Given the importance of the oil and gas industry to modern society, it’s no surprise that entire books have been written about its long, complex history.
Don’t worry – we won’t go into that much detail here. Instead, we’ll focus on a single example that typifies the history of the industry: the East Texas Oilfield.
Why focus on a single oil field?
The East Texas field was one of the most important oil fields in history. Its discovery sparked one of the largest oil rushes in American history and affected the course of World War II. Most importantly, the field kept producing for nearly 80 years, despite changes in economics, regulation, and technology.
In short, the field can be seen as a microcosm of the oil and gas industry as a whole, with all its technological, economic, social, and scientific complexities.
In the section that follows, we’ll take a look at the geologic history of the field, the oil men who developed it, the role of the field in World War II, and changes that occurred after the war. By the end, you’ll have a better understanding of the role of oil in modern history and the typical patterns of development and production associated with a successful oil or gas field.
A Cretaceous Prelude
100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous era of geologic history, dinosaurs still wandered the forests. Pangea, a supercontinent combining most of the world’s landmasses, was just beginning to break apart. The world was a warm, wet place, and sea levels were high.
Near the shore, sand produced by the pounding waves was deposited underwater. The sea level continued to rise, and a layer of sand developed that reached a thickness of over 1,000 feet in many places. Over time, the sand was lithified (turned into rock) by a variety of processes. The resulting rock formation is now known as the Woodbine formation.
As sea level continued to rise and the beaches moved further away, the delivery of sand by waves and currents subsided. Eventually, only the finest organic sediments were deposited.
Over millions of years, these sediments formed a thick deposit of shale known as the Eagle Ford shale.
After the deposition of the Woodbine Sandstone and Eagle Ford shale, a series of tectonic events caused the rocks to be tilted, lifted above the surface, and eroded.
After this period of erosion sea level once again rose rapidly. This time, conditions were right for the formation of chalk. The resulting Austin Chalk reached thicknesses of more than 100 feet before being covered by coarser sediments.
The stage was now set for the formation of oil.
At high temperatures, the fine organic matter contained in the Eagle Ford Shale was slowly converted into oil. As the oil formed, it was forced out of the shales. Unable to pass through the fine grained Austin Chalk, the oil was squeezed into the Woodbine Sandstone.
Since oil is lighter than water, it rose through the Woodbine until its movement was blocked by the Austin Chalk.
Deep beneath eastern Texas, the oil waited.
One hundred million years later, humans entered the scene. As human population levels skyrocketed, people figured out how to use the energy contained in oil. Automobiles, ships, planes, and tanks took to the land, seas, and skies.
As the demand for oil grew, geologists began to search for plentiful, reliable sources of the fuel. That’s what finally brought oil prospectors to East Texas.
The Field before WWII
Oil companies first expressed interest in the East Texas Oilfield in the 1910s. Despite the promising nature of the geology, the 1,500 foot deep holes drilled by these companies did not strike oil. As the interest of major companies waned, risk-taking independent oil men moved in.
One of the key figures of the early history of the East Texas field was Columbus “Dad” Joiner, a self-educated, 67 year-old oil man.
Initially, Joiner was more interested in tricking investors out of their money than in finding oil. During his time in East Texas, Joiner convinced investors to buy shares in his ventures using sham geologic reports and rickety drilling equipment powered by burning tires. He hoped to cash out on the venture without having to actually find oil.
Incredibly, investors kept coming, even after his first two drilling schemes failed after reaching depths of less than 2,000 feet.
In the summer of 1929, Joiner began drilling a third well. The next fall, drillers reached a rock layer called the Woodbine Sandstone at 3,592 feet. To Joiner’s surprise, the well began producing oil!
Joiner’s success inspired a rush on land in the area. Wells drilled as far as twenty miles away hit oil at the same depth: around 3,500 feet.
A field the size of the East Texas Oilfield (140,000 acres) had never been drilled before. In fact, it took some time for operators to realize that the wells were striking the same reservoir.
When they did, an incredible oil boom occurred. Drillers were so desperate to get in on the action that competing wells were built immediately adjacent to each other. Some city blocks in Kilgore, TX, near the center of the field, contained over 40 wells! The fastest drillers sucked the ground beneath rival wells dry, bring fortunes to their operators. Slower drillers faced financial ruin.
Government regulators were concerned that the unfettered extraction of oil would reduce pressure in the reservoir and limit the total amount of oil that could be extracted.
Although limits placed on extraction were enforced by the Texas Rangers, production and smuggling of hot oil continued.
Finally, in an historic move, President Roosevelt stepped in and signed a bill giving the federal government power to regulate oil production.
The East Texas Field in WWII
During the second world war, hydrocarbon resources became critical inputs to the war effort. Without oil, armies could not fight.
