Essay about Oil and Texas: A Cultural History

In 1920s and 1930s, oil became a big boom in Texas. Roustabouts came from all over Texas. Oil could be made out of gasoline, natural gas and kerosene. Let’s talk about Texas Oil and social change in Texas. I’ve chosen to talk about minotersin west Texas, coogle in parts of Texas, and the divorce rates.

When oil was first discovered it was “Discovered of the spindle top oilfield near Beaumont in January 10, 1901 marked the opening of the prosperous phase of the business in Texas.” But not long after discovering in Texas it would soon be discovered in Oklahoma in 1905. Shortly after 1910 more oil was being founded and more was coming out of Texas. By the end of the Progressive Era in 1920’s “Texas was producing 85,000,000 barrels per year with even more dramatic increase

The History of Texas Texas history itself had its own amazing story. The small number of American settlers moved to the land of Texas had led to the dramatic war with the Mexicans. The land of Texas was used to be owned by Mexicans. Due to the argument between Texans and Mexicans caused the battle of San Jacinto and Mexican War. In long ago before American settlers moved to Texas, this place was so rich and an abundance of land.

Texas political culture is one that can be described as a combination of three main ideas: individualistic, traditionalism and moralism. Considering Texas and its overwhelming 254 counties we can see these main ideas undoubtedly. The 254 counties each have their own general set of ideas, attitudes and beliefs. The whole state of Texas is simply not just considered individualistic, traditionalism, or moralism, it is considered all three. Individualistic, traditionalism and moralism are all strong values that coexist in our society and they all affect how we as the people live our lives. A political culture shapes a region’s politics.

In Texas, there is an economic powerhouse that not only runs deep beneath fields of cotton, but also reaches miles beyond the green pastures of cattle. Its multitude of uses in daily life also far outweighs the benefits of technology. This resource, greater than any other in Texas, is oil. In 1866 the first commercial oil well was dug near Nacogdoches, Texas but unfortunately the well came up dry. Thirty years later in 1894 oil was discovered in Corsicana, Texas by accident while a water well was being dug. This was the first economically significant discovery of oil in Texas. On January 10, 1901, Texas was catapulted into the era of oil and gas with the discovery at Spindletop. The Spindletop well, located south of Beaumont produced roughly

This particular document was also important because oil impacted an event that led to Texas universities start growing and creating a higher opportunity of education for students. Oil wells were created in the Big Lake Field, and this made the University of Texas to become wealthier because of the money the oil wells produced. In 1931, the legislature split the oil money, two-thirds went to University of Texas, and one-third went to Texas A&M University. Because of the production of oil wells and oil in Texas, colleges and universities were able to become more efficient and open new opportunities to students. For the 10 minute segment of the radio broadcast, Document 3 will receive the

When people hear the word oil it is commonly interpreted as gas, but the oil that we drill is not what goes into our cars. The oil that is retrieved from the ground is called crude oil, Oil in its raw natural form and when it becomes refined it is used in plastics, rubber, and gasoline. ”Gasoline is a volatile, flammable liquid obtained from the refinement of petroleum, or crude oil. It was originally discarded as a byproduct of kerosene production.” The first oil well was found and harvested in Titusville, Pennsylvania by a man named Edwin L. Drake, in 1859. The well was about 70 feet deep (How gas). It pumped between 20-40 barrels a day

From March 2, 1836 to February 19, 1846, Texas as its own independent country in North America. Those who resided in this independent country were referred to as Texians. Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836 during the Texas revolution which ended on April 21 of that same exact year. However, Mexico did not want to give the Republic of Texas its independence which resulted in conflicts between that of Texas and Mexico that went on into the 1840s. As a result, The United States of America recognized the Republic of Texas as an independent country in 1837 but failed to append their land. Later receiving its independence, Texas elected a Congress of fourteen senators and twenty-nine representatives in the month of September and year of 1836. However, within the Republic, citizenship was not a privileged for everybody living in Texas. Not everybody had legal rights to reside within the limits of the Republic without Congress permission. The Constitution of the Republic of Texas created differences for each and every ethnicity for each individual person. Meaning, whoever was there on the day the Republic of Texas won their independence had to be classified as a citizen of the Republic including Africans, those with African descent, and Native Americans. For Caucasian immigrants to become citizens they would have to had lived in the Republic for six months or less and take an oath. Those who were brought to Texas as a slave had to stay a

