

“By the middle of this summer you will be able to purchase at approximately 30,000 filling stations in various parts of the country, a fluid that will double the efficiency of your automobile, eliminate the troublesome motor knock, and give you 100 percent greater mileage,” Popular Science Monthly reported in 1924. The toxicity of tetra-ethyl lead resulted in a federally mandated phase out of the additive beginning in 1976. Learn more in Ethyl Anti-Knock Gas.

February 3, 1868 – Refiners seek End to Civil War Tax

Angry refiners from Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, met in Petroleum Center and passed a resolution demanding an end to the U.S. “war tax” of one dollar per 42-gallon barrel of refined petroleum products, including kerosene. During the Civil War, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase advocated petroleum taxes as high as $10.50 per barrel. A one-dollar excise tax on oil (per barrel) was imposed in 1864 and repealed in 1872 with most other war taxes — except whiskey.

February 4, 1910 – Showman “Buffalo Bill” explores for Wyoming Oil

Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s legacy extends beyond his famous Wild West Show — reaching into the Wyoming oil patch. Cody, who in 1896 founded the town that bears his name, in February 1910 bought 7,500 shares of an exploration venture he had formed with a congressman. It was not their first attempt to strike oil.

W.F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody (center) and investors inspect oil samples from the Shoshone Anticline near Cody, Wyoming, circa 1910. Photo courtesy the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

In 1902, Cody and several partners, including Wyoming Rep. Frank Mondell, began exploring near Cody. They drilled one 500-foot-deep dry hole, and a second well also failed to find oil before they ran out of money. Cody and the congressman ventured into the oil business again in 1910 by forming the Shoshone Oil Company.

During a visit to New York City, Cody carried pocket flasks of oil to impress investors. His friends started calling him, “Bill the Oil King,” noted one historian, adding, “With what degree of seriousness we cannot know.”

Learn more in Buffalo Bill Shoshone Oil Company.

February 4, 1920 – Breckenridge Field joins North Texas Oil Boom

The No. 1 Chaney well tapped another giant oilfield in North Texas, which three years earlier had made headlines for its “Roaring Ranger” well in Eastland County. The latest discovery within the city limits of Breckenridge in Stephens County produced 3,700 barrels of oil per day.

“This started an intensive town block drilling campaign, and soon every block had its oil rig. Over 200 wells were drilled on the townsite, and most of them were good producers,” noted a 1930 report. “Owners of very small plots were made wealthy. By 1923, over 2,000 derricks surrounded Breckenridge within a radius of four miles.”

As the North Texas drilling boom continued, Breckenridge acquired its first railroad connection to Wichita Falls, Ranger, and Fort Worth, soon joined by the Cisco and Northeastern line (see Oil Boom Brings First Hilton Hotel).

February 5, 1873 – Death of an Illegal Oil Well Shooter

Andrew Dalrymple, allegedly a frequent “moonlight oil well shooter” in the Tidioute, Pennsylvania, region, was killed in a nitroglycerin explosion at his home on Dennis Run, the Titusville Morning Herald reported. Supplies of nitroglycerin lately had been stolen from magazines throughout the oil region by those seeking to avoid fees for using the Roberts torpedo. “This species of theft is winked at by some parties, who are opposed to the Roberts torpedo patent,” the newspaper noted.

February 5, 1998 – DOE privatizes Elk Hills Petroleum Reserve

The Department of Energy and Occidental Petroleum concluded the largest divestiture of federal property in U.S. history with the sale of Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve in Kern County, California. As the highest corporate bidder, Occidental ended the government’s business operations of oil and natural gas production at the 75-square-mile reserve. The $3.65 billion DOE divestment completed a privatization process that had begun years earlier.

The California Resources Corporation (CRC) in 2018 acquired the former Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 in Kern County. California. Map courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Clinton Administration in May 1995 had proposed placing the federally owned Elk Hills reserve on the market in an effort “to reduce the size of government and return inherently non-federal functions to the private sector,” according to the DOE Office of Fossil Energy.

Discovered in 1911 and designated America’s first oil preserve one year later, Elk Hills returned to production following the 1973 oil crisis, becoming one of the top ten most productive U.S. fields. The former Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 — made famous by the 1922 “Teapot Dome Scandal” during the Harding administration — was acquired by California Resources Corporation (CRC) in 2018.

