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The
first "over water" oil wellby
Bob Bowman | |
In
the early l900s, 27-year-old Walter B. Pyron, of Blossom,
Texas, a production foreman for Guffy Oil Company, noticed gas bubbles rising
from Caddo Lake. He and other Guffy employees rowed across the lake, lighting
strings of the bubbles.
Confident that oil and gas lay beneath the lake,
Pyron wrote to his superiors recommending that 8,000 acres of lake bottom be leased
at an auction being held by the federal government at Mooringsport, Louisiana,
near Ferry Lake, the Louisiana side of Caddo Lake.
He told them he was
sure his men were capable of drilling and completing a well in the lake, using
crude tools and wood timbers.
On the day of the auction, Pyron had no
reply, but he went to Mooringsport for the auction.
Fifteen minutes before
the auction he still had no answer, but Pyron found a crank-style telephone and
talked to his superiors at Gulf Oil Corporation--the successor of Guffy Petroleum
Company--in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. They were dubious, but Pyron was persistent,
and time was passing.
A minute and a half before noon--the time set for
the bidding--Pyron won Gulf's approval and raced to the auction site. He was just
in time and bid the lake bottom for $30,000 down and $70,000 in royalty agreements.
Seldom has an oil property been obtained for so little money at an auction
sale. The problem of drilling over water had stumped other bidders, but not Pyron.
In
early May, 1911, after months of hard work and battles with mosquitoes, alligators
and moccasins, the Ferry Lake No. 1 was drilled to a depth of 2,185 and began
producing 450 barrels of oil a day.
The oil was piped to tank farms on
the shore and then transferred to a system of gathering pipelines.
In
Pyron's days, offshore wells were called "over water" wells and a special platform
had to be built on Ferry Lake. A crew felled cypress trees on the shore and drove
the trunks into the lake for pilings for the platform. A slush pit was also made
of wood.
To support the drilling platform, the crew assembled a floating
pile driver, three tugboats, ten barges and 36 small boats, bringing them to the
lake by way of the Gulf Coast, the Mississippi River and the Red River.
One
storm scattered the equipment and crews so thoroughly that it took weeks to reassemble
them. Altogether, it was two years from the day of the auction to the time drilling
began on the lake.
Tempers flared so much on the project that one driller
quit on the spot, dived into the lake and swam to shore, preferring the snakes
and alligators to his tough crew boss.
Watching his driller churn the
water, the boss calmed down and went after the driller in a boat. When he reached
the man, the boss spoke in a calmer voice, but said: "All right, now go into town,
get some dry clothes, and hurry back. We've lost too damned much time."
While
Pyron's achievement is recognized by a historical marker erected in 1994 at Mooringsport,
it has never had the wider recognition it deserves. Some historians feel the first
offshore wells were in California, but they were actually drilled on the shore
and slanted into the Pacific Ocean.
Pyron went on to become a vice-president
of Gulf and was instrumental in the discovery and development of Kuwait's oil
field. He also served as a brigadier general during World War II.
He died
in 1951 and is buried at Fort Sam Houston in San
Antonio. |
All
Things Historical >
October 30, 2006 Column
Syndicated in over 40 East Texas newspapers
Published
with permission
Distributed by the East Texas Historical Association. Bob
Bowman of Lufkin is a former president of the Association and the author of more
than 30 books about East Texas. |
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