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Teaching American Petroleum History
Debate energy. This historical society advocates public education about petroleum history – using the industry’s little-known heritage as a context for teaching the modern business of meeting future energy needs.
Why? It's important for educators to recognize that 150 years of social, economic and technological advances in a vital American industry need to be studied – and taught. Today more than ever – Americans need to make informed decisions about energy.
NEW! This Week in Petroleum History
AOGHS Websites Offer Resources
Teaching the evolution of the nation's oilfield technologies is fundamental to the historical society's network of oil and natural gas museums, historians and energy educators -- and students. Every day more young people are finding articles in the Petroleum Age newsletters and links to other resources.
Google search the phrase “American oil history” and you will find that of about 40 million hits, this website is among the most visited. Two new AOGHS websites now are adding even more unique visitors.
AOGHS has established two sites that include individual articles from the Petroleum Age -- and additional Petroleum History Resources, which includes an updated list of State Contacts for educators and students.
These innovations allow the historical society to continue to expand its public outreach. The new websites show a strong and steady growth of vistors. Hopefully, they leave with a better understanding of a complex and still vital industry that began in 1859. This energy education work continues to reach educators and students. Visit the sites and donate a tax-deductible contribution.
The Petroleum Age newsletter and a network of community museums serve as frontline energy educators. Museums explain the historic achievements of the modern energy business. A skeptical public gains new appreciation for geology, petroleum engineering and chemistry. Among the newsletter's articles is Cantankerous Combustion -- describing America's first national automobile show in 1900. The most popular models proved to be electric, steam, and gasoline...in that order.
Popular Articles from the Petroleum Age
To understand the energy present, we must understand the energy past. Articles from the Petroleum Age examine the industry's social, economic and scientific heritage. Here are a few examples.
All Pumped Up -- When an oilman’s work pays off with a producing well, much remains to be done before the oil can make it to market. In 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake used a common water well hand pump to retrieve oil from 69.5 feet. It wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient. Oil wells will run dry, but advances in technologies can put off the inevitable. Read more...
Dramatic Oil Company -- Less than two years before he assassinated President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth formed the "Dramatic Oil Company" with several of his acting friends. Believing his fortune would be made in the booming Pennsylvania oilfields, Booth left a Boston stage in 1864. After successfully drilling a well, Booth and his partners gambled to increase production by "shooting" their Venango County investment. The effort failed and Booth’s dreams of oil wealth abruptly collapsed. Read more...
Mabel's Eyelashes -- In 1872, Robert Augustus Chesebrough patented a method for turning unwanted goop from Pennsylvania oil wells into a balm he called Vaseline. It was a revolutionary petroleum product. In 1913, Thomas Williams became intrigued when his sister Mabel mixed it with a darkening agent, perhaps coal dust. Before long, he was selling "Lash-Brow-Ine" by mail-order catalogue. Read more...
Making Hole -- Drilling or "making hole" began long before oil or natural gas were anything more than flammable curiosities found seeping from the ground. Many fascinating technologies would evolve to pry into the earth’s secrets – and unlock deeper petroleum reserves. "Fishtail" bits became obsolete in 1909 when Howard Hughes Sr. introduced the twin-cone roller bit. History remembers several men who were trying to develop better drill bit technologies, but it was Hughes who made it happen. Read more...
Exploring Rigs to Reefs -- More than 4,500 offshore oil and natural gas platforms today supply 25 percent of the United States’ production of natural gas and 10 percent of its oil. Thanks to a program begun two decades ago, today’s offshore production benefits both the economy and the environment. "These platforms are better nursery habitat than the natural reefs in the area," says one expert. "They are contributing to the recovery of a severely depleted species in a significant way." Read more...
Oil and Gas Museum Renovations
Thousands of visitors walk through petroleum museums in more than 30 oil and natural gas producing states.
Two leading energy education facilities in Pennsylvania and Texas have begun major renovations. In Titusville, Pa., the Drake Well Museum's main building, built in 1963, is undergoing a significant redesign. The museum hosted many energy education events in August as part of the 150th anniversary of the first U.S. oil discovery.
Meanwhile, in Galveston, Texas, a multi-phase improvement to the exterior hull of the Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig and Museum is underway. Various components of the drilling rig are being removed, modified or improved to increase the educational value of the museum -- and its maintainability. Learn more.
The membership of this society believes oil and natural gas history offers an important context for teaching the complex business of meeting America's future energy needs. You are invited to join us. Make a tax-deductible contribution to the historical society.
