Spindletop
Spindletop is the
name of a small knoll just south of Beaumont Texas.
The following is an excertp
from a book "The History of Oil Exploration".
Anthony Lucas, an Austrian-born
mining engineer, has been supervising the drilling of an oilwell
since October 27, 1900.
 His
crew must install a new drilling bit on the string of a drill
pipe. The date is January 10, 1901. The drilling crew begins
lowering the new bit to the bottom of the hole. They run about
700 feet (200 meters) of drill pipe into the 1,000 foot (300
meter) hole. Suddenly, the well starts spewing drilling mud.
The mud, a liquid concoction that carries rock cuttings out of
the hole, drenches the rig floor and shoots up ito the derrick.
See
the photo to the right.
The spoutig oil blows
all the drill pipe out of the hole. The blowing well elates Lucas
and his crew as they watch the display from a safe distance.
They estimate that it is flowing over 3 million gallons (over
12,000 cubic meters) perday. The Lucas well produced 1,600 times
that amount. It showed that burried layers of rock could contain
tremendous amounts of oil. What is more, it proved that rotary
drilling was an effective way to obtain it. Spintletop marked
the beginning of the modern petroleum industry.
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