Science in Short Chapters

by W. Mattieu Williams

As the oil industry of America is of such great national importance, an investigation of this kind is worthy of the energies of the American Government geologists. It would throw much light on the whole subject, and supply data from which the probable duration of the oil supply might be approximately calculated.

Such an investigation might even do more than this. By proving the geological conditions upon which depend the production of petroleum springs, new sources may be discovered, just as new coal-seams have been discovered, in accordance with geological prediction, or as the practical discovery of the Austrian gold-fields was so long preceded by Sir Roderick Murchison’s theoretical announcement of their probable existence.

When the “kerosene wells” were first struck, the speculations concerning their probable permanency were wild and various. Some maintained that it was but a spurt, a freak of nature limited to a narrow locality, and would soon be over; others asserted forthwith that American oil, like everything else American, was boundless. Neither had any grounds for their assertions, and therefore made them with the usual boldness of mere dogmatism.

Then came a period of scare, started by the fact that wells which at first spouted an inflammable mixture of oil and vapor high into the air soon became quiescent, and from “spouting wells” became “flowing wells,” merely pouring out on the surface a small stream at first, which gradually declined to a dribble, and finally ceased to flow at all. Even those that started modestly as flowing wells did the latter, and thus appeared to become exhausted.

This exhaustion, however, was only apparent, as was proved by the application of pumps, which drew up from wells, that had ceased either to spout or flow, large and apparently undiminishing quantities of crude oil.

Further observation and thought revealed the cause of these changes. It became understood that the spouting was due to the tapping of a rock-cavity containing oil of such varying densities and volatility that some of it flew out as a vapor, or boiled at the mean temperature of the air of the country or that of the surrounding rocks. Such being the case, the cavity was filled with high-pressure oil-vapor straining to escape. If the bore-hole tapped the crown or highest curve of the roof of such an oil-cavern, it opened directly into the vapor there accumulated, and the vapor itself rushed out with such force that a pillar of fire was raised in the air if a light came within some yards of the orifice. We are told of heavy iron boring-rods that were shot up to wondrous heights—and we may believe these stories if we please.

If the bore-hole struck lower down, somewhere on the sloping sides or in the shallow lower branches of the oil-cavern, it dipped at once into liquid oil, and this oil, being pressed by the elastic vapor of the upper part, was forced up as a jet of spouting oil.

In either case these violent proceedings soon came to an end, for as the vapor or oil poured out, the space above the oil-level where the vapor had been confined was increased, and its pressure diminished, till at last it barely sufficed to raise the oil to the surface, and afterwards failed to do that.

It is quite clear from this that the supplies are not “inexhaustible.” The quantity of vapor having been limited, there must also be a limit to the quantity of oil giving off this vapor; the space in the oil-cavern occupied by this vapor having been limited, there must be a limit to the space occupied by the oil. The quantity of oil may be ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, or ten thousand times, greater than that of the vapor, but in either or any case it must come to an end at last, sooner later.

If there were but a few wells here and there, as at other similar places, such as Rangoon, the Persian oil-wells, etc., the pumping might continue for centuries and centuries; but this is not the case in America. The final boundaries of the oil-bearing strata may not yet have been reached; but so far as they are known they are riddled through and through, and pumped in every direction, so that the end must come at last, though with our present knowledge we cannot say when.