February 7, 1817 – The First Gas Street Light

Fueled by manufactured gas (distilled from tar and wood), America’s first public street lamp illuminated Market Street in Baltimore, making Gas Light Company of Baltimore the first U.S. commercial gas lighting company. City officials erected a replica of the lamp in 1997.

The first U.S. gas street lamp illuminated Baltimore in 1817. Photo courtesy BG&E.

Artist Rembrandt Peale earlier demonstrated the brightness of manufactured gas with a “ring beset with gems of light” at his Baltimore museum. “During a candlelit period in American history, the forward-thinking Peale aimed to form a business around his gas light innovations — and the exhibition targeting potential investors,” notes Baltimore Gas & Electric (BG&E), which began as the Gas Light Company of Baltimore.

Learn more in Illuminating Gaslight.

February 8, 1836 – Coal Gas brightens Philadelphia

As Philadelphia became America’s center for finance and industry, a municipally owned gas distribution company began lighting Second Street. The newly formed Philadelphia Gas Works ignited 46 lamps that burned manufactured coal gas. In Washington, D.C., manufactured gas began replacing kerosene lamps in the U.S. Capitol by 1847.

A manufactured gas storage facility at Point Breeze in South Philadelphia, circa 1856. Photograph courtesy Philadelphia Gas Works.

Philadelphia Gas Works in 1856 completed construction of a manufactured gas storage tank with a total capacity of 1.8 million cubic feet, the largest in America at the time. The village of Fredonia, New York, began the first commercial use of natural gas as early as 1825.

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Recommended Reading: Unleaded: How Changing Our Gasoline Changed Everything (2021); An Illustrated Guide to Gas Pumps (2008); Around Titusville, Pennsylvania, Images of America (2004); Western Pennsylvania’s Oil Heritage (2008); Presenting Buffalo Bill: The Man Who Invented the Wild West  (2016); Ranger, Images of America (2010); Black Gold in California: The Story of California Petroleum Industry (2016); In Pursuit of Fame: Rembrandt Peale, 1778-1860 (1993). 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. Become an annual supporter to help maintain this energy education website, a monthly newsletter, this week in oil and gas history, and expand historical research. Pease contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History, February 2 – 8 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

As East Texas farmers struggled to survive the Great Depression, an oil discovery confirmed the existence of a massive oilfield. W.A. “Monty” Moncrief of Fort Worth completed the Lathrop No. 1 well, which produced 7,680 barrels of oil a day from 3,587 feet deep. Geologists at first thought a third oilfield had been found.

Three determined wildcatters revealed the “Black Giant,” a 130,000-acre oilfield that brought prosperity to Kilgore, Longview, and Tyler during the Great Depression. Kilgore annually celebrates its oil heritage.

Moncrief’s discovery well was 25 miles north of the famous Daisy Bradford No. 3 well of October 1930, drilled by Columbus Marion “Dad” Joiner. It was 15 miles north of the Lou Della Crim No. 1 well, completed at Kilgore three days after Christmas 1930. The 130,000-acre East Texas oilfield would become the largest in the lower 48 states. 

Learn more in Moncrief makes East Texas History.

January 28, 1921 – “Vaseline Well” erupts in Oklahoma

After reaching a depth of 3,710 feet, drillers of the W.C. Newman well near Lamar, Oklahoma, “hit into a strata of oil, the like of which never before, nor since has been found,” reported the Daily Oklahoman in a 1933 retrospective of the well, which “caused oil men to marvel then, as today, since it produces the same Vaseline-like content.”

High-viscosity oil from the 1921 Oklahoma well was featured by the syndicated Believe It or Not by Ripley. Illustration courtesy Hughes County Historical Society.

The Hughes County well erupted a dark green oil that “turned into a brilliant yellow when it came into contact with the outside air” and sprayed 200 feet of a semi-solid mass that “hung like gum from the nearby fences, trees and other structures,” noted the newspaper.

“Ordinary pipelines would not carry the oil, so a special line, sandwiched between four steam pipes to heat the almost solid lubricant, enabled it to flow to storage tanks,” the article added. Featured as the “jelly” well in the syndicated Believe it or Not by Ripley, by 1933 daily production of 350 barrels of the high-viscosity oil had declined to 15 barrels.

