Previous Chapter 19--The Butler Oil Field
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Transcribed by: Lyn Magill-Hoch. For an explanation and caution about this transcription, please read this page.
Surnames in this chapter are:
BALDAUF, BEIGHLEY, BRADFORD, BREWSTER, BRONSON, BROWN, BURNS, CAMPBELL, CHANTLER, CHEMUNG, CRISWELL, CRUIKSHANK, CUNNINGHAM, DELAMATER, DENNY, DUFFY, EMERSON, FRUHLING GLADE, GUCKERT, HARVEY, JACK, KANE, KLINGENSMITH, LARDEN, MAHAN, MAHONING, McCOLLOUGH, McJUNKIN, McMURRY, PARKER, PHILLIPS, SAXON, SHIELD, SMITH, SPEECHLEY, STEELE, STEWART, THOMPSON, WARREN, WILCOX, WESTERMANN
The knowledge of the existence of natural gas in Butler county antedates by many years its use for heating and lighting purposes. It was encountered in the drilling of early oil wells, its force often being such as to render a continuation of the work impossible. After it was once brought into subjection, however, and a practical demonstration of its utility and value for manufacturing and domestic purposes made, its general use quickly followed, and the gas well immediately took rank with the oil well as a source of wealth, and as an important factor in the manufacturing industries in which it is now so extensively used instead of coal. It has, also, proved a no less important factor in domestic economy, supplying a cleanly, convenient and economical fuel, and greatly reducing the labor of the house-wife.
Like the popular ideas of the origin of petroleum, the popular notion of the origin of natural gas is varied. From what is generally accepted as fact, the position and quantity of gas, depend, in the first place, upon the porosity and the homogeneousness of the sand rock, which is its reservoir; in the second place, on the compactness of the strata above or below the sand; in the third place, on the dip of the sand and the position of the synclines and anticlines; in the fourth place, the proportion of water, oil and gas, and in the fifth place, the pressure of the gas before being tapped.
An old producer, speaking from experience, says, that in nearly every instance where an oil district has been found, there has invariably been a corresponding gas field discovered not far away. Oil and gas were undoubtedly formed and placed in the sand rocks by the same agency. The process that filled the oil rock also filled the gas rock. They run parallel, and, therefore, gas will be found as long as oil is found. Many gas wells in Butler, Warren, Venango and Washington counties have been producing gas ever since wells in the same locality have been producing oil. Gas wells were often abandoned because the pressure had so decreased that they could not force their product through the lines as against wells of higher pressure. The gas pump will in the future make it profitable to deliver the gas to consumers. To abandon a gas well when it ceases to be strong enough to force its way through its pipe lines, would be like abandoning an oil well because it had ceased to flow.
The celebrated gas well near Fairview, on the W. C. CAMPBELL farm, was drilled for oil in April, 1872. It proved a gasser, and was a source of supply for [p. 296] ten years. The force of the fluid at the mouth of the tubing was such that when it was accidentally lighted, the flames rose to a height of seventy-five feet and roared like a whirlwind, the sound of it being heard in Parker, ten miles away. To extinguish it the contractor spent $500. The plan adopted was to smother the blaze with clay, and to accomplish this a ditch was excavated and the clay thrown inwards so as to form a cone. For days the work was carried on before a mound was raised over the casing of the well and the flames subdued. After being brought under control, the gas from this well was used for the lighting and heating of Fairview, Petrolia, Karns City and Argyle. It also furnished fuel for forty wells and eight pumping stations, and power for driving many wells. In the fall of 1873, a pipe leading to the towns named was connected with this great gasser.
The celebrated HARVEY well, near LARDIN's mill in Clinton township, was tapped in November, 1874, and gas struck in heavy quantity at a depth of 1,145 feet. At 420 feet, the drill reached the "Blue Monday" and "Lightning Rock." It required six weeks to pass through the 100 feet of this hard, white limestone. Sandstone and gas showed at 1,115 feet. As described by signal service officer, J. CUNNINGHAM, of Tarentum, who visited the place in February, 1875, it was certainly a wonder. Located between abrupt hills, in a valley about 300 feet wide, this self-feeding furnace sent up its flames. The gas was conveyed a distance of 150 feet, in a six-inch iron pipe, from which it discharged with the force of steam. Mr. CUNNINGHAM arrived near the well after darkness had set in, being drawn hither by the great light which had illumined the sky on many a previous night. When he came within its immediate influence and saw the trees wrapped in light and their trunks and branches silvered to their tops by this great torch, the scene was incomparable. The hundreds of interested faces, the great mass of fine white flame, with its intense heat and brilliancy, the terrific noise of the escaping fluid, as it leaped into the atmosphere, fifteen feet wide by forty feet high, was a sight not soon to be forgotten. The gas pipe line from this well crossed from summits before the head of Pine creek was reached, and then down the valley to Sharpsburg, or, in all, about seventeen miles.
