Word: oiling
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Blind Lead the Blind. Oil fever sent men searching in the unlikeliest places on the unlikeliest leads. A miner in California, Edward Doheny, sniffed oil when he spotted an ice wagon loaded with tar jolting along a Los Angeles street before the century's turn; he rustled up another prospecting pal, Charles Canfield, and with pick and shovel they dug a 4-ft. by 6-ft. shaft 165 ft. down into the nearby tar pits, struck a field that was to flow more than 70 million bbl., lead to the discovery of another 6 billion...
...found an arrow carved in a rock in West Virginia, heard a tale that it pointed to treasure buried by pirates years before, sighted along it and drilled a 3,000-bbl.-a-day producer. In the same state, hearing of a blind farmer's vision of oil spouting over his maple tree, they drilled on the spot, found a 300-bbl.-a-day well. In Illinois, following the directions of a blind judge who had developed his own theory on oil finding, they drilled near Robinson, started the heaviest land rush since Texas, and enriched themselves...
...Within the next 30 years," says Author Knowles, "explorers would find almost 10 billion bbl. in its 70,000 square miles. There were more giant oil fields lying under this wasteland than would be found in any other single area in the U.S. . . . The 2,000,000 acres belonging to the University of Texas made it one of the richest universities in the world...
Arrogant and superstitious, Harry Sinclair liked to drill in cemeteries or places where blackjacks grew, created a $700 million empire.* Haroldson L. Hunt, who now commands a $600 million empire, was a professional gambler, writes Author Knowles, who got started in oil with an Arkansas lease that he won in a poker game, struck a 15-million-bbl. field in Louisiana after a poker-playing pal had a dream that it contained oil...
...Probably the most important geological breakthrough came when Geologist Everette Lee DeGolyer used a reflection seismograph on the Seminole plateau, sending man-made sounds deep into the earth and gauging the echo to find "the rock beds humped up into a little dome which might be a trap for oil." In 1930 the well blew in at 8,000 bbl. a day. "This was the most important well drilled in America since Spindletop; reflection seismograph revolutionized prospecting for oil as completely as Spindletop had done...