The History of Oil's Use in Society

The oil industry as we know it today has roots in another oil used along time ago. This oil at the time was used to fuel lamps and wasconsidered a technologicaladvancement over thecandle. The oil being usedwas harvested from theocean in the form of blubberfrom the Sperm whale. Thisparticular whale oil wasconsidered to be of thehighest quality, as it did notcreate smoke or odors whilebeing burnt. Sadly theSperm whale was hunted to the point that supply became scarce. Itwas the mid 1800’s and a need for an alternate lamp fuel had arisen.Around 1854 GeorgeBissell began toexperiment with ablack liquidsubstance, referredto as “rock oil”, thatignited whentouched by a flame.Believing that thisnew foundsubstance could berefined and utilizedas an alternate fuelto whale oil, Bissell,along with a fewadditional investors,created the SenecaOil Company in NewHaven, Connecticut.

Drilling was already a widely used technology, although generally fordifferent purposes, so the natural inclination was to drill for the oil. Theman hired to oversee the job site at Oil Creek was Edwin L. Drake. Theman Drake hired to do the drilling was William A. Smith. Beginning witha length of metal conduit that the drill tools would be used inside of,Smith and Drake finished building the drilling rig structure and beganto drill for oil. Known as the DrakeWell, this is considered to be the first well created in the U.S. for thesole purpose of extracting the oil from the ground.Soon drilling for oil would catch on from Oil Creek’s Pennsylvaniaorigins to California and Texas. One particular location near Beaumont, Texas named Spindetop would become the site of yet anothertechnologicaladvancement inthe drilling for oil.Spindletop, or “BigHill”, stuck out likea sore thumb incomparison to theflat landsurroundingBeaumont, so in1890 afteracquiring theland to Spindletop,Patillo Higgin’salong with apartner attemptedto drill for oil.Higgin’s ran intotrouble while digging the well that prevented him from reaching the oilresivoir so he looked to rent his land to an oil prospector.Anthony Lucas, an Austrian mining engineer, joined Higgin’s only to failin his first attempt. Lucas then hired the Hamil brothers who were wellknown in Texas for drilling and were some of the first to utilize a newtype of drill technology called the rotary drill. Unlike the Drake Wellthat was made using a cable-tool drilling rig, the well at Spindle Hill