Spindle Top Research Paper

Ever since the day that Spindletop started to gush, oil has been very important to the region.  Oil has lead to new inventions and also expansions to places like schools.  It also gave people jobs because people can get paid for locating and drilling oil.     Due to the amount of

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

Oil and Texas: A Cultural History "Soon the 4-inch drill pipe…shot skyward. After the mud, water, and pipe were blown out, gas followed, but only for a short time. Then the well was very quiet. We ventured back, after our wild scramble for safety, to find things in a terrible mess...We started shoveling the mud away-when, without warning, a lot of heavy mud shot out of the well with the report of a cannon…In a very short time oil was going up through the top of the derricks, and rocks were being shot hundreds of feet into the air. Within a very few minutes, the oil was holding a steady flow at more than twice the height of the derrick…”

The Progressive Era The Progressive Era took place in the first two decades of the twentieth century from 1900’s to 1930’s. The Progressive Era was to help the economy for people who lived in America. Some of the ways Americans would try to help were make improvements on working conditions,

The North Dakota Pipeline Oil has been an important resource of energy in America “since the discovery of the Spindletop geyser in 1901. It drove huge growth in the oil industry in America. Within a year, more than 1,500 oil companies had been chartered, and oil became the dominant fuel of the 20th century and an integral part of the American economy” (History.com Staff). This had developed the construction of pipelines to move the oil within the country and offshore in coastal waters. Recently, the federal government approved the construction of a new pipeline that would be transporting crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

Hydraulic Fracturing in Alabama I. Introduction A) Oil Crisis- unsustainable form of energy for America a) America’s population is increasing each year b) Estimated 500 million by 2050 c) Energy use d) Oil prices increasing B) Fracking in Alabama a) 1st drilling in Alabama occurred in the Black Warrior Basin (1970s) II. Background Information A) Shale a) Conesauga Shale, Alabama Northern Alabama Activity is in St. Clair, Etowah, and Cullman counties. b) Floyd Shale, Alabama Gas exploration target in the Black Warrior Basin of northern Alabama and Mississippi B) Fracking Practices a) Fracturing fluids injected under high pressure ground creating fissures that allow gas and oil to move (1999, August 30). Fracturing fuss. The Oil and Gas Journal, 97(35), 37. Retrieved fromhttp://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA55757757&v=2.1&u=jack26672&I t=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=7737ba518ce3e5dc48a14afd88091e2d Hydraulic Fracturing 101. (2013, January 1). Retrieved October 1, 2014, from http://www.energyfromshale.org/hydraulic-fracturing/shale-ga Hydraulic Fracturing Background Information. (2012, May 9). Retrieved October 1, 2014. http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/wells_hydrowhat.cf m Hydraulic Fracturing: The Process. (2014, January 1). Retrieved October 1, 2014, from http://fracfocus.org/hydraulic-fracturing-how-it-works/hydraulic-fracturing-process Morris, J., & Song, L. (2013, September 16). Study Delivers Good News, Bad News on

Black gold or otherwise known as petroleum, was a great impact and change to certain places and created a new source of fuel for rapid trading and industrialization. It changed the face of Texas after the Texas oil boom had occurred in 1901. Saudi Arabia is probably one of

Earthquakes: Hydraulic Fracturing in Texas Paragraph 1: Hydraulic fracking is a hot topic across the state of Texas. There are debates whether fracking is the actual cause of the sudden earthquakes in Texas. Fracking is an intense process where natural gas is extracted deep from within the earth. Drillers from oil and gas companies use a horizontal drilling technique that is initiated as a vertical casing and then makes a 90 degree turn. This allows the well to follow the natural fractures of shale rock. A fracking fluid mixed of water, sand, and chemicals is injected with high-pressure down the well. The fluid produces several small cracks in the shale, creating a pathway for the gas to enter and flow out of the well casing. Each well can