For more information, call (202) 387-6996 or e-mail bawells@aoghs.org.
First U.S. Oil Discovery
 On Aug. 27, 1859, in a small Pennsylvania town, Edwin L. Drake struck oil, changing the world forever. Boring a pipe deep into the Titusville ground, he drew black crude to the surface, in a process that would be copied all over the world and mark the dawn of the Petroleum Age.
The method, inspired by salt extraction, would eventually create an industry that fueled dramatic leaps in human development, as well as wars and environmental degradation. But the technique's importance was initially felt in the lighting industry, as a replacement for whale and other fats used in lanterns.
"The industry that developed was the kerosene lamp oil business," said Bill Stumpf, who, decked in period costume, operates a replica of the first pump at a Titusville museum. In the process of developing kerosene, Drake, who sported the military epithet of colonel to lend his project some credence, created gasoline -- initially discarded as an unwanted by-product.
But with the development of the internal combustion engine in Europe in the 1880s his technique acquired new importance, eventually making oil the bedrock of the global economy and the world's most traded commodity.
"That really ushered in the modern age of oil where oil has essentially enabled mankind to be mobile," said Tim Considine, a professor of energy economics at the University of Wyoming.
But 150 years on, questions loom over the future of the fuel as oil prices spiked to record highs of over 140 dollars a barrel last year. "We'll be seeing the effects of that price shock for the next five, seven years in consumers' decisions about what car they buy, and how they drive," Considine said.
The methods pioneered by Drake are now so successful that the world's largest oil fields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are beginning to show signs of decline, according to experts.Hope is now vested in new developments in Africa, Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico and Russia. "The key question is whether the production from this larger number of smaller fields will keep pace or offset the decline of what's happening in the big giants," said Considine.
Despite the gray clouds, Titusville's 6,000 residents are basking in their town's former glory -- for this week, at least -- with the anniversary prompting an influx of visitors. "The town has never been this loud, this animated. It's usually pretty quiet," said Lauren, a waitress at the Blue Canoe Cafe.
Pennsylvania's petroleum glory days are behind it, with hundreds of thousands of wells drilled in the state over the last century and a half having exploited the vast majority of known reserves. But some residents are looking forward, hoping that the recent expansion of natural gas drilling and production in shale beneath the Pennsylvania earth will spark a new energy boom. According to local US congressman Glenn Thompson: "This gas shale is the Drake's well of the 21st century."-- From AFP, www.afp.com, Aug. 27, 2009, by Marine Laouchez
In addition, the celebration marking the 150th anniversary features a collectible item aimed at stamp enthusiasts.
The Oil Region Alliance and Oil 150 will offer a first day cover featuring a specially designed combination of the Oil 150 logo and the "Celebrating the Story - Progress from Petroleum" slogan in full color. The cancellation will be a special U.S. Postal Service mark featuring the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad Post Office that is affiliated with the Oil City post office.
“The first day cover will make an excellent keepsake of the celebration of 150 years of the petroleum industry, which started right here in the Oil Creek Valley," said Randy Seitz, president and chief operating officer of the Oil Region Alliance.
The first day cover will become available for sale Thursday, Aug. 27, at the Oil Creek & Titusville Railroad's Perry Street Station in Titusville. Cost of the first day cover is $5. Orders will be accepted via the online store at www.oil150.com and by telephone at 814 -677-3152 (extension 104). A limited edition of 3,000 covers is being produced. -- From www.thederrick.com
AOGHS Energy Education
 The Petroleum Age quarterly newsletter supports the American Oil & Gas Historical Society's education mission. The latest issues of this resource for teachers and students are posted on a special website.
As the American petroleum industry marks its 150th anniversary this year, the Society seeks new energy education partnerships. Please support our energy education network by downloading our donation form attachment at this secure Google website.
Sponsors are needed to sustain the society's Petroleum Age newsletter -- and mission of preserving the history of exploration and production by providing advocacy for organizations that preserve that history through exhibition, material preservation – and especially educational programming.
AOGHS has established a communications network of oil and gas museums, historical societies, state and national energy educators, companies and individuals committed to energy education. The society's efficient and low-cost programs have a proven track record. They offer an energy education force multiplier for any organization.
