Spindle Top Research Paper

On June 10th, 1999 a gasoline pipeline ruptured in Whatcom Falls Park. This park is located in Bellingham, Washington where the pipeline was controlled by the Olympic Pipeline Company. This break in the gasoline pipeline let over a million liters of gasoline flow into a nearby river in the park. After about an hour and a half the gasoline in the river ignited and caught on fire. The fire burnt along the river for one and a half miles. As a result of the gasoline catching on fire, three people were killed with another eight people injured. It has been estimated that total damages to property reach as high as 45 million dollars. This pipeline explosion was a horrible disaster that could have been avoided for a variety of reasons.

Settlers used oil as an illuminant for medicine and as grease for wagons and tools. Rock oil distilled from shale became avaialable as kerosene even before the industrial revolution began. While traveling in Austria, John Austin, A new york merchant, observed an effective, cheap oil lamp and made a model that upgraded kerosene lamps. Soon the u.s rock oil industy boomed as whale oil increased in price owing to the corporation, which was created to develop oil found floating on water near titusville, Pennsylvania, was the pennsylvania rock oil company of conneticut ( later the seneca oil company). Pipelines early became a major consideration in standards drive to gain buisness and profits. Samuel syckel had built a four-mile pipeline from pithole,

Morris, J., & Song, L. (2013, September 16). Study Delivers Good News, Bad News on

Texas’ history with oil starts much earlier than the 1901 Spindletop gusher. As early as 1543, there were reports of natural oil seeps along the coast of Texas which was used as both medical treatments and caulking for boats by Spanish explorers (Wooster). In 1866, the first of Texas’ oil producing wells was drilled in Nacogdoches County, however the supply and profit was not high enough to justify further development. In 1895 in Corsicana, Texas there was a minor oil find that led to the creation of Texas’ first oil refinery in Nacogdoches, Texas. Another large oil find is the East Texas Oil Field which spans 140,000 acres and is considered to be the largest oil field in the United States (excluding Alaska); this oil field has produced over 5.2 billion barrels from its 30,340 historic and active oil wells (Smith).

    Due to the amount of money that people get paid for locating large amounts of oil, around the early 1920´s Texas A&M University was searching for a well.  Finding oil can also lower the cost for because you have a well yourself.  In May 28 1923, they struck a very good one and it started to gush.  This caused it to start a building boom and Texas A&M got 4.4 million dollars richer by 2008.

On Saturday afternoon, a magnitude 4.5 earthquake hit only three miles northwest of Cushing, Oklahoma; home to one of the largest oil storage facilities in the world, Cushing Hub. The federal government, which designated the hub, and scientists watching the area are concerned of the high possibility of a larger earthquake seriously damaging the storage tanks and pipelines, which could then lead to environmental damage, a risk of fire, and could disrupt the flow of oil throughout the country. The Cushing quake isn't the first of its kind; Oklahoma is now the second most seismically active state due to the tens of millions of barrels of injected wastewater which have lubricated the cracks and and two stretches of fault, making it easier for the

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

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

On the afternoon of January 28, 1969, a terrible environmental disaster occurred when a well blowout on the Union Oil Company platform A, causing one of the largest oil spill in the United States. The platform was located in Summerland Oil Field pier which 6 miles east of city of Santa Barbara. Riggers desperately tried to repair the well before oil started spreading to the shoreline. Needless to say, the effects of the oil spill sparked outrage from the local community and the media that inevitably caused ecological effects, safety and ethical concerns. It took oil workers a total of 11 days to cap the ruptured pipe, while an estimated 3 million gallons of poisonous black crude oil showered the Pacific Ocean. Sadly, oceans

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

The Three Spinners is a German folktale collected by the Grimm Brothers. These brothers added the psychological motives of the characters. Three Spinners is not the most popular Grimm Brother fairy tale, but it reveals the way that traditional folk tales could appeal to poor peasant. The tale is a about a girl who would not spin, so her mother beat her so badly her cries were heard by the Queen across the street.

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.

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

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

On April 20, the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico led to the largest accidental release of oil into marine waters in history. As a result, a huge loss of money and life was caused and affected serious environmental damage to wild animals and water pollution. BP was accused of their irresponsibility that it took 87 days before the well was closed and sealed. BP’s shares