An epilog to the LinkedIn post by Joe Dancy at…
LinkedIn Article by Joe Dancy,Texas A&M Law Senior Lecturer of Law & Economics:
Today, 191 years ago, boring for salt brine with a simple spring-pole device on a farm near Burkesville, Kentucky, Martin Beatty found oil at 171 feet. Drilled in 1829 about 250 miles north of Nashville, the Kentucky “salt well” produced about 50,000 barrels of oil in three weeks. Disappointed, he searched elsewhere. Because oil from his well would be bottled and sold, some historians consider Beatty’s discovery the earliest commercial oil well in North America. Beatty, an experienced salt driller from Pennsylvania, had drilled brine wells to meet growing demand from settlers needing the dried salt to preserve food. He bored his wells by percussion drilling – raising and dropping a chisel from a sapling, an ancient technology for making hole. Historian Sheldon Baugh described the scene of Beatty’s oil well of March 11, 1829: Well-driller Beatty bragged to bystanders “Today I’ll drill her into salt or else to Hell.” When the gusher erupted he apparently thought he’d succeeded in hitting “hell”! As the story goes “he ran off into the hills and didn’t come back.” A later newspaper account reported Beatty’s well was neglected for years, “until it was discovered that the oil possessed valuable medicinal qualities.” Not the last time oil would ruin a ‘good’ salt well.
(written in 2020)
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gusher-signals-start-of-u-s-oil-industry
Hi Joe thanks for sharing the American Oil Well story. I would like to share an epilog!
39 years ago, I was sitting in my Albany, KY office with my feet on the desk thinking about how I could pay for one drill rig too many. A guy came into my office (who later became a US Congressman) but that day he had his promoter’s hat on.
The River of Fire Incident
He told me of the Old American Oil Well drilled in 1829 in search of salt. During this time frame, whale blubber was the lubricant of choice. There were no autos or trucks, and less than 20 miles of track existed for a new concept: the train. Oil was considered a novelty when it seeped out of the ground.
The 1829 Beatty well was a blow out, gusher, and a massive volume of oil from this well spilled into the river, and later caught on fire, created a terrifying sight to settlers a few miles downstream, who knew nothing of the blowout, or for that matter, oil.
This sight resulted in a few people committing suicide in the face of the certain end of the world! They were witnessing the river of fire of biblical prophecy complete with fast moving flames, smoke, and heat. Everyone knew water didn’t burn! The tragedy to this day is referred to as the “River of Fire Incident.”
The Heirs said “Drill it!”
For nearly two centuries a certain adjoining property had remained in the same hands and the family owners considered not drilling any further as sacrosanct and it became the only undrilled parcel in an area known for high volume over-pressured oil wells at shallow depths of 1000′-1600′. Eventually, the family fathers passed away and long distant heirs took over and they said, “Are you kidding? Drill here, drill now!”
The family of my future friend, a US Congressman, were oil and gas operators in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado. They were seeking a drilling partner and, aware of my recent success in hitting a relatively shallow oil well producing 2,000 barrels per day in the adjoining county, making me an ideal candidate. Their intuition correct! Believing I could achieve that depth with a post hole digger and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, I eagerly accepted the offer to drill in exchange for a share of the profits and coverage of fuel expenses.
Great Expectations!
We set up on that drill site with great expectations! We drilled the magic 200′ – nothing. Then 1000′ – crickets. 1500′ nicely colored rock chips with no fluorescence, and TD at 2000′ nothing.
The Congressman’s father was an old-time driller himself who was in the torpedo business. He speculated that since we were chasing fractures we probably had just missed it. So, he lowered quite a large charge of nitro down the hole and set it off, hoping to break into one of the fractures. Nope. Nada. Nothing. (The nitro probably turned the downhole sands into glass at some point! )
Back to Nature
I’m pretty sure after we had rigged down and left the drill site, the last thing I saw was a squirrel sitting on the casing head, although I could be wrong about that.
South Kentucky in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s was the epicenter of a great fracture play that resulted in numerous high volume wells at shallow depth. The idea of returning the entire investment in a few days created great excitement, hoards of promoters, and many, many fun times and stories. In the end, just like the famous gold rush, most lost money and the only sure thing were profits made by the supply houses and contractors. 😎
Glenn M Sitter, Sitter Drilling
https://linkedin.com/in/fasthorses
Epilog: At the time of the Burkesville Old American Oil Well blowout, there were no “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” However, a few years later, oil was discovered to have medicinal properties, and the first consumers of oil, literally drank the stuff, which was pedaled from the back of covered wagons by “Snake Oil” salesmen. I sometimes wonder how we as a society, survived long enough to benefit from the true use of oil and the Industrial Revolution! LOL