January 28, 1969 – Santa Barbara Oil Spill

After drilling 3,500 feet below the Pacific Ocean floor, a Union Oil Company drilling platform six miles off Santa Barbara suffered a blowout. The accident spilled an estimated 100,000 barrels of oil into the ocean with some reaching southern California’s beaches, including Summerland — where early  U.S. offshore petroleum history began in 1896 with wells drilled from piers.

Beyond the 1969 spill, marine scientists have noted California’s natural oil seeps continue to leak tons of petroleum every day.

The drilling crew had begun to retrieve pipe in order to replace a drill bit when the mud used to maintain pressure became dangerously low, causing a natural gas blowout, according to the University of California, Santa Barbara. The well, which was brought under control after 12 days, turned public opinion against offshore exploration and helped lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December 1970.

Naturally occurring oil seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel have been significantly reduced by offshore oil production, according to “History of Oil in the Santa Barbara Channel,” a 2018 exhibit at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum.

Learn more in Oil Seeps and the Santa Barbara Spill.

January 28, 1991 – Rig No. 114 becomes Tourist Attraction

Among the largest drilling rigs in the world, the Parker Drilling Rig No. 114 was erected in Elk City, Oklahoma, after civic leaders realized the retired rig — easily seen from I-40 and historic Route 66 — could be a tourist attraction. No. 114 once drilled deep wells for testing nuclear bombs.

Parker Drilling Rig No. 114, within sight of Route 66 and I-40 in Elk City, Oklahoma, has welcomed travelers since 1991. Photo by Bruce Wells.

In 1969, Parker Drilling signed a contract with the Atomic Energy Commission to drill a series of holes up to 120 inches in diameter and 6,500 feet deep in Alaska and Nevada. After the nuclear experiments, the company modified its rig to drill conventional wells that set records by reaching beyond four miles deep (see Anadarko Basin in Depth).

The 181-foot Parker No. 114 towers over Elk City’s former Casa Grande Hotel at the intersection of 3rd Street and Route 66. The Casa Grande, which opened in 1928, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995; it was once home to a natural history museum that included petroleum exhibits.

January 29, 1850 – Kerosene Inventor patents Gasification Process

Canadian geologist Abraham Gessner received a U.S. patent for a gas manufacturing process “to enable others skilled in the art…for obtaining of illuminating gas from compact and fluid bitumen (crude oil), asphaltum, chapapote, or mineral pitch as found in mines, quarries, and springs in the earth.”

Gessner licensed his “coal gas” distillation apparatus (patent no. 7052) for about $1 per burner, declaring his manufactured gas “affords the cleanest, safest, and most agreeable light ever used.” By 1854, Gessner’s research would lead him to invent another illuminating fuel, “a new liquid hydrocarbon, which I denominate Kerosene.”

January 29,  1886 – Karl Benz applies to Patent Gasoline-Powered Auto

German mechanical engineer Karl Benz applied for a Reich Patent (no. 34735) for his Benz motorwagen, a three-wheeler with a one-cylinder, four-stroke gasoline engine. His innovative “Fahrzeug mit Gasmotorenbetrieb” (vehicle with gas engine operation) was the world’s first patent for a practical internal combustion engine-powered car.

Detail from Karl Benz’s “vehicle with gas engine operation,” patent No. 37435, submitted on January 29, 1884, to the Reich Patent Office in Berlin.

Although there had already been “auto-mobiles” powered by steam or electricity, Benz used the internal combustion engine as the drive system. The Imperial Patent Office 1886 Benz patent has been called the birth certificate of the automobile.

In August 1888, his wife Bertha would drive a Benz motorwagen from Mannheim to Pforzheim in a headline-making publicity stunt (see First Car, First Road Trip).

January 30, 1998 – Spy Ship relaunched as Ultra-Deep Drill Ship

Decades after secretly recovering parts of a lost Soviet ballistic missile submarine and after a $180 million shipyard conversion, the Glomar Explorer began its career as a record-setting, deep-water drill ship for the offshore petroleum industry.

