Look Back: Oil industry comes and goes
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OLEAGINOUS [meaning: having to do with the production of oil]!
Some Local Reminiscences of the Petroleum Reign
Refined oil has never been lower than it is at the present. Crude has sold as low as fifty cents [a barrel]; the quotation of yesterday gave the price at 71 cents. Manufactured oil sells from 7 1/2 cents per gal. for the low grades to 13 1/2 cents for the highest grades. As a result of the marked depression, new ventures are not plentiful.
* The refineries of this city and vicinity are doing very little at present. The Camden refinery, with a capacity of 900 barrels per day, is only running about two-thirds of the time. And the other refineries are as badly off. The probabilities are that the continued development of the Macksburg [in Ohio] will somewhat increase the amount of oil refined here.
* Great quantities of crude oil were formerly brought to this point from the Pennsylvania fields and shipped to Baltimore for export purposes. This was done by the Standard Oil Company from 1875 to 1879 inclusive. This enterprise however, has been removed from Parkersburg and the crude material is now shipped directly to Baltimore, where it is refined.
* The largest well ever struck in America, until about three months ago, was the famous gusher at Burning Springs [Wirt County, WV] about nineteen years ago. This well had a flow of 4,000 barrels [per day], and the field at that time was a factor in the crude oil market of this country. The sudden rise' and fall of the territory, however, is familiar to our readers. The great well of Burning Springs was eclipsed by the now famous Phillips well, on Thorn Creek, in the Pennsylvania field, which started with a flow of 6.000 or 7,000 barrels per day.
* It is the general opinion of oil men that the Volcano oil field is about pumped dry. Its present daily capacity is about 300 barrels, all of which comes to the refineries here. The palmy days of the oil business of Volcano were 1878, when the output was about 900 barrels. The field, however, was never of national importance. It is now gradually declining. It has been worked for twenty years and few territories pay after that length of time. The parties working the field cannot afford to drill new wells while the current prices of crude oil are so low.
Excerpt from The [Parkersburg] Daily State Journal
Feb. 12, 1885
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In David McKain's book, "Where It All Began," the excitement in the Burning Springs oil fields are described by J.R. Dodge, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture: "...At the close of the year [1865] the excitement at Burning Springs was intense. Engines by the scores were brought from Parkersburg … and neighboring lands were purchased for future operation, or speculative purposes. The lands of Standing Stone, Reedy, Tucker's, Lynn Camp, Lee's, and many other creeks and of Two Riffles Rock, and other runs, which swell the waters of the Little Kanawha, were prospected, surveyed, sold, or leased, and either "stocked" or reserved for individual enterprise. The shrewd operators upon Oil Creek (in Pennsylvania), where the first [oil] lands commanded from one to ten thousand dollars or more, seized upon these lands at fifty, one hundred, two hundred dollars or more, according to indications or location. On Burning Springs Creek figures were asked and obtained -- if five thousand dollars per acre may be deemed modest …"
Later in the book, McKain states: "What Dodge did not point out, nor did he know, was that this potential and success would be elusive until deeper drilling was successful -- and that would wait for another era, better equipment and drilling tools, and increased capital.
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Bob Enoch is president of the Wood County Historical and Preservation Society. If you have comments or questions about Look Back items, please contact him at: roberteenoch@gmail.com, or by mail at WCHPS, PO Box 565, Parkersburg, WV 26102.