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The History of the Oil Industry

31.12.2009 (6:16 пп) – Filed under: Oil ::
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PekarCalifornia Comes of Age
1861 First oil well in California is drilled manually in Humboldt County.
1866 Oil is collected from tunnels dug at Sulphur Mountain in Ventura County by the brothers of railroad baron Leland Stanford, the same year that these techniques are applied to the Pechelbronn oil mine in France.
1866 First steam-powered rig in California drills an oil well at Ojai, not far from the Sulphur Mountain seeps.
1875 First commercial oil field in California is discovered at Pico Canyon in Los Angeles County.
1878 Electric light bulb invented by Thomas Edison eliminates demand for kerosene, and the oil industry enters a recession.
1885 Gas wells are drilled in Stockton, California for fuel and lighting.
1885 Oil burners on steam engines in the California oil fields, and later on steam locomotives, create new crude oil markets.
1886 Gasoline-powered automobiles introduced in Europe by Karl Benz and Wilhelm Daimler create additional markets for California oil. Prior to the automobile, gasoline was a cheap solvent produced as a byproduct of kerosene distillation.
1888 A steel-hulled tanker sails from Ventura to San Francisco, eleven years after the 1877 sailing of a Russian tanker across the Caspian sea at Baku.

The Kern County Oil Industry

1860s to 1890s – Tar Pits and Tunnels

1864 – Tar mined from open pits at Asphalto McKittric on west side of San Joaquin Valley.

  • 1866 – First refinery in Kern County built near McKittrick tar pits to process kerosene and asphalt.
  • 1878 – First wooden derrick in Kern County constructed at Reward to drill for flux oil to mix with asphalt.
  • 1887 – «Wild Goose» well at Oil City, Coalinga comes in at 10 bbls/day, demonstrating potential of north part of basin.
  • 1889 – Oil wells drilled at Old Sunset (Maricopa) with a steam-powered rig mark discovery of Midway-Sunset field.

    • 894 – Old Sunset (Maricopa) part of Midway-Sunset has 16 wells producing 30 barrels of oil per day.

    1890s to 1920s – Gushers and Cable Tools

  • 1899 – Hand-dug oil well discovers Kern River field and starts an oil boom in Kern County.
  • 1902 – Arrival of railroad makes development of Midway-Sunset field economically feasible.
  • 1902 – First rotary rig in Califonia reportedly drills a well at Coalinga field, but the hole is so crooked that a cable tool is used to redrill the well.
  • 1903 – Kern River and Midway-Sunset production makes California the top oil producing state.
  • 1904 – 17.2 million bbls of oil produced at Kern River exceeds annual production from Texas.
  • 1908 – Rotary drilling rigs and crews arrive in California from Louisiana and successfully drill wells at Midway-Sunset field and erase the embaressment of the Coalinga experiment six years earlier.

    • 1929 – Blowout prevention equipment becomes mandatory on oil and gas wells drilled in California.

    1930s to 1950s – Well Logs, Seismic, and Rotary Drilling

    • 1929 – First well logs in California run by Shell in a well near Bakersfield (Kern County).
    • 1930 – Deepest well in the world is Standard Mascot #1, rotary drilled to 9,629 feet at Midway-Sunset.
    • 1936 – First seismic exploration in California discovers Ten Section field near Bakersfield. Seismic discovery of the productive Paloma and Coles Levee anticlines soon follows
    • 1943 – Deepest well in the world is Standard 20-13, drilled to 16,246 feet at South Coles Levee.
    • 1953 – Deepest well in the world is Richfield 67-29 drilled to 17,895 feet at North Coles Levee.

    1960s to Today – Steam, Horizontal Wells, and Computers

    • 1961 – First steam recovery projects in Kern County start up at Kern River and Coalinga fields after a successful pilot by Shell at Yorba Linda field in Los Angeles.
    • 1973 – Tule Elk and Yowlumne fields become the last 100-million barrel fields discovered in Kern County.
    • 1980 – First horizontal well in Kern County is Texaco Gerard #6 in fractured schist at Edison field.

    1985 – Kern County reaches an all-time production high of 256 million barrels of oil/year. At the same time, California reaches an all-time production high of 424 million barrels of oil/year.

    1997 – Deepest horizontal well in Kern County is Yolwumne 91X-3 with measured depth of 14,300 feet. However, the well is surpassed only two years later by the relief well for the Bellevue blowout.

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