Diggers in the Earth

by Eva March Tappan

"Stocks par, stocks up,
Then on the wane;
Everybody's troubled with
Oil on the brain."

In the course of a year or two, the first "gusher" was discovered. The workmen had drilled down some four or five hundred feet and were working away peacefully, when a furious stream of oil burst forth which hurled the tools high up into the air. Hundreds of barrels gushed out every day, and soon other gushers were discovered. The most famous one in the world is at Lakeview, California. For months it produced fifty thousand barrels of oil a day, and threw it up three hundred and fifty feet into the air in a black column, spraying the country with oil for a mile around. The oil flowed away in a river, and for a time no one could plan any way to stop it or store it. At last, however, a mammoth tank was built around the well and made firm with stones and bags of earth. This was soon full of oil; and with all this vast weight of oil pressing down upon it, the stream could not rise more than a few feet above the surface. Just why oil should come out with such force, the geologists are not quite certain; but it is thought to result from a pressure of gas upon the sandstone containing it. The flow almost always becomes less and less, and after a time the most generous well has to be pumped.

A CALIFORNIA OIL FIELD
For scenery, one should not go to an oil field. Looks, smell, and oil alike are unpleasant, but every oil derrick covers a fortune and helps to make our machinery run smoothly.

An "oil field" may extend over thousands of square miles; but within this field there are always "pools"; that is, certain smaller fields, where oil is found. When a man thinks there is oil in a certain spot, sometimes he buys the land if he is able; but oftener he gets permission of the owner to bore a well, agreeing to pay him a royalty; that is, a certain percentage of all the oil that is produced. When this has been arranged, he builds his derrick. This consists of four strong upright beams firmly held together by crossbeams. It stands directly over the place where the well is to be dug. It is from thirty to eighty feet in height, according to the depth at which it is hoped to find oil. There must also be an engine house to provide the power for drilling. An iron pipe eight or ten inches in diameter is driven down through the soil until it comes to rock. Now the regular drilling begins. At the top of the derrick is a pulley. Over the pulley passes a stout rope to which the heavy drilling tools—the "string of tools," as they are called—are fastened. The drilling goes on day and night. The drill makes the hole, and the sand pump sucks out the water and loose bits of stone. When the drill has gone to the bottom of the strata which carry water, the sides of the bore are cased to keep the water out; then the drilling continues, but now the drill makes its way into the oil-bearing sandstone.

There is nothing certain about the search for oil. In some places it is near the surface, in others it is perhaps three or four thousand feet down. The well may prove to be a gusher and pour out hundreds of thousands of gallons a day; or the oil may refuse to rise to the surface and have to be pumped out even at the first. Naturally, no one is prepared for a gusher, and millions of gallons have often flowed away before any arrangements could be made for storing the oil. Sometimes a well that gives only a moderate flow can be made to yield generously by exploding a heavy charge of dynamite at the bottom, to break up the rock and, it is always hoped, to open some new oil-holding crevice that the drill has not reached.

Crude petroleum is a dark, disagreeable, bad-smelling liquid; and before it can be of much use, it must be refined. For several years it was carried in barrels from the oil fields to Pittsburgh by wagon and boat, a slow, expensive process, and generally unsatisfactory to all but the teamsters. Then came the railroads. They provided iron tanks in the shape of a cylinder fastened to freight cars, much like those employed to-day. There was only one difficulty about sending oil by rail, and that was that it still had to be hauled by team to the railroad, sometimes a number of miles. At length, some one said to himself, "Why cannot we simply run a pipe directly from the well to the railroad?" This was done. Pumping engines were put in a few miles apart, and the invention was a success in the eyes of all but the teamsters. In spite of their opposition, however, pipe-lines increased.

Before this it had been necessary to build the refineries as near the oil regions as possible in order to save the expense of carrying the oil; but now they could be built wherever it was most convenient. To-day oil can be brought at a small expense from west of the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seaboard, refined, and distributed throughout that part of the country, or loaded into "tankers,"—that is, steamships containing strong tanks of steel,—and so taken across the ocean. The pipes are made of iron and are six or eight inches or more in diameter. In using them one difficulty was found which has been overcome in an ingenious fashion. Sometimes they become choked by the impurities of the oil and the flow is lessened. Then a "go-devil" is put into them. This is shaped like a cartridge, is about three feet in length, composed of springs and plates of iron and so flexible that it can turn around a corner. It is so made that as it slips down the current of oil, it whirls around and in so doing its nose of sharp blades scrapes the pipes clean.