When the 1900s struck, life in Texas changed forever. Oil was spitting out of a rig waiting to make the people of Texas richer than ever before by making more than a few people rich. Oil was discovered in Texas making many people go searching for their dreams of precious black gold by hiring skilled workers and roustabouts to setup drills until it came splashing out of the top. In our radio series, we will look at what the impact of finding oil had on life in Texas, and people’s social lives. Oil had a large impact on society in Texas, and the most important of the social changes were how African Americans made more money, divorce rates increasing drastically, and how close people lived to each other.

As the Texas oil industry grew, so did related industries. Some companies began producing oil by-products such as petrochemicals. Others produced pipelines, barrels, and oil-field equipment. As these companies began moving into oil towns such as Houston, Beaumont, and Port Arthur, they further expanded the local economies. Some moved into small towns, quickly turning them into cities. In North Texas the town of Wichita Falls grew from 8,200 residents in 1910 to about 40,000 in 1920.The state income also increased from just over $101,000 in 1906 to $5.9 million in 1929, largely due to the oil

Rockefeller introduced new techniques that completely reshaped the oil industry as well as how business was run. In 1859, Edwin Drake discovered oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and Rockefeller was quick to foresee a future. He was persuaded that refining oil would bring immense wealth and so he began to sell off his other interests. Around 1863, Rockefeller and several partners entered the booming oil industry by investing in a Cleveland Refinery. During the 19th century, kerosene was in high demand and during the process of refining crude oil to kerosene, there were many byproducts that many saw as waste, but thrifty Rockefeller saw it as gold. Byproducts such as petroleum jelly was sold to medical supply companies, paraffin to candlemakers, and other wastes as paving materials for roads. He kept shipping a plethora of goods, therefore, railroad companies drooled over the prospect of getting his business. Due to the immense use of railroads, Rockefeller demanded discounted rates, or rebates from them. The high cost of transporting his oil to his Cleveland refineries cost 40 cents

The issue of whether offshore oil drilling is a safe operation or not has been arguing for a long time in the United States. ( SPE International, N.D.) Drilling on water started in early 1930s in Louisiana by shallow-draft barges. Nevertheless, the first oil well on water was drilled in 9th of September, 1947 by Kerr-McGee’s unit Tender Assist Drilling (TAD) in the Gulf of Mexico (SPE International, N.D.). A year after year, oil companies used more and more sophisticated equipment to drill on water, but the number of spilled accidents has been rising since 1964 (Ivanovich, and Hays, 2008). After all, while

Further, BP estimated that the Cusiana and Cupiagua oil fields had oil reserves for a total of 2 billion barrels of oil, with the Cusiana oil field accounting for 1.5 billion barrels of oil and the Cupiagua oil field the other 500 million barrels of oil (Knott, 1993). It is important to note that recently the oil reserves in the Cusiana oil field had been estimated to be much lower. The field is estimated to have 750 million barrels, but is still one of the major fields in all of

As it is known, World War II went on between 1939 and 1945. Many would think that the export and production of oil would decrease, but the exact opposite happened. During World War II Egypt was close to almost doubling its output of oil despite the conflicts that were going on around the globe. Along with the great production and output of oil from Egypt, after World War II the success of oil discovery continued. “The first post-war exploration success came in 1946 when Anglo-Egyptian Oilfields Ltd. in partnership with Socony-Vacuum oil Co., struck oil in a wildcat well at Sudr, on the east coast of the Sinai Peninsula” (Middle East Reservoir Review 23). This well soon proved to be crucial in the next two years after the war, it was

After years of hard work by our geologists, geophysicists, and reservoir engineers, an oil field was discovered. Before deciding whether to develop this field or not, an economic assessment of our potential production options