The horizontal drilling techniques of today’s oil patch are the culmination of a long series of technological advances begun in the earliest days of the oil and gas industry. Originally, directional drilling—or sidetracking—using a variety of deflection drilling devices was developed to solve a number of problems associated with well drilling. In those very first […]
Roll On
by Paul Wiseman From the last mile, in almost every case, to every mile in many cases, trucks are indispensable in today’s delivery-based economy. Nowhere is that more true than in the oil patch, where trucks haul everything from drill pipe to drilling rigs to the oil itself, over tens of thousands of road-miles every […]
They Swung into Spring
It was a balmy and beautiful Monday, the 17th of April, when the membership of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association took over the Links Course and the Old Course at the magnificent Odessa Country Club and once again participated in the grand tradition that is PBPA’s Spring Swing Golf Tournament. This four-man scramble brings food, […]
API says U.S. petroleum demand fell in April year-to-year for fifth straight month
Washington, D.C.-based American Petroleum Institute said this week that U.S. petroleum demand – as measured by total domestic petroleum deliveries – increased by only 17,000 barrels per day in April compared to March (to 19.8 million b/d). But compared to April 2022, U.S. petroleum demand fell 0.8 percent – the fifth straight month of year-to-year […]
The World’s Biggest Oilfield
Saint Rita of Cascia (Italy), later to be known as the Patron Saint of the Impossible, left this earth on May 27, 1357. Exactly 466 years and one day later (May 22, 1923), a well named after her, extending about 3,050 feet into the earth she’d left, began alternately flowing, and blowing out, for about […]
How Oil Populated the Permian Basin
Population growth created by the first ten years of oil production in the Permian Basin was remarkable. Once the Big Lake field began to develop, a veritable deluge of oil men poured into the Permian Basin. As it turned out, during the mid to late 1920s, that vast lightly inhabited region with no known oil […]
A Company Town for the Ages
There are few examples of the company town concept in oil country. Some come close, like the town of Philips near Borger up in the Panhandle. Others, like the company camp concept, fall peripherally within that range. The reasons they do not qualify are threefold. A company town, to be rightly deemed as such, must […]
Railroad Commission says Eastland County lake safe for recreational use
Railroad Commission of Texas said Feb. 20 it notified City of Gorman that Bass Lake in Frank Gray Memorial Park in Eastland County has been determined to be safe for recreational use. The spring-fed lake on the edge of the Barnett Shale was contaminated in April 1990 when a pipeline ruptured and spilled 294,000 gallons […]
Crossing the Line
We convened down at the Rig #8 this past Friday for our weekly alcohol-fueled sojourn down memory lane. This time the subject came up concerning some of the more wealthy members of our little oil patch fraternity and how they got that way. There were the usual yarns about old so-and-so and how he drilled […]
Born on a Prayer
Although completion of the Santa Rita #1 well in Reagan County in 1923 was preceded by the Mitchell County Abrams #1 (1920) and the Loving County Russell #1 (1921), firsts do not necessarily denote the most important. The Santa Rita well, which was in the same 100-barrel production range as those which preceded it, received […]
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