In 2000, shale beds where the number one source of America’s constant need for gas. Most of that production increase has come about to the growing need of hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking”, which is a process used to release oil or gas from underground formations that are otherwise too hard to mine with other tools. Over the past few years, advances in fracking technology have made huge reserves of natural gas in America economically recoverable. According to the Energy Information Administration, shale gas plays, or fields, in the United States, most notably the Marcellus, in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and New York, and the Barnett, in Texas, are said to contain enough natural gas to give power to the country for a hundred and ten years. With the everlasting specter of energy independence, some have argued that such efforts to recover natural gas need to be expanded. Activists concerned with fracking’s potential environmental hazards view the new process as a serious threat to our environment. There are many different opinions on wether or not fracking is a safe way to gain our gasoline, and to meet the growing demands of gasoline around the world. The process of fracking creates cracks that come from wells into oil and gas formations by pumping highly pressurized fluids, ceramic beads, sand, and a mixture of chemicals, into the gas formation. As this fluid holds the underground fissures open, oil and gas fly up the well to the surface where they are

Pipelines are making headlines lately for all the wrong reasons. It is important to address why they are perceived to be harmful, if they actually are, and how they can be improved for the future, or if they should be eliminated. The use of pipelines date back as far as 500BC

In 1898 the Magnolia Pettroleum Company opened their refinery on the Corsicana oil field. The field set the precedent for the commercial oil production in state. This promoted exploration of oil reserves in Texas. Corsicana oilfield discovery was a massive in bringing Texas into the national oil industry. In 1902, the Spindletop well located south of Beaumont was one of the biggest impacts in oil production discovery. This discovery brought in over seventeen million barrels of oil. From a year of its discovery 500 Texas oil companies were operating at Spindletop. This success of Spindletop promoted many oil companies to start drilling the Gulf Coast to search for identical results. Throughout the next century in Texas, the oil industry had then spread throughout the

“Rockefeller built an empire in a world without automobiles, finding profit by selling kerosene and lamp oil. By the turn of the century, the internal-combustion engine was generating demand for a new product: gasoline.”4 In comes the Lone Star State, to solve the worlds energy problem “Jan. 10, 1901, the modern American oil industry began on Spindletop Hill, south of Beaumont, Texas.”4 The big hill, located 4 miles south of Beaumont, Texas was formed millions of years ago with a giant underground dome made of salt. A man named Anthony Lucas from Austria, a former salt miner, was baffled at this big hill, which was actually only 12 feet high in elevation over the prairie lands. Lucas contacted some Pennsylvania oilmen for some help. The Pennsylvanian’s travel to Texas, surveyed a nice spot on the hill, and on October 27, 1900 the gusher was spudded. Spindletop had been drilled before, but never by a rotary drilling rig. Drilling is difficult at first. “There is little in the way of rock at the surface in that part of the world. Instead, oil wildcatters had to drill through several hundred feet of sand,”5 Due to the high sand content the well continually caved in, and one of the Pennsylvanians decided to try mud instead of water to help. This advancement changed the game for drilling, and is still used to drill wells today. The “Lucas Gusher” will erupt more than 150 feet into the air. It begins flowing at an astounding 100,000 barrels per day from a depth of 1,010

Eagle Ford Shale Play Introduction Since the beginning of the oilfield in the United States, Texas has been one of the leading states in this industry. In 1866, Lyne T. Barret drilled the first producing oil well at Melrose in Nacogdoches County [7]. From here, more wells were brought in, but the big Texas oil revolution began at a well-called Lucas No. 1. It was here, In Spindle top, Beaumont, where Capt. Anthony F. Lucas drilled the well that would produce 94 percent of the state’s production at the time and produce more than 17 million barrels of oil [7]. Now, 114 years later, Texas has given up another oil field play that will revolutionize the industry. This play is named Eagle Ford Shale. Figure 1 shows where the shale outcrops

The government was changing oil prices and driving them up from $0.35 to around $13.75 a barrel in 1962. This create a large oil drilling glut with thousands of people trying to make millions. Many failed but the ones who struck oil didn’t have to be efficient as they would blow holes in the ground and gather up all the oil they could. Often the holes leaded to creeks or rivers flowing wasted oil in the

diameter. It is a dominantly preservational basin, commonly linked to larger tectonic features. Its clearly described rock succession, modest burial history and simple tectonics make this an uncomplicated area to study oils. In the Canadian and American parts of the Williston Basin occur