That man Drake sure had a stubborn streak

March 31, 2010

In 1859, folks around Titusville, Pennsylvania, probably thought Colonel Edwin Drake was the most stubborn individual they had ever met. It seemed this man was on a mission to destroy “common sense.”

Didn’t he know how foolish it was to spend money trying to drill a hole in the ground for oil when no one had ever done such a thing around Oil Creek and northwestern Pennsylvania? The only wells that had been drilled were for drinking water and brine in salt mining — not for oil.

Besides, with oil’s limited demand as a medicinal “cure-all” and as a lubricant, it seemed that all the oil anyone could ever want was readily available from the area’s natural seeps and what collected in streams and ponds.

Nevertheless, the stubborn Colonel Drake pressed on, even when he was warned that the region’s glacial soils and their loosely compacted sand and gravel could lead to well cave-ins.

Rock oil from Titusville
So what spurred Drake’s relentless drive?

In the early 1850s, George Bissell, a New York attorney and later an important player in the startup of the oil industry, became intrigued with oil from a Titusville seep and its potential as an illuminant. He undoubtedly had already heard the news that Samuel Kier, a Pittsburgh entrepreneur, had succeeded in distilling Pennsylvania crude into kerosene as a higher-quality alternative to expensive whale oil for lamps. Before Bissell could move ahead with any business venture, he wanted confirmation that this Titusville “rock oil,” as it was called, could also be burned as an effective source of light.

He hired Benjamin Silliman Jr., a nationally renowned chemist at Yale University, to analyze a sample of the Titusville oil. When Silliman’s experiments proved the oil could be used as an illuminant, Bissell gathered a number of financial backers to form the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company (later renamed the Seneca Oil Company). They purchased the property where the seep was located and sent Drake to Titusville in 1857 to inspect it.

In 1858, Drake returned to Titusville with a commission to boost production from the seep to commercial levels. An irrigation and collection operation dating to 1853 had never produced enough oil to make it economic, and the developer had given up. Despite Drake’s best attempts, including even trying to open other seeps nearby, the most he could produce was 10 gallons a day — still not enough.

Refusing to give up, the colonel next hired workmen to dig a shaft for mining the oil. Once again, success was not to be as water flooded the shaft and forced the dig to be shut down.

Drilling — why not?
By this time, Drake was ready to consider an idea that had intrigued Bissell. Salt drillers often had to contend with removing oil from their wells. Why couldn’t their drilling methods be used to drill for oil?

In the summer of 1858, the colonel (he was not a colonel of anything — a Seneca Oil partner reportedly had added the title in a letter to Drake, and it stuck) moved ahead with turning the drilling idea into reality. He used his Seneca Oil funding to purchase a 6-horsepower wood-fired engine and boiler to power the drilling and had a house built over the equipment for protection.

But the most important job of finding an experienced hand to drill the well took nearly a year. Drake’s luck turned when in May 1859 he convinced blacksmith William “Uncle Billy” Smith, an experienced salt-well driller, to join him.

Following erection of a pinewood derrick, drilling began in the summer of 1859. Challenges surfaced yet again, however, when the hole began caving in at around 16 feet. Not to be distracted from his mission, Drake seized on an idea of driving cast-iron conductor pipe down to the shale bedrock at 32 feet and continuing to drill through the pipe. It worked. Once they had reached the bedrock, drilling continued at the “blinding speed” of about 3 feet a day. Even there, the shale periodically caved in, plus the engine caught on fire, although it was salvaged and put back into service.

Drake’s persistence was again tested when company funding ran out. He pushed ahead with his own money but soon ran through that. He was left to borrow $500 from friends. All the while, scoffers continued to label the operation “Drake’s Folly” — yet the colonel would not be deterred.

The gurgle heard round the world
On August 27, 1859, near the end of the workday, the drill bit slipped 6 inches beyond the bottom of the drilled hole. It had encountered a natural fracture in the bedrock. This brought the total depth to 69 ½ feet. Uncle Billy and his son, Samuel, decided to pull the drilling tools from the hole and stop for the day. Upon returning the next morning, they noticed oil was filling the well. At last, the reservoir supplying the ancient seep had been tapped.

It thus might be said that the world’s petroleum industry began with a gurgle instead of a roaring gusher. The historic Drake well produced a meager 10 to 35 barrels a day. Nevertheless, that was nearly double the world’s known oil production.

The man with the bull-headed notion that oil could be found by drilling a hole in the ground had won the day and had sent the scoffers chasing off through the western Pennsylvania hills for any oil leases they could grab. Wooden derricks soon crowded the once quiet area, and the age of petroleum had dawned.