Oil wells. Some have that quality of a little plastic toy one would give to a child, writ large. A vintage drinking bird working off thermodynamics. I’ve always found common North American wells terrifyingly charming. Little toys digging up the remains of dead grandpas and dinosaur slush. (Well scientists haven't actually agreed on where oil comes from.) Alas, the whole process draws on the imagination.
As modern concerns lead us to look to alternatives to petroleum, ones that do not spill and sully, I hope to see the number of oil wells decrease and disappear. Meanwhile, I find them horrifyingly cute.
This design is the most lovingly-cute. This, friends, is the “stripper” well. Designed by Walter Trout in 1925 for the pragmatic counterbalanced oil well pump jack, the beloved stripper well has earned many nicknames over the years. Dotting the USA, 363,459 of these thirsty birds quietly remove the final volumes of oil from a reservoir.
The machine design is so cleverly goddamned cute, it’s a wonder that petroleum is such a markedly hot-button topic. From the moment oil was unearthed, however, it has been in demand. The earliest known oil wells were drilled in China in 347 AD, using bits attached to bamboo poles. Oil was burned to evaporate brine and produce salt. Marco Polo described seep oil fields in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan as having an output of seemingly hundreds of shiploads. The process yielded naphtha, for a 13th century petroleum industry. The first commercial North American oil well entered operation in Oil Springs, Ontario in 1858, while the first offshore oil well was drilled in 1896 at the Summerland Oil Field on the California Coast.
And the first major oil spill? In June of 1942, German U-boats attacked tankers off the east coast of the United States. Spilled into the Atlantic were 590 thousand tons of oil. Oil spills do happen naturally, as well. The best known natural ocean seep is Coal Oil Point along the California coast where an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 gallons (7,570 to 11,400 liters) of crude oil is released each day.
Why would the world over want oil? For centuries, oil seeps provided a balm for injuries. Natural gas seeps – when ignited – created folklore and places called “burning springs.” It had long been recognized that oil could be collected and used as a medicine, lubricant, and even a sick-smelling, smoky illuminant. A decade before the birth of the petroleum industry, Samuel Kier of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, sold 50-cent, half-pint bottles of Pennsylvania “Rock Oil” proclaiming its “Wonderful Medical Virtues.” When a Yale chemist, Benjamin Silliman, found that oil could be distilled into a kerosene illuminant circa 1854, the world changed forever.
