The month of March is known for wind. Which we’ve experienced plenty of in the last month. And of course April is known for showers. But let me tell you, April is no slouch in the wind department. As you’re probably seeing right now, wherever you stand, in the Permian Basin. As I write these […]
The Ability to Drill a Crooked Hole on Purpose
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Permian Basin #1
Just one hundred years ago this year, some 19 years following the Spindletop discovery on the Gulf Coast that made Texas the leading oil producing state in the nation, the first successful oil well in what was to become known as the Permian Basin was drilled. At the time the region was viewed as a […]
Keeping Memories Alive
The history of any 100-year-old oilfield can be told from various perspectives. Ginger Birdwell Beisch’s book about the KMA Field uses several, including her own voice. The idea to write the book came from her little brother, Michael Bruce Birdwell. He’s pictured at age four in the oilfield scene on the cover of the book. […]
Gone Fishing
Here’s how Schlumberger’s Glossary defines a “fish”: Anything left in a wellbore. It does not matter whether the fish consists of junk metal, a hand tool, a length of drill pipe or drill collars, or an expensive MWD and directional drilling package. Once the component is lost, it is properly referred to as simply “the […]