Word: shaft
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...through the Pennsylvania oilfields last week like the report of a great new gusher. On Thanksgiving Day a group of oilmen had gathered in Franklin, Pa. around an oil well whose like they had never seen before-a sizable hole in the ground that looked more like a coalmine shaft. Someone threw a switch, setting off 12,000 Ib. of explosives deep underground. There was a rumble, a burst of steam and gas from the hole, and then an amazing flood of hundreds of gallons of oil and water from underground wells into the bottom of the shaft...
...Ranney had hit on a simple way to make old oilfields gush again. Pennsylvania's old wells, though they still yield the richest crude oil in the world, have slowed down to an average of less than half a barrel a day from each well. From his single shaft at Franklin, Ranney expects to get more than...
Ranney's well actually works on the same principle as a coal mine. In coal fields, miners dig a shaft down to the layer of coal, then work horizontally through the layer, cutting the coal away...
Conventional oil drilling is vertical: drill ers bore a narrow shaft down through the layer of sedimentary rock in which the oil is stored. From the small shaft surf ace they usually get only about 20% of the oil actually present...
...mills that own the mines, Lewis' order did not stick. First at Brownsville, then at Uniontown, groups of miners worked against union officials who were trying to get them back into the pits. When local election on the question brought a mixed result, self-appointed pickets roved from shaft to shaft, arguing, pleading, jeering at the returning workers, Thus, at the height of the outlaw strike, 24,000 miners were idle, cutting production a daily average of 200,000 tons for 18 days. Since this type of coking coal cannot be bought on the commercial market, furnaces stood idle...