Petroleum; Petroleum -- Great Britain; Petroleum engineering
It will be of great interest here to refer briefly to these, and though
it would be impossible to detail all those Mexican wells which have
ranked quite outside the limits of ordinary producers, I will touch
only upon two of these remarkable oil gushers. They both were drilled
on the properties owned by the well-known English firm of Pearsons, the
operating company being the “Aguila” (Mexican Eagle) Company. It was in
1906 when the Company commenced active drilling operations in Northern
Vera Cruz, and though these were very successful from the start, it
was two years later that the famous “Dos Bocas” well came in. A heavy
gas pressure developed when the rotary drill was down just over 1,800
feet, and in a few minutes the internal pressure manifested itself by
bursting the wire-wrapped hose connected with the drilling apparatus.
The oil then commenced to come to the surface in an immense stream, and
in twenty minutes the well was beyond control. Fissures began to appear
in the ground at considerable distance from the well, and through
these came oil and gas. One of these fissures opened directly under
the boilers, and though the fires had been drawn, the gas ignited. The
position was well-nigh hopeless from the start, the well itself was
throwing out an 8-inch column of oil hundreds of feet in the air. The
force of the volume of oil below ground flung the heavy English drill
pipe out of the well, and soon it became impossible to approach within
300 feet of the “mad gusher.” The flames of fire are said to have
reached 1,000 feet in height, and inasmuch as all ground round the well
had fallen into the cavity caused, they were over 50 feet in diameter.
And for 58 days did this gusher burn with all the fury imaginable, its
glare being seen far out at sea. Anything approaching an approximate
production of oil from this well will never be made: it can safely be
recorded, however, that its mad flow of oil ran into many millions of
barrels, and it is placed on record that nearly 2,000,000 tons of solid
earth were carried away by the force of the oil from the well’s mouth,
for a crater of nearly 120,000 square metres was formed round the well.
[Illustration: A GUSHER OF THE MEXICAN EAGLE CO. UNDER CONTROL--A DOME
BUILT OVER THE MOUTH]
Toward the end of 1910 another surprise was in store for those in
charge of drilling operations for the Company, for it was then that the
world famous “Protero del Llano” gusher came in. This well ranks as one
of the largest, if not the largest, ever associated with the petroleum
industry. Its estimated daily flow was over 125,000 barrels, and within
three months the well had produced over 8,000,000 barrels of crude oil.
During November, 1919, a new field at Naranjos was developed by the
Mexican Eagle Co., and the first three wells to come into production,
commenced to yield over 30,000 tons daily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account