To learn more about the AOGHS network of industry associations, energy educators, workshop practitioners, oil and gas museum directors, county historical societies, community historians, oil patch preservationists and artifact collectors, email bawells@aoghs.org, call (202) 857-4785
Popular with museum directors and volunteers, workshop practitioners, high school teachers and students, the society's Petroleum Age articles have been reprinted in many museum publications, state association newsletters, Hart’s E&P magazine, the American Gas Association’s American Gas magazine, the Association of Energy Service Contactor’s Well Servicing magazine, The American Oil & Gas Reporter, and local newspapers.
Below is a Petroleum Age article -- one of many that has proven popular for its original research and educational content.
Million Barrel Museum
From Vol. 3, No. 4, December 2006 Petroleum Age
In the heart of the Permian Basin, eight miles southeast of Odessa in Ector County, Texas, tourists can view the second largest meteor crater in the United States. But in neighboring Ward County, the community of Monahans boasts its own attraction that can also be seen from space -- an oil museum like no other.
Families traveling west from Odessa on I-20 are invited to visit the Million Barrel Museum, home of an engineering marvel -- a giant elliptical cement oil tank built by Shell Oil Company in 1928. According to Elizabeth Heath of the Ward County Historical Commission, it is the size of three football fields.
“There were great oil discoveries around 1926 and few places to put the oil, no pipelines or tanks,” Heath explains. “Shell had a lot of production coming from Wink, Texas, and came up with the idea of digging a big hole in the ground. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
A local high school math teacher measured the dimensions of the tank at 522 feet by 425 feet. In theory, she noted at the time, its capacity was more than 5 million barrels, but only one million barrels were ever stored before being shipped by rail to refineries in Oklahoma.
The concrete-covered earthen walls slope at a 45-degree angle. The tank once had a domed roof made of California redwood, supported by massive and heavily oil-proofed posts spaced 14 feet apart. A network of tall lightning rods rose above. Heath says the concrete-covered dirt- and wire-mesh walls took three months to build with teams of mules hauling the wood and cement.
“But Shell found it didn’t work. It leaked from too many places and the company couldn’t seal it properly,” she comments. “When Shell workers poured the cement, they did it in sections, so it made seams all around. You didn’t have caulking like we have today, so oil seeped into the sand. Between the seepage and the evaporation, they lost a lot.”
Visitors from all over the world have come to see the structure, which shows its age in several places and sports some graffiti from various Monahans high school classes, Heath observes. Shell pumped out the oil and dismantled the tank soon after the start of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
Water Park
The oil tank-crater, empty and abandoned, gaped on Monahans’ East Side of for decades. Then in 1954, a local couple, Wayne and Amalie Long, purchased it from Shell and turned it into a water park.
The Longs constructed a boat ramp from the opening Shell had made to remove equipment, the interior 14-foot pillars, and the roof.
Although the water park did, indeed, attract many boaters, swimmers and fishermen, a series of leaks soon forced its closing. The website Roadtripamerica.com includes a January 2006 letter from Wallace Dickey Jr., the nephew of the entrepreneurial Manahans couple, which offers this first-hand account of the Million Barrel Museum’s history:
“My uncle and aunt Wayne and Amalie Long were the entrepreneurs who bought the million-barrel oil tank and tried to turn it into a swimming and fishing hole in the 1950s. I was there in the summer of 1958, when I was in high school, when they tried to turn it into a stock car racetrack after it would not hold water long enough for fishing and swimming. It was my aunt, after my uncle’s passing in 1980, who turned it into a museum and donated it to the state for a state park that makes it what it is today.”
Preserving History
In 1986, Amalie Long donated the tank and the more than 14 acres surrounding it to the Ward County Historical Commission “because her husband wanted it to be a community project, something we could work on for local history.”
With the help of a local teacher and local historians, the Million Barrel Museum was born in 1988.
A 1999 Odessa American newspaper interview with curator Carolyn Cook noted the international appeal of the tank. She described a group Japanese tourists who “spoke very little English, and they kept asking, ‘Where are the barrels?’ It took quite a while to explain why there weren’t any barrels here, especially since I speak pure Texan.”
The Million Barrel Museum today includes Monahans’ first jail, railroad memorabilia and a restored turn-of-the-century boarding house.
The concrete walls now make an amphitheater for community events held several times a year, the most popular being a Fajita cook-off held in May that attracts more than 5,000 people.
The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. Admission is free.
American Oil and Gas Historical Society, 1201 15th Street NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005 | Phone: (202) 857-4785. Fax: (202) 857-4799. © 2010 by Bruce Wells.
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