National Capital Area Chapter of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics

Participates not in photographic order: Katharine Austin Barnes, Paul Brown, William Burns, Rodica Donaldson, Vlad Dorjets, Paul Faeth, Michael Hill, Walter Howes, Jim Johnson, Heidi King, Mark Lively, Alexander Squires Lopez, James McDonnell, Andrew Paterson, Ron Promboin, Daniel Kurt Schultz, Jean-Baptiste Siproudhis, Peri Cankardes Ulrey, and Doug Vine.

Participates not in photographic order: Katharine Austin Barnes, Paul Brown, William Burns, Rodica Donaldson, Vlad Dorjets, Paul Faeth, Michael Hill, Walter Howes, Jim Johnson, Heidi King, Mark Lively, Alexander Squires Lopez, James McDonnell, Andrew Paterson, Ron Promboin, Daniel Kurt Schultz, Jean-Baptiste Siproudhis, Peri Cankardes Ulrey, and Doug Vine.

USAEE members on oil sands tour during the 2010 Calgary Conference.

Many people have heard of speed dating, and some of us have even done it. Nicolay Filchev, a student member of the NCAC Council from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and fellow NCAC Council member Peri Uley came up with the idea of speed mentoring. We had about 15 students and 15 non-student NCAC Members meet for two hours of speek mentoring. Some people thought the event was too short. Others thought it was too long. Maybe that meant it was like Goldilock's statement of "just right".

NCAC-USAEE Members Tour the McClintock No. 1 Oil Well. Descriptions and photography supplied by John Jennrich. On August 21-22, 2009, 45 members of the local chapter of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics traveled by bus to northwestern Pennsylvania to visit Titusville, Pithole and Oil City, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the first commercially drilled oil well in the world - the Drake Well. The McClintock well was drilled two years later, in August 1861, but is the oldest continuously producing oil well in the USA.

This is a replica of the engine house holding the Drake Well, drilled in August 1859, near Titusville, PA. One hundred and fifty years ago, Col. Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States. The site was near Titusville in northwestern Pennsylvania, an area now populated with places called Oil City, Oil Creek and Pithole. Drake's success in late August 1859 spurred an oil-drilling boom in Pennsylvania similar to the Gold Rush in California a decade earlier. Drake didn't invent oil. What he created was the first well drilled specifically for what was then called rock oil, using a casing to keep the water out of the well bore and the sides of the well from collapsing. His drilling effort went down only 69 feet, but it was enough to produce oil - and almost instantly change the economy of both Pennsylvania and the nation. On Aug. 27, 1859, when Drake struck oil, the price was 75 cents per gal. By year-end, the price had dropped to 22 cents. The first oil refinery, which produced kerosene, was built in 1860 at Titusville.

Power supply for Drake Well. Behind the brick wall is a boiler, heated by a wood-fueled furnace, to the left out of the photo.

The steam-powered pump drives the large wheel (in the previous photo), which transfers power to the up-and-down pumping of the well. The Drake Well, drilled to 69 feet. This is beneath the tower in the wooden structure.

Here is a view of the McClintock No. 1 oil well, drilled in August 1861 and the oldest continuously producing oil well in the nation. The word, continuously, by Pennsylvania state standards, means it has been producing at least 5 days every 364 days. The well, adjacent to Oil Creek and about two miles from Oil City, produces about 12 barrels of oil a month.

This is a model of what Pithole City looked like in 1865.

This is a photograph of what Pithole City looked like in 1865. It covered 1 square mile and held 15,000 people. Derrick-destroying fires were frequent and life was rough. Pithole had 40 structures called hotels and 2-3 churches, and the preacher of one church was known to carry a brace of six-shooters. Construction of a pipeline to flow the oil to market replaced the wagon-driving teamsters, but not without a fight. One result of using the pipeline was a precipitous drop in the price of oil. The town lasted 500 days, ending when the oil was drained from the field and the wooden buildings either burned down or were torn down and moved elsewhere, leaving an empty field.

Pithole City Today. The field in the background is where the Pithole buildings were 144 years earlier.

Not All Oil. This well-drilling derrick, now located at the Drake Well Park, was used to drill 10,000 feet down for natural gas. It was powered by a steam boiler (not seen) behind the structure, which . . .

. . . drove this wheel and transferred energy to turn the rotary drill.

The barker is a one-cylinder power plant, now fueled by natural gas, to run the production well operations at Drake Well Park. The barkers - which go off at irregular intervals as the large cylinder (lower left) fills with fuel that then is ignited with a magneto - were known for their distinctive sounds, which allowed operators to play cards at night at a central, outdoor location and keep track of their power plants just by the sounds they made.

Power from barkers was transferred over and under driveways to various wells via sucker rods, here collected in a pile.

Like a Rube Goldberg contraption, these sucker rods transfer power more than a couple of hundred yards to walking beams and other devices that move the pumps vertically up and down in the well. A sucker rod comes in from the right midway up the photo. As the rod moves back and forth, it transfers the power to beams that move the well-pumping rod up and down. In this case (at Drake Well Park, where there is no longer any actual production), the pump flows oil from the bottom of the drum to a pipe . . .

. . . at the top of the drum, and back into the container. It's not exactly a gusher, but it flows steadily and, as the docents say, it smells like money.

Early Hydraulic Fracturing. As engineers know, explosions under water, especially if contained in a pipe, cause dramatic eruptions upward, but the main force is down and out because of the weight of the overlying water. This is a nitro pickup truck used to haul nitroglycerin to well sites for hydraulic fracturing. Before trucks, the nitro was carried in horse-drawn wagons, and before nitro, shooters (the crew that did the hydraulic fracturing) used black powder. Hydraulic fracturing was discovered accidentally as well operators in Pennsylvania tried to break loose a drilling tool stuck down a well. With the only option being to drill a second well, the operators thought they might unstick the tool with a black-powder bomb lowered into the well, which they first filled with water. They got the tool loose, but in doing so (in dramatic fashion), they discovered that a marginally producing oil well suddenly began producing 10 times as much. Didn't take long for them to figure that they could do this on purpose, opening up more fissures in the oil-bearing rock.

Notable Participants in the Drake Well Tour. Branko Terzic, former FERC commissioner.

Notable Participants in the Drake Well Tour. Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank (wearing his Rock Oil Tour 2009 cap).

Notable Participants in the Drake Well Tour. Guy Caruso, former head of the Energy Information Administration.

Notable Participants in the Drake Well Tour. Joe Dukert, an independent energy consultant, holding up the Oil City (PA) Derrick newspaper, which features a large photo of Joe and colleagues touring the Drake Well Museum in Oil City.

Participants Gather for a Group Picture After the Tour.