University of Oklahoma Graduate College from Creekology to Geology
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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE FROM CREEKOLOGY TO GEOLOGY; FINDING AND CONSERVING OIL ON THE SOUTHERN PLAINS, 1859-1930 A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By BRIAN FREHNER Norman, Oklahoma 2004 UMI Number: 3270678 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform 3270678 Copyright 2007 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 © Copyright by BRIAN FREHNER 2004 AU Rights Reserved. FROM CREEKOLOGY TO GEOLOGY: FINDING AND CONSERVING OIL ON THE SOUTHERN PLAINS, 1859-1930 a Dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY V o Ibert L. Hurtado Robert L. Griswold Davjo W. Levy Raltm R. Hamerla IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are a number of people I would like to thank for their support and encouragement during the years it took to “get through” graduate school and to complete this dissertation. First of all, I need to thank my colleagues with whom I drank beer and commiserated about the obstacles that accompany life, love, and work. I have had the opportunity to meet a number of intelligent and talented individuals from whom I learned much. Without their friendship and support, graduate school could have been a much lonelier place and a much less fulfilling experience. I would also like to thank Hal Rothman who was my first mentor and taught me the ropes as I began down the road to becoming a professional historian. I cannot thank Hal enough for his guidance early-on and the opportunities he presented for me to work as a public historian. I would also like to thank all of my committee members, past and present, including: Richard Nostrand, Roberta Magnusson, Paul Gilje, Rich Hamerla, David Levy, and Robert Griswold. I particularly need to thank the co-chairs of my dissertation committee, Donald Pisani and Albert Hurtado. Don offered invaluable encouragement, insightful and constructive criticism, and always pushed me to “find the story.” I would like to express a great deal of gratitude to A1 and his wife Jean. Because of Al’s belief in my potential when he and I met at Arizona State University, I was able to follow him to the University of Oklahoma and complete this dissertation. He has supported, encouraged, and inspired me in countless ways and I only hope that someday I can repay the debt by doing the same for someone else. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Chapter 1 : Creekologists, Practical Men, and Geologists: Contests for Authority in the Oil Field Chapter 2: J. Peter Lesley and the Search for a Prospecting Method Chapter 3: When Oil Moved West: Geologists, Practical Men, and the Search for Structure on the Southern Plains Chapter 4: Charles N. Gould: Petroleum Geology Arrives on the Southern Plains Chapter 5 : Henry L. Doherty: From Independent Consulting to Corporate Geological Research Chapter 6: Practical Oil Men and the Oklahoma Oil Conservation Statute, 1915 Chapter 7: Contesting the Oil Field: Engineers and Technocrats Co-opt Conservation Introduction For approximately 200 years leading up to the nineteenth century, the technology Americans used for illumination remained as primitive as that used by the ancient Romans and Greeks. The colonial whaling industry had long hunted right whales to provide for Americans’ illumination needs but discovered early in the eighteenth century that the fats and oils of sperm whales proved markedly superior for burning and lubrication. Spermaceti, a sponge-like substance from the heads of sperm whales, provided an unrivaled material for making candles. On the eve of the American Revolution, a fleet of approximately 150 vessels regularly docked at the port of Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts as a base of operations for launching expeditions to hunt and kill sperm whales to provide fuel for lighting Americans’ homes. The decreasing number of sperm whales and increasing demand for illumination gave rise to four new alternatives for providing light from 1830 to 1850: distillation of oil from terpentine, expanded production of lard oil, the growth of a domestic manufactured-gas industry, and coal-oil production.* The production of coal-oil proved most important to the development of the petroleum industry within the United States. Coal-oil production began during the mid- 1850s and disappeared merely six years later but provided a foundation for the * * Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, The American Petroleum Industry, vol. 1, The Age o f Illumination, 1859-1899 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1959), 29; 33. 