Glomar Explorer in 1998 began a record-setting career as a drill ship. Photo courtesy American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Launched by Global Marine Drilling with a long-term lease of $1 million per year from the U.S. Navy, the world’s largest drill ship would spend 17 years drilling ultra-deep wells around the world. The pioneering vessel was originally the Hughes Glomar Explorer, launched in 1972 for the CIA’s “Project Azorian” to raise submarine K-129 from more than three miles deep.

Learn more in Secret History of Drill Ship Glomar Explorer.

January 31, 1888 – Death of a Famed Pennsylvania Oil Scout

Thirty-seven-year-old Justus McMullen, already a famous Pennsylvania oil scout, succumbed to pneumonia contracted while investigating production data from a well near Canonsburg, southwest of Pittsburgh.

Oil scouts like Justus McMullen of Bradford, Pennsylvania, braved harsh winters to gather intelligence about oil wells.

McMullen, an oilfield detective who published the Bradford “Petroleum Age” newspaper, contributed much to the early U.S. oil exploration and production industry. Sometimes called “night riders of the hemlocks,” oilfield scouts debunked rumors and demystified oil well production reports — sometimes despite armed guards.

Learn more in Oil Scouts – Oil Patch Detectives.

January 31, 1946 – Houston Petroleum Club founded

Texas independent producers founded the Petroleum Club of Houston. The group began meeting on the top floor of the Rice Hotel in downtown Houston in 1951. Club members hosted industry events and lunchtime business meetings where deals were made with a handshake. One wall featured a 21-foot tapestry of a geological cross-section of Texas.

Founded in 1946, the Petroleum Club of Houston began meeting at the Rice Hotel in 1951 before moving to the top three floors of the ExxonMobil building in 1963.

The Houston Petroleum Club moved to the ExxonMobil Building in 1963 and occupied 45,000 square feet on floors 43 and 44 before moving into the top floor of nearby Total Plaza in 2015.

February 1, 1868 – Oil Quality weighed for Pricing 

For the first time, crude oil price quotations began to be based on specific gravity — the heaviness of a substance compared to that of water. In the new oil regions of Pennsylvania, independent producers frequently met to sell shares of stock, argue prices, and enter into refining contracts that depended on the oil’s quality. Before the establishment of the Titusville Oil Exchange in 1871, producers gathered along Centre Street in Oil City, known as the “Curbside Exchange.”

In 1921, the American Petroleum Institute established API gravity, which would become the worldwide standard. Crude oil can be classified as light, medium, or heavy, according to its measured gravity.

February 1, 2021 — PESA and AESC become Energy Workforce & Technology Council

The Houston-based petroleum industry organization Energy Workforce & Technology Council emerged from a merger between the Petroleum Equipment & Services Association (PESA, founded in 1933) and the Association of Energy Service Companies (AESC, founded in 1956).

“The combined organization will represent more than 600 member companies in energy services, supply, manufacturing and drilling, and will focus on enabling our members to safely, profitably and sustainably produce the energy needed to meet rising demand around the world,” noted Leslie Beyer, CEO, Energy Workforce & Technology Council.

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Recommended Reading: The Black Giant: A History of the East Texas Oil Field and Oil Industry Skulduggery & Trivia (2003); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Slick Policy: Environmental and Science Policy in the Aftermath of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill (2018); It Happened in Oklahoma (2019); Bertha Takes a Drive: How the Benz Automobile Changed the World (2017);Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129 (2012); The Oil Scouts – Reminiscences of the Night Riders of the Hemlocks (1986); The Finest in the Land: The Story of the Petroleum Club of Houston (1984). 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. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History, January 26 – February 1 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.

The U.S. Geological Survey predicted America’s oil supplies would run out in 20 years. It was not the first nor last false alarm. Warnings of shortages were made for most of the 20th century, according to A Case History of Oil-Shortage Scares, a 1950 report that documented six claims prior to that year alone.

Among the earliest “end of oil” predictions was the Model T Scare of 1916, according to the report by geologist David Deming of the University of Oklahoma, followed by the John Bull (United Kingdom) Scare of 1920-1923. Then came the Ickes Petroleum Reserves Scare of 1943-1944 (named for Interior Secretary Harold Ickes) and the Cold War Scare of 1946-1948. Predictions of U.S. oil shortages began as early as 1879, when the Pennsylvania state geologist proclaimed remaining oil supplies could keep kerosene lamps burning for only four more years.

