Petroleum

by Albert Lidgett

From this time, the number of pipe-lines have multiplied, until to-day there are thousands of them scattered throughout every oil-producing field of America. The first long main transportation line for oil was laid in 1880 from Butler County to Cleveland, a distance of over 100 miles, and immediately after its completion, trunk lines were commenced from the Bradford oil region to the Atlantic seaboard. The popularity of this new method of oil transportation may be judged from the fact that within three years from the completion of these first propositions, the National Transit Company possessed over 3,000 miles of oil pipe-lines, and had iron tank storage for 35,000,000 barrels of crude oil.

Then a few master minds came to the front, and loyally supported by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil fame, they undertook the herculean task of practically girdling the States with a system of oil pipe-lines that has no parallel anywhere. They eliminated the jaded horses, oil-boats, wooden tankage, and slow freights, tedious methods, and questionable practices of handling petroleum, and substituted therefor the stem pump, the iron conduit, the steel tank storage, and systematic and businesslike methods which soon commanded the confidence and respect of all oil-producers. They extended their pipe-lines to practically every producing well and established a transportation system which serves the industry to-day as no other on earth is served. The advantages of the modern pipe-line to the oil-producer are obvious. A pipe-line connection to a producer’s tank ensures prompt service and a cash market for his product at all times. The small line connected with his tank conveys the crude oil therefrom, either by gravity or by means of a pump, into a receiving tank of the gathering or field lines of the pipe-line system, from which it is pumped into the main trunk pipe-lines to the refineries.

OIL PIPE-LINE CONNECTIONS IN THE AMERICAN FIELDS

The system by which the producer can have payment for his oil at any time, for he is credited with its value when it once enters the pipe-line, is the perfection of simplicity, accuracy, and efficiency. The pipe-line of which the gathering or field lines are composed varies in diameter from 2 to 8 inches, the joints of which are screw threaded. The main trunk lines are from 6 to 10 inches in diameter, and pumping stations, supplied with powerful plant driven by steam or internal combustion engines of the Diesel type, are located at suitable points of the line. According to the nature of the crude oils to be passed through the pipe-line must the erection of pumping houses be governed: for instance, in handling the heavy Californian or Mexican crudes, the pumping stations have to be much nearer each other than when a lighter crude oil is transported. Some of the heavier oils have, in fact, to be heated before they enter the pipes at all.

As already mentioned, the total oil transported to-day by the American pipe-line system exceeds half a million barrels daily. The lines themselves—all laid, of course, below ground—are so unobtrusive and do their work so quietly and unseen, that they attract no attention, and yet they are vastly important to not only the business of the States, but to those myriads of consumers abroad.

It is, in fact, impossible to over-estimate the importance of this up-to-date system of oil transportation in the United States as it exists to-day. To show the impossibility of conducting the present-day American petroleum industry without the use of pipe-lines, let me give a few facts. The large oil-tank cars, which are not unusual sights on our railways, hold, at the maximum, about 25 tons of oil. Excluding California altogether from these illustrations, the half-a-million barrels of oil which are transported daily in the States by pipe-lines would fill over 2,500 tank cars. Taking 25 cars to make up a freight train, it would require fully 100 trains daily to transport the oil that now goes by pipe-line, and inasmuch as it is estimated that the oil on the average is transported overland (or, rather, under-land) 1,000 miles, it would require, approximately, 200,000 railroad tank cars to do the daily work in connection with the transport of oil in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, for the average movement of tank cars is 30 miles daily, and all empty cars must be returned. No less than 8,000 railroad engines would be required to do this work, which, on the face of it, is a railway impossibility.

I am afraid I have devoted more space to the question of pipe-line transport in the States than the confines of this little work warrants, but the subject is one of great interest to all who would know the magnitude of the organization which is comprised in the limits of the petroleum industry.

The United States, however, is but one of the large oil-producing countries where the pipe-line system for the land transport of oil has become the backbone of transport. In Russia, for instance, the fields of production are situated hundreds of miles from the exporting ports, and, following upon the principles which obtain in the United States, the pipe-line system had, perforce, to be adopted. In this respect, however, Russia has still a great deal to learn from our Western friends, and the conservative policy which permeated the Russian Empire as a whole has precluded the making of much headway.

The Russian oil-fields—those of Baku and Grosny—are situated at great distance from the coast, and the necessity of connecting both fields with the export port of Batoum, on the Black Sea, has frequently been put forward as a project offering the one solution of the difficulties attending the retention of a large export oil trade. The Grosny pipe-line is still a scheme for future solution, but that affecting Baku has been solved by the laying of a pipe-line from Baku to Batoum. This line, which is approximately 650 miles long, runs direct between the two oil centres and, assuming it operates 24 hours in the day, has a capacity of transporting over 3,000 tons of oil daily. Inasmuch as the Russian oil refineries are at Baku, the line is used solely for the transportation of the refined products. The line itself is laid alongside the railway line of the Transcaucasian Railway, at a depth of 4 feet, but many strange stories are related as to the tapping of it at various points, and a lucrative trade being done in the oil so caught.