The BURNS gas well on the DUFFY farm, near St. Joe, was drilled to a depth of about 1,600 feet, in 1875, by John BURNS. Its mouth was 1,298 feet above ocean level. It was cased with five and five-eights-inch pipe and fitted with a cap into which were screwed five two-inch pipes. When the small pipes were closed, the pressure rose to 300 pounds, and, to prevent the lifting of the casing, the gas was allowed to escape. The fluid for heating was twenty-five per cent better than bituminous coal. The gas was piped to Freeport through a two-inch pipe, the pressure at that place being 125 pounds per square inch. The output of the well averaged 12,000,000 cubic feet of gas per day.
The DELAMATER well was an oil producer so long as the owners did not go below the Third sand. When they did they lost a ten-barrel well and struck what appeared to be an inexhaustible reservoir of gas, the pressure being such that tools weighing 1,600 pounds could be drawn by hand, although the volume of gas was not so large as that of the BURNS well half a mile distant.
The DENNY wells, in the northeastern corner of Winfield township, were [p. 297] drilled for oil, but became great gas producers. William STEWART was interested in these wells with the DENNY brothers.
The SAXON station gas well, drilled early in 1874, to a depth of 1,857 feet, struck a strong flow of gas at 1,150 feet.
The J. B. MAHAN well, one and a half miles from GLADE Mills, in Middlesex township, was drilled below the 1,930 feet level, in 1875. From 1,420 to 1,480 feet a thick bed of white sandstone showed a product of five barrels of amber oil, and from 1,732 to 1,745 feet it proved a ten-barrel well with a heavy flow of gas. At the 1,880 feet level blood-red slate was found, and this strange conformation, the first of its kind discovered below the oil sand, extended to 1,930 feet, when drilling ceased. The first oil sand, fifty feet deep, was struck at the 1,350 feet level.
Two miles south of the Jefferson township line, in Clinton township, CHANTLER Number 1 was drilled to gas at 1,340 feet. This gas was piped to the Etna furnace, near Pittsburg, as well as from a gasser just south, on the WESTERMANN farm, where gas was found at 1,340 feet in the First sand, and oil and gas at a level of 1,495 feet, in the Second sand.
The well on the CRISWELL farm was drilled by KLINGENSMITH for the Standard Plate Glass Company to a depth of 3,500 feet.
The gas well on the Robert THOMPSON farm, two miles south of St. Joe, at old Carbon Centre, in Clearfield township, was drilled in 1875, to a depth of 1,558 feet, its mouth being 1,162 feet above ocean level. Soft limestone, fifteen feet thick, was found at 215 feet; sand and sandstone below 300 feet; salt water at 530 feet; salt water and gas at 840 feet; corn meal sand at 1,446 feet; third sand oil at 1,456 feet, and gas at 1,558 feet. For four months it yielded eight barrels of oil a day; but after it was drilled to the Fourth sand, the oil flow made way for the gas. This liquid caught fire and burned the rig; but when the flame was controlled the gas was turned to account as fuel for the boilers in that section of the Donegal field.
The JACK well, 2,600 feet south of North Washington, struck gas in the Fourth sand at a depth of about 1,500 feet, or 1,800 feet below the top of the limestone bed. Within a year the volume of gas decreased fifty per cent, though this hole was considered to be the sole vent of the reservoir.
A gas well drilled on McMURRY's run, in Marion township, presented the same phenomena as that on the JACK farm, both wells dating to 1877. This well was drilled near the mill by EMERSON & BRONSON with the hope of finding oil. Their enterprise was rewarded by a flow of gas and water, the latter produced in a column reaching about thirty-five feet above the derrick.