In the following mini-documentary, we’ll learn more about the importance of oil to the war effort and take a look at some interesting innovations that came out of the war.
Transcript
Mark Clement
It seemed like fate, just preordained to me, to be a Marine and a geologist.
I understand exactly why we took it but we took a lot of casualties because of it so a lot of good guys.
We didn’t see Iwo Jima really until the day that we got ready to go ashore. It was a madhouse on the beach. You got casualties all over the place and we’re trying to direct traffic and keep them from running over people. The sand, it was coarse and black and very unstable. The wheeled vehicles would just bog down. In the midst of all of this, every once in a while they’d start shelling us. It’s a holy mess. But what could I do? Am I going to get hit tomorrow or the day after? What are my odds and everything? You don’t have time to think. You’ve got certain things that you’re supposed to be doing and you just go ahead and do it. We were responsible for all the replacement ammunition, grenades, water, and we had to get all of that ashore and we had oil and the oil were not only the energy to propel the vehicles forward but was also the means of lubricating. The jeeps and everything were running on rubber made out of oil. The other thing was there was toluene and toluene may not mean too much to most people and neither does trinitrotoluene but I use TNT and if we had not had the oil I don’t know what would’ve happened. Then I came back and went back to work as a geologist. I enjoyed geology. You were out in the open. You were in the field.
Yeah, west Texas was on fire. I mean we were drilling, drilling, drilling.
It was a time of both innovation and education, the evolution of drilling, voidance of blowouts, seismic technology. They’d mapped the sub-surface. And then the computer really came into its own for the small operator. You buy the property and you think it’s making so much money, well it is. The thing is that you got to borrow the money from the bankers. And that’s alright; you could’ve paid them back. What’s left needs to pay the taxes and pay the operations people. I was economic analyst. I took all the data from the engineers and the geologists that were fed to me and put it in the computer and we ran an economic analysis. What if the price went up? What if the price went down? A whole bunch of things that can occur in oil and gas that impact on whether you’re making a profit. Some worked out, some didn’t. About that time, I left in ’71 and started independent. I did all of the reserves in Algeria one year. I worked in the North Sea. I worked in Saudi Arabia. I worked in Malaysia. I worked in Indonesia. I was in Venezuela for four years. My eldest daughter was born down there as a matter of fact. You know, there are an awful lot of geologists out there but there’s only a small percentage who ever have the opportunity to discover a field and I got lucky, found an oil field within about two and a half years. There’s nothing like it in the whole wide world. You’ve found something and you’ve written it up. And of course the people whom you sold it to are standing out there, all the engineers and everything, and when you test that well, and it was at night, and a string of flame out there 40 or 50 feet in the air and everybody’s going, “Ohh, ohh, ohh, ohh!” and they know they’ve got something. And the drilling team looks at you and say, “Well, I think you’ve got a keeper there partner.” And I said, “Well, it sure looks good doesn’t it?” There’s a sense of satisfaction because you’re in competition with thousands of other guys out there that are trying to find the same thing. So it’s not pomposity, it’s just that you just feel, “what a great sense of relief? I was right on this thing.” Of those five wells, two are still producing 1975 to now, almost 40 years.
Well, I’ve thought about what I did but what I did was so small. The only thing I knew was that I had no problem with beans on the table for many, many, many, many years. But you don’t give too much thought to the past. You got children and grandchildren that are being raised. And I share a unique position with a lot of people in the world in that one or more of their children have chosen their vocation. My daughter, at one time, said, “I think I want to take geology.” and I thought, “well, that’s fine with me.” I mean I was flattered to have somebody in the family in the next generation who’s a geologist. See I just look to her to teach me so that’s about it.
Conclusions
The lifetime of the East Texas Field stretches across one of the most rapid periods of change known to history. When it was discovered, the Great Depression was just beginning, computers were mechanical, and horses still provided farm labor in many places. By the time the last commercial wells closed, the Internet was booming, high tech, fuel-efficient engines were doing all the work, and geologists were using 3D computer models and advanced geophysical techniques to find new oil and gas resources.
The importance of oil to society has only increased since the field came online. It’s no longer only used in the internal combustion engines of tractors, tanks, and cars – it has also become a crucial ingredient in plastics, fertilizers, road pavement, and other critical components of the modern economy.
The cheap, seemingly unlimited energy provided by conventional oil and gas powered the unprecedented economic expansion of the twentieth century and raised the standard of living for many people. However, the 20th century energy boom was not without problems nor without limits.
Images: “East Texas Oil Field” by Dolph Briscoe Center for American History; “US Map, Cretaceous” by Ron Blakely; “Daisy Bradford No. 3” by Hunt Oil Company; “Joinerville, Texas” by Jack Nolan via Gaston Museum