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BRADFORD - ALLEGANY, PROVING GROUND FOR AN INDUSTRY 

By G. Adolph Vossler 

Man, in his search for new sources of energy, seems destined to lift the lid of Pandora's box and let loose upon the world a host of problems. In this century there were many hands upon the lid and it is not quite clear who raised it. It may have been the Italian scientist, Enrico Ferml, when in a squash court beneath Stagg Field in Chicago, he started the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction. On it may have been the scientists under Dr. Oppenheimer, at Los Alamos, counting off  the seconds to zero and wondering if that first atomic explosion might un- ravel the universe. It was first rea1ized by most of us when those young men made a bomb run over Hiroshima in the Ano1ia Gay.

In the nineteenth century, in as much less spectacular fashion, the lid was raised by a simple blacksmith of  Tarentum, Pa, named Billy Smith.  On a Sunday morning he reported to his boss, Col. Edwin Drake, that the hole which they had drilled to a depth of 69 ft near Titusville, PA was filled with oil. What eventually accrued from this discovery has been both to the benefit and detriment of mankind.  Some may object to the use of Pandora's box and its connotation of evil as a similie for the finding of a product so useful. You need only ponder upon the use to which it has been put in waging war, or reflect on our holiday highway casualty lists to realize that it is not an unmixed blessing.

In the 96 years since Col. Drake's well, production of petroleum has risen from gallons to 6 1/2 million barrels daily in the United States and we import and use an additional million barrels a day. The daily production of the world is 13 1/2 million barrels a day. Drilling techniques have been perfected that has enabled man to drill to a depth of 21,482 ft.   Production methods have been learned that give us oil from below 17,000 ft. The submersible drilling barge has made it possible to drill off-shore in 20 or more feet of water and the direction drilling permits several wells to be drilled from one location at the bottom of each well being several hundred feet off center from the top.  The electro-log. the gamma ray log. the caliper log and the core barrell have given oil men new tools to work with. The geologist has a host of tools and methods to help him find new oil. There has been a lot to learn in this nearly a century of oil and our Bradford-Allegany field has played an important role in the acquisition of this knowledge. It was largely the early proving ground for men, and methods, and materials.

The first drillers had to borrow their know-how from the salt well drillers. The early steam engines were those used by the saw- millers. Mostly, it was cut and try and improvise. Wood was the material most lavishly at hand, and it was used for the crude machinery, for derricks, pulleys and tanks. The first oil was transported in wooden barrels. Once the broad-axe was skillfully used to hew shafts, sills, and posts but there are few left who can use it.

It might be interesting to trace the development of prime movers during the past fifty years. The Drake well was powered by a 6 H. P. steam engine. My earliest recollection of a drilling well was in 1902, when I was permitted to drop the go-devil in a well being shot. That well had a 12 H.P. steam engine, and when the tools were raised from the hole it was necessary to stop several times to let the steam pressure build up. I can remember walking the steam boxes between wells, where several wells were pumped from a central boiler. Thousands of feet of good hemlock lumber went into these steam boxes, which served as insulation for the steam lines. I recall the barkers on these steam pumping engines, each playing a different tune. Their purpose was to indicate when the well was pumped off as the engine speeded up. Early in the century Bessemer, over at Grove City, fitted a gas cylinder to one of these steam engine beds, put a tube on the cylinder that was heated by a gas flame to act as the ignition system, and the half-breed engine was born. Nothing more useful, or more cantankerous was ever introduced to the oil fields. These engines had no governor and could run unbelieveably fast when the gas regulation was inadvertently changed. Occasionally a life was lost by exploding fly wheels or by getting caught in the clutch.  Soon McEwen Bros. and Clark & Norton were making these engines in Wellsville and manufacturers in other parts of the field joined the rush to gas. The half-breed developed from 12 to 15H.P. and cost from $125 to $150, the purchaser furnishing the steam bed. This change to gas made possible the central power house which we still see dotting the hill sides of the area.

