THE OIL PIONEER WHO PROVED PERSISTENCE IS THE SECRET

Book Review - Myth Legend Reality; Edwin Laurentine Drake and the early oil industry
Herman K. Trabish, December 11, 2009 (NewEnergyNews)

In a landmark year for the U.S. oil industry, the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the bringing home of the nation’s first oil well, a scholar has authored what many history buffs are calling the definitive history of oil’s earliest days.

Most Americans are unaware that the birthplace of the U.S. oil industry was an obscure corner of northwest Pennsylvania where, in 1859, Colonel Edwin Drake drilled 69 feet into Titusville earth and brought up the first “gusher.” (There was actually no gush but there was oil.)

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Geology Professor and oil historian William Brice saw the anniversary of the Drake well coming and brought home a remarkable piece of readable, engaging yet scholarly biography in Myth Legend Reality; Edwin Laurentine Drake and the early oil industry. It is biography and history but it is something else as well. Colonel Drake’s persistence in the face of loss and tough economic times is exemplary and the story of finding the right kind of energy for the nation at just the right time should give every readers cause for reflection on the kinds of energy the nation is depending on today.

Edwin Drake had more than his share of losses before the big win in Titusville. He lost a wife and three children and a career. But he was remarried and raising more children when a New Haven consortium of lawyers hired him to go to Titusville and see if he could develop the oil seeps that had been known in the mountain valleys along Oil Creek since the Seneca Indians owned the land.

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The locals called it Drake’s Folly. Though locals had gone and harvested oil from random pools since the region was inhabited, nobody had ever thought of actually drilling down into the ground where the oil was seeping out. It was slow hard expensive work and the consortium finally decided to call it off. But Drake persisted just a little bit longer. As a result, there was Rockefeller and a host of American gazillionaires and the Allies won the World Wars and Western wealth won the Cold War and now everything is made from plastic.

It is a great and true tale and Brice tells it excellently and authoritatively and he is a pleasure to read: “… Edwin Drake was responsible for the first well drilled specifically to find oil. He persevered and was successful. He found oil and proved that it was far easier and more productive to drill for it than to skim it off the surface of oil seeps. Thus his work provided an economical means of obtaining a new, but also very old, raw material that was first used to power the lamps of the day, but came eventually to power the world’s industry and transportation…”

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Another sample: …Before Drake’s discovery, no one even bothered to keep detailed statistics of oil exports from the United States. But by 1861 almost 11,000,000 gallons of oil were exported that year; between 1861 and 1864 the amount almost tripled; and in 1864 almost 32,000,000 gallons were exported. Thus in five years exports of oil went from probably a few thousand gallons to 32 million. Just in 1866 alone, the value of petroleum exports from the United States reached about $20,000,000, and that does not include the revenue from domestic sales. In a large measure, Drake’s effort indirectly provided the United States government with the means to pay for the Civil War, and subsequently for all the other wars that followed…”

And one more: “…But mostly we remember Drake because he provided the inspiration for countless others who followed him into the wilderness of western Pennsylvania seeking their own fortunes in the oil fields. For if this humble, former railroad conductor could do it, then they could also. Soon that inspiration spread across the nation and across the oceans to other lands. Thus the work of Edwin Drake initiated the development of our modern oil and gas industry…”