Drilling or “making hole” began long before oil or natural gas were anything more than flammable curiosities found seeping from the ground. For centuries, digging by hand or shovel was the best technology that existed to pry into the earth’s secrets.
Then the spring pole harnessed the resiliency of a bent tree to assist in pummeling a hole into the ground to find water. Ancient histories record the technique, which is still used in some corners of the world. While repeatedly kicking down a stirrup was primitive and slow, the spring pole’s rope and chisel were practical drilling technologies.
A decade before the birth of the petroleum industry, Samuel Kier sold 50-cent, half-pint bottles of Pennsylvania oil proclaiming its "Wonderful Medical Virtues." His advertisements featured cable tool derricks drilling brine wells. (Graphics courtesy of American Oil and Gas Historical Society) |
The Ruffner brothers' drilling ingenuity and innovation made the
Although there was money to be made from salt brine wells, sometimes a good well would be fouled with the intrusion of unsought and unwanted oil. The rainbow sheen and pungent smell of oil was bad news to brine drillers.
The cable tool rig
The advent of cable tool drilling introduced the wooden derrick into the changing American landscape.
Using the same basic notion of chiseling a hole deeper and deeper into the earth, but adding the miracle of steam power and clever mechanical engineering, wells could be drilled far more efficiently. Frequent stops were needed to remove the chipped-away rock and other material, bail out water — and sharpen the bit.
The "spring pole," a simple but highly effective technology for drilling shallow water wells, dates back to thousands of years. |
It had long been recognized that oil could be collected and used as a medicine; lubricant; and even a foul-smelling, smoky illuminant. American Indians gathered oil by using blankets to soak it up from natural seeps. The Ruffner brothers sold their oil to marketers of patent medicines and lubrication products.
Kier sold his Petroleum or “Rock Oil” in half-pint bottles as a guaranteed curative for all manner of aches and pains. His advertisements prominently featured cable tool derricks drilling for brine, water saturated with salt.
When a Yale chemist, Benjamin Silliman, found that oil could be distilled into a kerosene illuminant, the world changed forever. Inspired entrepreneurs formed the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. with the notion of using cable tool drilling to extract large volumes of oil they hoped to find near
Kier soon abandoned patent medicine and went into the kerosene refining business, buying all the oil he could get.
“Colonel” Edwin Drake’s 1859 discovery brought the oil boom. Soon, cable tool rigs were everywhere, pounding into the earth, searching for oil. In June 1860, J.C. Rathbone used a steam engine to power a rig and produced a 100-b/d gusher at only 140 ft (43 m). In
The rotary rig
A new technology answered the call of necessity and the lure of opportunity. Rotary drilling is most often associated with the spectacular Spindletop Hill discovery near
Fishtail bits became obsolete in 1909 when Howard Hughes Sr. introduced the twin-cone roller bit. Rather than scraping the rock, a milled tooth bit drilled by gouging, crushing and powdering the rock as it turned. |
Rotary drilling uses fluids (drilling mud) to circulate out the rock as it is chipped away. The fluid washes out the drill hole as it goes, making the process more efficient. Drilling mud also stops an oil well from bursting forth unexpectedly — gushers. Meanwhile, grinding their way through layers of rock rather than pounding, the heavy fishtail bits made history.
Rotary rigs soon became the preferred means of drilling for oil, although to this day they still share the oilpatch with a few cable tool rigs. The change in technology was not without friction. Cable tool drillers sometimes referred to rotary drillers as “swivelnecks” or “mud hogs” while the rotary men called their cable tool contemporaries “ropechokers” or “jarheads.”
According to one ropechoker, “If your hole ain’t straight when you’re drilling with cable tools, you’re plumb out of luck — you can’t get any motion on the tools, and the casing won’t go in. But a crooked hole don’t mean anything with a rotary; they’re crooked more often than not.”
The record depth recorded for a cable tool rig is 11,145 ft (3,397 m). On
Fishtail bits became obsolete in 1909 when Howard Hughes Sr. introduced the twin-cone roller bit. History remembers several men who were trying to develop better drill bit technologies, but it was Hughes who made it happen. The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) notes that about the same time Hughes developed his bit, Granville A. Humason of
More innovations followed. Frank Christensen and George Christensen developed the earliest diamond bit in 1941. The tungsten carbide tooth came into use in the early 1950s. The company Hughes founded would merge in 1987 with one founded in 1927 by Carl Baker (Baker Oil Tool).
Just 6 years later, near Conroe, Texas, the new science of directional drilling made news when a Long Beach, Calif., company begun by H. (Harlan) John Eastman was called in to stanch a 6,000 b/d oilfield blowout.
“Slanted oil wells are the latest sensation of the oil industry,” begins a May 1934 Popular Science Monthly article, reporting Eastman’s technological success. “Only a handful of men in the world have the strange power to make a bit, rotating a mile belowground at the end of a steel drill pipe, snake its way in a curve or around a dog-leg angle, to reach a desired objective.”
In 1990, Baker Hughes purchased Eastman Christensen, which in 1992 resulted in the industry’s first rolling cone bit company and first diamond bit company becoming today’s Hughes Christensen, a Baker Hughes Co.
The search for oil continues today, building on history's successes. Almost 3,000 rotary rigs are at work around the world, and drilling technology continues to evolve, making history along the way.
Editor’s Note – Biographers note that Howard Hughes Sr. met Granville Humason in a