1 distillation, refining, and commercial patterns the petroleum industry would follow. Chemists in France and Scotland first experimented with applying low temperatures to coal in order to distill oil in the 1830s and 1840s. The process found its way to the U. S. where two separate groups of inventors and investors working out of Boston and New York began producing coal-oil on a commercial basis. The industry boomed throughout 1858-1860 as these and other cities became home to numerous production plants. At the same time, the manufactured-gas industry grew at an even faster rate, but coal oil offered a more attractive source of illumination to the majority of Americans because it was safer and produced a better quality of light. From the outset, coal-oil producers considered using petroleum as the primary raw material for illumination and some applied methods of distilling and treating coal to petroleum in order to extract kerosene which they burned in lamps. For petroleum to supplant coal permanently as the primary raw material for illumination, however, producers had to be sure they could find adequate supplies and that they could produce petroleum less expensively than mining coal and converting it to oil. Until such time, the coal-oil industry’s infrastructure continued to expand.^ The possibility of inexpensive and plentiful supplies of oil came to fruition in 1859 when Edwin Drake drilled the first commercial oil well in Pennsylvania. Initially, many questioned whether petroleum existed in a sufficient quantity to replace coal oil permanently as a raw material for illumination and lubrication. As a result, transportation, marketing, and refining facilities lagged behind the production of ^ Ibid., 43; 37-8; 43-44; 56; 57; 59; 60. 2 petroleum for two years after Drake’s discovery. As producers continued to find oil and pump it from the ground, coal-oil refineries gradually converted their operations to accommodate the new material. By 1861, Pennsylvania drillers realized that they had only scratched the surface of potential oil production when Henry Rouse struck the area’s first flowing well, or “gusher.” Gushing wells accounted for much of the total output during 1861 and 1862 but a much smaller proportion of Pennsylvania’s future production. Once the pressure that pushed petroleum to the surface dissipated, workers extracted oil from the reservoir with pumps. Although gushers lasted a relatively short time in Pennsylvania, their impact was lasting and lay at the heart of many problems the industry faced into the twentieth century.^ Overproduction destabilized the oil industry early-on, and producers struggled to balance supply and demand in order to avoid wasting both oil and capital. A cycle of boom and bust plagued the oil industry throughout much of its history. In Pennsylvania, for example, output decreased slightly in 1862 but increased annually thereafter for nine years. Production leveled off again in 1873 but soon began climbing and peaked at thirty million barrels annually in 1882. As inventories rose, prices fell and consternation grew among oil producers. Although they attempted to negotiate shutdown agreements to eliminate glutted markets, the difficulty of convincing thousands of oil men to ignore the opportunity to expand into new fields undermined the success of such efforts. Continued production swamped existing transport and refining facilities and prompted businessmen Ibid. 82; 111; 112; 113-14. to begin thinking about organizing their industry more efficiently/ No one deplored the chaos that prevailed in the industry more than John D. Rockefeller. Vilified as a ruthless monopolist by some and praised as a sagacious businessman by others, no single person did more to shape the structure of the oil industry. His efforts in assembling the Standard Oil trust and vertically integrating the industry have been well documented and need not be retold here. Of significance to this study, however, is how the passion for order and efficiency motivated him. Rockefeller looked with revulsion at the mad scramble among producers who competed to extract oil and blamed them for the industry’s overproduction, wild price fluctuations, and waste. Although independent producers understandably resented Rockefeller’s ruthless business tactics, his efforts to consolidate control over refining capacity reflected his recognition that unrestrained production destabilized the industry and undermined everyone’s long term interests.^ The director of Pennsylvania’s state geological survey, J. Peter Lesley, agreed that overproduction destabilized the industry and wasted oil but attributed the industry’s problems to oil men’s poor understanding of geological principles. Like Rockefeller, Lesley lamented the “utter demoralization of the crowded population which scrambles for Ibid., 118; 373; 374. ^ The most authoritative biography of Rockefeller is Allan Nevins, John D.