The drilling operation still used the steam engine. As it was  increased to 25 or 30 H.P. it became the most flexible and correct for the drilling motion that has been devised. It entailed the provision  of large quantities of fuel and water, however, and economics was against it. About the time of the First World War the reversible clutch, which permitted reverse power without reverse rotation of the engine, was perfected and the commercial type gas engine invaded the field. These were large and heavy and sluggish and most drillers had to learn how to get along with them. From this stage, it was a natural progression  to the multi-cylinder motor which is still used on the spudder rig that has all but supplanted all other types of cable tool drilling outfit.

In passing, mention should be made of the multi-cylinder motor that proved most popular. This was the Buffalo, a marine type motor that could  be mounted on wheels, and had self contained reverse gears and clutch, and whose greatest peculiarity was that its rotation was counter clock-wise when most motors rotate clock-wise. In the pumping operation the half-breed engine was also supplanted by the motor or commercial type gas engine.

Bradford-Allegany has been a proving ground for the pipeliner as the first major pipe line in the United States was built from Olean to Bayonne NJ, in 1881, to carry Pennsylvania oil to seaboard refineries. This first line was 6" wrought iron pipe and, in succeeding years was paralleled with three more 6' lines making it ever 50,000 bbls. a day capacity. It passed through the Village of Wellsville on its way to the Elm Valley station, which was the second largest storage point between Olean and Bayonne.  At its maximum there were 79 tanks at Elm Valley with a capacity of 2,765,000 bbls of oil. I can remember when there were a few 35,000 bbl tanks left at Elm Valley and a pond behind the fire walls of those that has been removed. Elm Valley was one of 11 stations on the line equipped with 800 H.P. Worthington steam pumps and staffed with a crew of eleven men consisting of a foreman, two engineers, two asst. engineers, four fireman and two telegraph operators. The skill with which some of these dispatchers could handle the telegraph key has become almost a legend. Line walkers, covering 14 miles a day,  had adventures with wildcats and rattle snakes and speculated on how many times the distance around the world  they had walked. Oil was sent through the line from as far away as Texas.  Ownership of the line was vested in National Transit Co. and later in New York Transit Co., both Standard Oil subsidiaries. By 1927 the competition of tankers supplying oil to the Atlantic sea board was too great, so the equipment was sold and the line transferred to Home Gas Co. who still use it for transporting natural gas.

The area had many small refineries, in the early days, that are gone and forgotten. Oil was transported to them in wooden barrels and their main product was illuminating oil. As a example, the first refinery in Allegany County was at Friendship in 1880. It had a capacity of about 800 bbls a month. The neighbors had long complained of the odors emanating from the plant and after about four years of operation it burned mysteriously, one night, never to be rebuilt.  Vacuum Oil Co., with a plant at Rochester and later at Olean, became a pioneer in the attempt to utilize the heavier fractions of oil after kerosene had been removed.  Vacuum Oil eventually became dominated by Standard Oil who also started the Acme Oil Works in Olean, and alumni from these two plants became refining experts all over the world. In 1911 the Supreme Court handed down its famous decree dissolving the Standard Oil Co. Vacuum had meanwhile merged with the Acme Works and in 1931 with Standard of New York became Socony Vacuum. This combination went forward to become, along with Jersey Standard and Stanolind, a billion dollar a year concern. Just last year Socony Vacuum left Olean, moving those of its employees who wished to the State of Washington.

There were immense tank farms in the Penn Grade Area in the 1880’s to store the flush production. At one period there were ten million barrels of oil stored in the vicin1ty of Olean, making it the largest oil storage depot in the world. These tanks were all pa1nted red and they had not yet learned that white paint would cut evaporation losses. Fire was the natural enemy of the tank farm and much was learned to combat this danger. Every tank farm had its cannon for shooting holes in a burning tank to shorten the burning time and thus increase the salvage value of the tank.

Liquid petroleum gas, known as L.P.G., is an important product especially in the West and Southwest. Our area contributed a small part in the development of L.P.G.  About the time of World War 1, there were nine plants built in Allegany County to extract casing head gasoline from natural gas. These plants did not exist long as the operation was hazardous and the profits small. The plant I knew was that of Ebenezer Oil Co. at Allentown, which incidentally was one of the few that paid for itself and returned a profit. I can recall paying a dollar for six gallons of gas at their pump. The transaction had risk attached, for occasionally on a hot day if the gas had not been properly stabilized by blending with naphtha, it might enter your tank as a measurable liquid, revert to gas and escape through the vent in the tank cover. Besides being stranded there was always the realization that the Model T gas tank was under the seat. I am sure Clark Bros. learned things of value from these gasoline operations in the development of their big compressors which have proven popular among L.P.G. producers.