January 19, 1965 – “Underwater Manipulator” patented

Howard Shatto Jr. received a 1965 U.S. patent for his “underwater manipulator with suction support device.” His concept led to the modern remotely operated vehicle (ROV) now used most widely by the offshore petroleum industry. Shatto helped make Shell Oil Company an early leader in offshore oilfield technologies.

Howard Shatto Jr. would become “a world-respected innovator in the areas of dynamic positioning and remotely operated vehicles.”

Underwater robot technology can trace its roots to the late 1950s, when Hughes Aircraft developed a mobile, manipulator operated robot — Mobot — for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Beginning in 1960, Shell Oil began transforming the landlocked Mobot into a marine robot, “basically a swimming socket wrench,” noted one engineer.

In his 1965 patent — one of many he received — Shatto explained how his robot could install production equipment at greater depths than divers could safely work. The ROV inventor also would become known as the offshore industry’s father of dynamic positioning.

Learn more in ROV – Swimming Socket Wrench.

January 20, 1886 – Great Karg Well erupts Natural Gas in Ohio

A well drilled for oil near Findlay, Ohio, erupted with natural gas flowing at 12 million cubic feet per day from pressure that could not be controlled by technologies of the day. The “Great Karg Well” ignited into a flame that burned for four months and became a Findlay tourist attraction. Eight years earlier, a gas well in Pennsylvania had made similar headlines (see Natural Gas is King in Pittsburgh).

A plaque dedicated in 1937 at Findlay, Ohio, commemorated the state’s 1886 giant natural gas discovery.

Although Ohio’s first natural gas well was drilled in 1884 by the Findlay Natural Gas Company, the Karg well launched a gas-drilling boom that attracted manufacturing industries. Glassworks companies were lured by the inexpensive gas (also see Indiana Natural Gas Boom), and new businesses included eight window glass factories, two bottle, two chimney lamp, one light bulb, one novelty, and five for tableware.

By 1887, Findlay was known as the “City of Light,” according to a historical marker erected in 1987 at the first field office of the Ohio Oil Company, which adopted the name Marathon Oil in 1962. The Hancock Historical Museum has preserved Great Karg Well history less than two miles from the well site.

January 21, 1865 – Testing the Roberts Torpedo

Civil War veteran Col. Edward A.L. Roberts (1829-1881) conducted his first experiment to increase oil production by using an explosive charge deep in the well. Roberts twice detonated eight pounds of black powder 465 feet deep in the bore of the “Ladies Well” on Watson’s Flats south of Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Civil War veteran Col. E.A.L. Roberts demonstrated his oil well “torpedo” south of Titusville, Pennsylvania.

The “shooting” of the well was a success, increasing daily production from a few barrels of oil to more than 40 barrels, according to Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine. By 1870, Roberts’ torpedoes using nitroglycerin became common in oilfields.

In April 1865, Roberts received the first of many patents for his “exploding torpedo,” and one year later the Titusville Morning Herald reported, “Our attention has been called to a series of experiments that have been made in the wells of various localities by Col. Roberts, with his newly patented torpedo. The results have in many cases been astonishing.”

January 22, 1861 – Pennsylvania Stills produce Kerosene

The first U.S. multiple-still oil refinery was brought on-stream one mile south of Titusville, Pennsylvania, by William Barnsdall, who had drilled the second successful well after Edwin Drake’s first U.S. oil discovery. Barnsdall and partners James Parker and W.H. Abbott spent about $15,000 to build six stills for refining kerosene. Equipment was purchased in Pittsburgh and shipped up the Allegheny River to Oil City, where a refinery produced two grades of kerosene, white and the less expensive yellow.

January 22, 1910 – Standard Oil of California strikes Oil

Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) drilled its first successful oil well, a gusher in Kern County that initially produced 1,500 barrels of oil a day from the Midway-Sunset field. The discovery came after the 1906 merger of Pacific Coast Oil Company (see First California Oil Well) and Standard Oil Company of Iowa to create Socal.

Standard Oil Company of California (Socal) began in 1879 as the Pacific Coast Oil Company and was renamed Chevron in 1981. Image courtesy Chevron.

The new company needed more oil reserves after it had “stepped up its marketing efforts, particularly in gasoline sales, which nearly doubled between 1906 and 1910,” according to a company history. “Until now, Standard had left the hunt for oil to others.”

