Spindletop

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Spindletop the Boom Heard Round the World
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• Discovery of oil on January 10, 1901 at
  Spindletop, a small hill south of Beaumont, Texas
• Marked the birth of the modern petroleum industry.

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• Before this, Pennsylvania had been the most oil
  productive state in the country.
• All that changed on January 10, 1901.

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• Native Americans used oil seeps to protect
  against mosquitoes and to seal leaks in their
  canoes.
• Spanish explorers used the black, sticky tar
  found washed up on the Texas beaches to
  waterproof their boots.

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• In the late 1800s an oil well was drilled near
  the east Texas town of Nacogdoches.
• This well was known as Oil Springs.

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• Corsicana was the first big producing oil field
  in east Texas.
• Local
  businessmen
  were drilling
  for
  water,
  but they
  found OIL
  
  instead!

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• By the end of the year 1900 more than 2 million
  barrels of oil had been produced in the Corsicana
  field.

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• Patillo Higgins was one of the few at the time
  who believed that, in the future, modern industry
  would switch from coal to oil.

Patillo Higgins
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But where to get all that oil?

• Patillo Higgins believed it lay beneath his feet
  at a salt dome known
  as Spindletop, south of
  Beaumont, Texas.

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Higgins organized the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and
Manufacturing Company in 1892.
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• Anthony Lucas, a trained engineer with experience
  as a salt miner in Louisiana, was put in charge
  of drilling.

Anthony Lucas
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The drilling began on October 27, 1900.
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• Oil wildcatters had to drill
  through several hundred feet of
  sand.
• This made the
  hole cave in.

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• To help solve this problem they came up with the
  solution of pumping mud down into the hole.
• The mud stuck to the sides and kept it from
  caving in.

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• They brought in a more experienced team from
  Corsicana and began using a a more efficient
  rotary type drill bit.

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• By Christmas, 1900, the drilling crew had reached
  a depth of 880 feet.
• During the first week of January, 1901 they had
  drilled down to a depth of 1,020 feet.

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• The day was January 10, 1901.
• After lowering the drill into the open hole to a
  depth of about 700 feet, mud started bubbling
  back up the hole.
• Seconds later, the drill pipe shot out of the
  ground with great force, and then . . .
• Nothing happened.

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• All of a sudden, a noise like a cannon shot came
  from the hole, and mud came shooting out of the
  ground like a rocket.
• Within seconds, natural gas, then oil followed.

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• The oil gusher, greenish- black in color,
  doubled the size of the drilling derrick, rising
  to a height of more than 150 feet!
• This was more oil than had ever been seen
  anywhere in the entire world.

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• Captain Lucas had been hopeful that this well
  might produce 5 barrels a day.
• In fact, this well, Lucas 1 flowed at an
  initial rate of nearly 100,000 barrels per day,
  more than all of the other producing wells in the
  U.S. COMBINED!

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• Almost instantly, locations such as Pennsylvania
  and Russia lost their status as major oil
  producers, for the Spindletop wells could produce
  more oil in one day than the
  rest of the fields
  in the world
  combined.

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• In the weeks after the gusher, Beaumont became an
  oil-crazy Boomtown of 50,000
  dealers, oil
  workers,
  investors,
  traders,
  merchants.

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• By 1902 there
  were more than
  500 Texas
  corporations
  doing business
  in Beaumont.
• Many of the major oil companies were born at
  Spindletop or grew to major corporate size as a
  result of their involvement at Spindletop.

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• The Texas Company (Texaco),
  Gulf Oil (Chevron), and Humble
  (Exxon-Mobil) were a few of the
  major companies.

The Texas Company
Texaco Corporate Office, Houston, Texas
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• Now people realized the true potential of oil.
• Before Spindletop, oil was used mainly for lamps
  and lubrication.
• After Spindletop, petroleum would be used as a
  major fuel for such new inventions as the
  airplane and automobile.

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• Ships and trains that had previously run on the
  power of coal, now began to switch to oil.

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• From this point on, nothing in the oil industry
  would ever be the same again.
• The gusher at Spindletop ushered in the modern
  age of petroleum.

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• Over the next 30 years, the U.S witnessed a
  string of historic oil strikes in West Texas,
  Oklahoma, and the great East Texas Oil Field that
  transformed the Southwestern U.S.

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Spindletop ushered in the great oil boom in Texas.
Oil companies and wildcatters, or speculators
willing to gamble and drill in places
not known
for oil,
began drilling.
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One such wildcatter was Columbus Dad Joiner.
Dad Joiner went broke several times drilling for
oil until...
he struck gold in East Texas in 1930.
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Joiners discovery became known as the East Texas
Oil Field.
In a little over 40 years, this field produced
more than 4 billion barrels of oil.
It accounted for 1/10 of the oil produced in the
United States.
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Unfortunately, all good things must come to an
end.
By the end of 1931, the East Texas field had
3,600 wells.
Only a couple of years later, the field had
26,000 wells.
Sounds good, but...
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The rapid growth in oil production reduced the
price of oil from
1.10 a barrel
to
10 cents a barrel
in a matter of a few months.
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The boom was followed by a bust.
Regulation and discoveries in West Texas helped
bring Texas out of this initial bust, but the
boom/ bust cycle has continued through the years.
Boom and Bust
Today, petroleum is still key to the Texas
economy.
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However...
we have had to diversify our economy and develop
other industries so that we are not totally
dependent on oil.
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One such industry is the petrochemical industry.
Petrochemicals are chemicals or products made
from oil and natural gas.
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• What would Texas be like today
  if we did not have oil?
• What are the advantages
  and disadvantages of oil
  as a basis of our economy?

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Spindletop started it all. Texas and the world
would never be the same.