The discovery of gas in the PHILLIPS Brothers' well, on the McJUNKIN farm, in September, 1882, at a depth of 1,000 feet, and within one and a half miles of Butler borough, promised to the citizens a cheap and clean fuel. It may be looked upon as the pioneer gas producer of the borough, the introduction to the newer wells on Cemetery Hill.
In February, 1886, the MAHONING Gas Company's well on the SHIELD's farm, near Harrisville, was drilled to a depth of 925 feet, when a great gas reservoir was opened. It was the fifth successful drilling within a radius of two miles.
[p. 298] The well on the Caspar FRUHLING farm, in Winfield township, drilled in 1889, was considered the greatest gas producer then existing in the county, though, when compared with the McCOLLOUGH wells in the adjoining county of Armstrong, it was insignificant. In 1888, A. W. McCOLLOUGH, of Butler secured a block of leases in the Winfield, Clinton and Buffalo fields, on what is known as the Brady's Bend anticlinal. There the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company drilled a dozen or more wells in their search for natural gas, and on the FRUHLING and CRUIKSHANK farms, completed in 1889, the greatest gas wells ever struck in this county - the flow being found in the lower member of the Hundred-foot, or the "Venango First Sand," or the "Second Sand" and Fifty-foot" (sic) of the PARKER field. Two large pipe lines were laid from this field to the plate glass works below Kittanning, at Ford City, while two more lines were laid to Butler borough by the Home Natural Gas Company and the Standard Plate Glass Company. This was the greatest gas reservoir ever opened in Butler county. Statistics relating to it are given at the close of this chapter, where comparisons are made with the old gas wells on the DUFFY farm in Donegal township.
The deepest test for gas ever made in this county was that on the Robert SMITH farm, in Winfield township. This extraordinary exploration was made by the Pittsburg Plate Glass Company under the direction of A. W. McCOLLOUGH, in 1891. The well mouth is found at the top of the lower member of the MAHONING sandstone, 1,351 feet above ocean level. The ferriferous limestone is reached at a depth of 475 feet; the mountain sand, or "Big Injun," at 852 feet; the bottom of mountain sand at 1,032 feet; the top of Butler gas sand at 1,372 feet, and the top of the "Hundred-foot," or Venango first sand, at 1,514 feet.* A good flow of gas was struck in the lower member of the "Hundred-foot," and through it an eight-inch hole was drilled, which was cased with six and a quarter-inch casing, connected so as to carry off the gas into the Ford City pipe line, thirteen miles distant.
Meantime a six-inch hole was drilled through the lower strata of the Venango sands, which were marked by broken sand shells. The drill passed on through the interval of the "WARREN" group, the "SPEECHLEY," the "BRADFORD," the "KANE" and the "WILCOX," deep into the CHEMUNG, without encountering gas or oil or finding a matrix for either. The last 1,500 feet were drilled through easily, only a shell being struck at intervals, until a depth of 4,000 feet was recorded, when the exploration was suspended. The bottom of this well is 2,649 feet below ocean level, being almost 500 feet deeper than any well ever drilled within the boundaries of Butler county.
The GUCKERT & STEELE gas well on the BEIGHLEY farm, a mile and one-half northeast of the Harmony pool, was struck on January 23, 1893, at the top of the sand, showing a pressure of 150 pounds the first minute. Several wells in that neighborhood and in the Breakneck, Glade run, Thorn creek and other districts evidence the fact that the searcher for oil often finds gas in great volume.
The PHILLIPS well on the CAMPBELL heirs' farm, showed a pressure of 300 pounds to the square inch. The Citizens' Gas Company's well, on the BALDAUF farm, near Herman, proved a good Fourth sand gasser, in November, 1893; while [p. 299] the BROWN & BREWSTER wells, on the Alexander BREWSTER farm, in Centre township, showed the value of that new gas field. The second well on that farm, completed in October, 1893, had a rock pressure, it is stated, of 1,600 pounds. With other later developments, it proves that Butler county is one of the greatest gas fields in the United States, and still has plenty of new territory to increase the supply.
[End of Chapter 20 - The Butler Gas Field: History of Butler County Pennsylvania, R. C. Brown Co., Publishers, 1895]
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