They arrived on the scene with their new, self-contained portable drilling rig. Good fortune intervened.Įnid, Oklahoma, entrepreneur George Everett Failing and his crew were working near Conroe.
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1 well unleashed the reservoir’s full fury and millions of barrels of oil began surging into the crater. With its casing shattered, their Alexander No. The nearby rig of James Abercrombie and cousin Dan Harrison collapsed into the growing crater. The crater spread into a growing lake of burning oil, and the entire field was threatened. Photo courtesy GEFCO.Īll attempts to put out the fire with dynamite blasts and tons of dirt failed. Today, his company operates a 350,000-square-foot plant in Enid, Oklahoma. patent for an innovative portable drilling rig he had invented a decade earlier using his Ford farm truck and an assembly to transfer power from the engine to the drill. Good for 10,000 Barrels Per Day.” Strake had found the discovery well for the 19,000-acre Conroe oilfield, but its geology made drilling and development risky.Īlthough Texas lawmakers regulated drilling practices, casing procedures, and well spacing, the oilfield remained a hazardous place as drilling and production technologies evolved.
The Conroe Courier newspaper headline proclaimed, “Strake Well Comes In. That well, completed on June 5, 1932, revealed the field’s main oil-producing sands. Despite the challenges, South Texas Development Company continued and spudded a second well 2,000 feet from the first Conroe well. The veteran oil operator had found the oil sands to be highly gas-charged, shallow, and unstable. 1 well had completed a difficult well at 4,991 feet deep, producing millions of cubic feet of natural gas per day and several hundred barrels of oil.
In 1931, wildcatter George Strake’s South Texas Development Company No. Given the limited well blowout technologies of the day, Conroe’s field was no stranger to the dangers of highly pressured wells. The towering black cloud from the oil fire, which could be seen from downtown Houston, burned for months. Historians document the day in January 1933 when the well came roaring in ablaze and cratered, eventually swallowing two nearby drilling rigs. Others have estimated a depth of 600 feet deep, with the twisted remains of the Madeley No. Some people have described Crater Lake at Conroe, Texas, as bottomless. “Only a handful of men in the world have the strange power to make a bit, rotating a mile below ground at the end of a steel drill pipe, snake its way in a curve or around a dog-leg angle, to reach a desired objective.” - Popular Science Monthly, May 1934 John Eastman of Long Beach, California, to save the Conroe oilfield.Įntire rigs sank out of sight when the unstable drilling area collapsed north of Houston in 1931. It took the combined efforts of oilfield technology innovators George Failing of Enid, Oklahoma, and H. The catastrophic fire threatened the entire field’s production. The runaway well then cratered, completely swallowing nearby drilling rigs. By the end of 1932, more than 65,000 of barrels of oil flowed daily from 60 wells in the region north of Houston.ĭisaster came in January 1933 when one of the Conroe wells blew out and erupted into flames. John Eastman employed new technologies that allowed “the bit burrowing into the ground at strange angles.”Įarly Conroe oil wells revealed shallow but “gas charged” oil-producing sands in what would prove to be the third largest oilfield in the United States at the time.
A 1933 Texas well disaster helped lead to advancements in directional drilling.Ī Great Depression-era disaster in a giant oilfield near Conroe, Texas, brought together the inventor of portable drilling rigs and the father of directional drilling.
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