36 BULLETIN 102, VOL. 1, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Another method of drilling known as the rotary system is also in 

 common use, being particularly adapted to regions where the sides 

 of the well tend to cave*badly, as in California and some other locali- 

 ties. This system requires more elaborate machinery than the stand- 

 ard, as the drilling and insertion of the casing is simultaneous. The 

 iron casing, indeed, is tipped with a steel bit and rotated so as to 

 bore its way downward like a great auger. 



The oil well is marked by a tall wooden framework called a der- 

 rick, which permits the string of tools and the casing to be inserted 

 or withdrawn when necessary. It is the presence of derricks that 

 gives the characteristic appearance to an oil field landscape. Oil 

 wells vary from a few hundred feet or less in depth, requiring a few 

 weeks only to drill, to those thousands of feet deep and demanding 

 months of continuous labor before production starts.^ The cost of 

 drilling normally runs from $1 up to $15 and more a foot,^ while the 

 rate of progress, except for shallow wells, ranges from about 60 down 

 to 10 feet a day, slowing, of course, with depth. It is apparent, then, that 

 oil-well drilling is a slow and costly process and makes a heavy draft 

 upon the iron and steel industry, consuming indeed about one-twelfth 

 of its output in ordinary times. 



A well favorably located eventually penetrates an oil-bearing bed, 

 and the petroleum may spurt forth in a lavish stream under the in- 

 fluence of the natural gas held in solution under pressure.^ Such 

 wells are called gushers and some pour forth prodigious quantities 

 of oil.* Other wells flow with less violence, and many, lacking in 



until the hole is finished • • *. It takes a couple of thousand dollars, several months, 

 and a couple of noncommittal men in mud-plastered overalls to dig an oil well. They 

 begin by going up about 60 feet. When they have finished their derrick, they hang a 

 drill on it weighing half a ton. Then the men hitch the drill to an engine and punch 

 a 42-centimeter hole in the earth's crust. Sometimes, after they have been punching 

 away for several weeks, the hole blows the derrick into the sky, utterly ruining it. Then 

 the owner shrieks with glee and employs 500 men to catch the spouting oil in barrels. 

 But sometimes the derrick is as good as new when the hole is finished. Then the owner 

 curses and takes the derrick away to some other place which smells oily." 



1 The deepest wells are slightly over 7,000 feet, but such depths are exceptional. The 

 deepest well in the world is near Clarksburg, W. Va., having recently reached a depth of 

 7,363 feet, according to the U. S. Geological Survey. 



* This is the cost in normal times. At present, the cost is more than twice the usual 

 figure. Thus to drill a well 3,000 feet deep might now cost from $50,000 to $80,000. 



•The action is analogous to the rush of soda water from a bottle when the cork la 

 removed. 



* " On the Fourth of July, 1908, the greatest oil well of the world was struck at 

 San Geronimo, on the Gulf of Mexico, 67 miles north of Tampico. When struck, the oil 

 gushed so rapidly that before the fire in the boiler of the engine running the drilling 

 machinery could be extinguished the flowing oil reached It and burst into a mass of flame 

 which for two months burned 60,000 to 75,000 barrels of oil per day with a flame from 

 800 to 1,400 feet in height, and 40 to 75 feet in width, making light enough to be seen by 

 ships 100 miles at sea, and to permit a newspaper to be read 17 miles away. After the 

 loss of $3,000,000 the fire was put out, but the oil flowed so rapidly that it could not 

 be carried away or put In tanks, and the English owners saved their oil only by con- 

 fining it in a reservoir one-fourth of a mile long made by heaping up earth embankments 

 to keep the oil from flowing away like water. Even this well was later surpassed by 

 the Potrero del Lano No. 4 well near Tuxpam, Mexico, which yielded 160,000 barrels a 

 day for some time." — ^J. Russell Smith, Industrial and Commercial Geography, 1913, 

 p. 409. 