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1911 ordered Socal separated from its parent, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. After absorbing Standard Oil of Kansas in 1961 and making other acquisitions, the California company in 1984 rebranded as Chevron, headquartered in San Ramon.

January 23, 1895 – Standard Oil closes Oil Exchanges

Standard Oil Company of New Jersey’s purchasing agency in Oil City, Pennsylvania, notified independent oil producers it would only buy their oil at a price “as high as the markets of the world will justify” — and not “the price bid on the oil exchange for certificate oil.”

The Oil City, Pennsylvania, Oil Exchange was incorporated in 1874. Three years later, it was the third-largest U.S. financial exchange.

Oil City’s exchange had become the third largest financial exchange of any kind in America, behind New York and San Francisco. But with the Standard Oil Company buying 90 percent of oil production and setting its own price for certificates, all other oil exchanges soon closed.

Learn more in End of Oil Exchanges.

January 23, 1957 – Wham-O launches Flying Petroleum Product

Among the earliest mass-produced products made from plastic, the “Frisbee” was introduced by Wham-O Manufacturing Company of California. The polymer toy originated in 1948 when a company called Partners in Plastic sold its “Flyin’ Saucers” for 25 cents each. In 1955, Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin’s Wham-O bought the rights.

U.S. patent with mold details of a 1967 polyethylene plastic Frisbee.

The Wham-O founders discovered that Phillips Petroleum had invented a high-density polyethylene (called Marlex). They used the new plastic to meet phenomenal demand for manufacturing Frisbees — and Hula Hoops beginning in 1958.

Learn more in Petroleum Product Hoopla.

January 23, 1991 – Gulf War brings World’s Largest Oil Spill

The world’s largest oil spill began in the Persian Gulf when Saddam Hussein’s retreating Iraqi forces opened pipeline valves at oil terminals in Kuwait. About 11 million barrels of oil would cover an area extending 101 miles by 42 miles and reaching five inches thick in some places.

Iraqi soldiers sabotaged Kuwait’s main supertanker loading pier, dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf. By February, about 600 Kuwaiti wells had been set ablaze. It would take months to put out the well fires, with the last extinguished in early April (also see Oilfield Firefighting Technologies).

January 24, 1895 – Independent Producers found Pure Oil

To counter Standard Oil Company’s market dominance, Pennsylvania oil producers, refiners, and pipeline operators organized what would become a major Chicago-based oil venture. Originally based in Pittsburgh, Pure Oil Company quickly grew into the second vertically integrated U.S. petroleum company after Standard Oil.

Ohio Cities Gas acquired Pure Oil in 1920 and kept the popular Pennsylvania brand name.

Beginning in early 1896, Pure Oil marketed its petroleum products by horse-drawn tank wagons in Philadelphia and New York — successfully competing with Standard Oil’s monopoly. The Ohio Cities Gas Company of Columbus acquired Pure Oil and in 1920 adopted the former Pennsylvania venture’s brand name.

Pure Oil Company moved into its newly built 40-story Chicago headquarters on East Wacker Drive in 1926.

With a new Chicago headquarters opened in 1926, Pure Oil began exploring offshore technologies within a decade. The company developed early freestanding drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

January 25, 1930 – North Texas Oil Producers form Association

After meeting in Wichita Falls to protest “the recent drastic price cut in crude oil, inaugurated by some of the major purchasing companies,” 50 independent producers organized the North Texas Oil and Gas Association. Other issues included seeking a tariff on foreign oil imports and stopping “hot oil” oilfield thefts. The association merged with the West Central Texas Oil & Gas Association in 1998 to become the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.

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Recommended Reading: Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975); Ohio Oil and Gas, Images of America (2008); Diving & ROV: Commercial Diving offshore (2021); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); Pico Canyon Chronicles: The Story of California’s Pioneer Oil Field (1985). Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (2004); Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century (1996); Against the Fires of Hell: The Environmental Disaster of the Gulf War (1992); The Birth of the Oil Industry (1938); Groundbreakers: The Story of Oilfield Technology and the People Who Made it Happen (2015). 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. Become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026  Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

The post This Week in Petroleum History, January 19 – 25 appeared first on American Oil & Gas Historical Society.