It was in the field of secondary recovery that Bradford-Allegany came into its own as a proving ground for the industry. There seems to be considerable confusion, claim and counter claim as to who first realized that water under pressure applied to an oil bearing sand would increase the production of surrounding wells. The fact that such a procedure was illegal in New York state until 1919, may have deterred many from seeking the acclaim due the discoverer.  It matters little who first practiced flooding for the important thing is that by study and laboratory research, by trial and error, by pooling knowledge gained from experience, techniques are now perfected that have added and will continue to add millions of barrels of oil to our reserves. 

Secondary recovery has moved on to Illinois, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas. Where ever oil is produced the possibilities of secondary recovery are explored and the experience of Bradford utilized. In many of these western oil towns you will find men with Bradford-Allegany water flood experience.  Each field presents its own problems but our area has led the way.

It is beyond the scope and purpose of this paper to attempt to give credit to all the people who have carried knowledge, learned in this area, to the oil fields of the world.  I know that we have sent drillers to Newfoundland and to the steaming jungles of Burma.  We have had wildcatters who have made fortunes and. others who have lost their shirts in Western oil operations.  We have furnished such executives as E. C. Lufkin of Bolivar and Ralph Holmes of Olean who have each served as president of the Texas Co. Wallace Hardison, an Allegany County producer was one of the founders of Union Oil Co. of California, and James C. Donnell who was in the oil business at Allentown became president of the Ohio Oil Co., was succeeded by his son, Otto D. Donnell who grew up in Allentown, and in 1948 James C. Donnell II became the third generation of the family to serve in that capacity.

The boom towns of the area were forerunners, too, of those that seem to go with the discovery of oil. Let us consider Richburg and its year of fame.  At the beginning of the year 1881 it was a sleepy village with 180 inhabitants, 40 homes, 4 stores, 2 grist mills, 2 blacksmiths, a shingle mill and sash works, a wool carding plant, a cheese factory, a wagon works, a cooper and shoe shop, a cider mill and 2 tins. Early that year, Edwin G. Bliss, an uncle of Hubert Bliss of Wellsville, and. two Grand Army comrades assembled a block of leases totaling 458 acres with the intention of drilling for oil. They got six other partners to help finance the venture. Among these was 0. P. Taylor who had two years previously drilled Triangle #1 at Petrolia, the first successful well in the Allegany field. My wife’s grandfather, Riley Allen, had been Taylor’s partner in two successful wells at Allentown in 1880 and he, too, became a partner in the Richburg well. On April 27th the well came in flowing. The “Empire Oil by J. P. Herrick has related what took place. I quote: “Within nine months Richburg had a population of about 7000, 2 banks 2 narrow gauge railroads, a morning an evening, and 2 Sunday news papers, telegraph and telephone service, 56 hotels and boarding houses, 24 saloons and. restaurants, 2 bottling works, 2 faro banks, 1 wholesale and retail grocers, 11 oil well supply stores, 8 laundries, 9 livery stables, 4 nitro glycerin dealers, 5 drug stores, 5 clothing stores, 2 iron and tool works, 2 hose companies, 2 express companies, 12 lawyers, 9 doctors, 4 jewelers, 4 milliners, 5 policemen, 3 justices of the peace, 2 Opera houses, 7 billiard parlors, a skating rink, and more than 20 bagnios, including one for colored clientele.  And the salary of the postmaster had increased from $137 to $1600 a year. Unquote.  Such was  Richburg’s year of glory and it was repeated at El Dorado, Burkburnett and a dozen other boom towns

Before concluding I should acknowledge the help furnished by the research and writings of that grand old oil man Mr. John P. Herrick of Olean and. Los Angeles. Without his books the preparation of such a paper would be an arduous task indeed.