The History of Oil's Use in Society
The oil industry as we know it today has roots in another oil used a
long time ago. This oil at the time was used to fuel lamps and was
considered a technological
advancement over the
candle. The oil being used
was harvested from the
ocean in the form of blubber
from the Sperm whale. This
particular whale oil was
considered to be of the
highest quality, as it did not
create smoke or odors while
being burnt. Sadly the
Sperm whale was hunted to the point that supply became scarce. It
was the mid 1800’s and a need for an alternate lamp fuel had arisen.
Around 1854 George
Bissell began to
experiment with a
black liquid
substance, referred
to as “rock oil”, that
ignited when
touched by a flame.
Believing that this
new found
substance could be
refined and utilized
as an alternate fuel
to whale oil, Bissell,
along with a few
additional investors,
created the Seneca
Oil Company in New
Haven, Connecticut.
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Drilling was already a widely used technology, although generally for
different purposes, so the natural inclination was to drill for the oil. The
man hired to oversee the job site at Oil Creek was Edwin L. Drake. The
man Drake hired to do the drilling was William A. Smith. Beginning with
a length of metal conduit that the drill tools would be used inside of,
Smith and Drake finished building the drilling rig structure and began
to drill for oil. Known as the Drake
Well, this is considered to be the first well created in the U.S. for the
sole purpose of extracting the oil from the ground.
Soon drilling for oil would catch on from Oil Creek’s Pennsylvania
origins to California and Texas. One particular location near Beaumont,
Texas named Spindetop would become the site of yet another
technological
advancement in
the drilling for oil.
Spindletop, or “Big
Hill”, stuck out like
a sore thumb in
comparison to the
flat land
surrounding
Beaumont, so in
1890 after
acquiring the
land to Spindletop,
Patillo Higgin’s
along with a
partner attempted
to drill for oil.
Higgin’s ran into
trouble while digging the well that prevented him from reaching the oil
resivoir so he looked to rent his land to an oil prospector.
Anthony Lucas, an Austrian mining engineer, joined Higgin’s only to fail
in his first attempt. Lucas then hired the Hamil brothers who were well
known in Texas for drilling and were some of the first to utilize a new
type of drill technology called the rotary drill. Unlike the Drake Well
that was made using a cable-tool drilling rig, the well at Spindle Hill
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was finally tapped by using the newer rotary drill. This type of drill is
the same style of drill that we use today in the majority of oil drilling
operations.
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