MEXICO'S BIG GUSHERS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 6, 7 June 1913, Page 9

MEXICO'S BIG GUSHERS

J AX IMMENSE OIL FIELD. I BRITISH ENTERPRISE TO THE FORE. (By Frank G. Carpenter). i Tampico will soon be the chief oil port of the world. It lies in the heart of oil lands which are producing 200,000. barrels of petroleum a day, and great oil tanks are going up which will hold a. supply of millions of barrels. Tampico is situated a little back from the coast, i halfway between Vera Cruz and the Rio Grande River. It lies near the mouths of the Panuco and Tamesi Rivers, and it has a harbor so deep that the biggest ocean steamers can land. The wharves and jetties and other harbor improvements were designed and bulit for the Mexican Government by American engineers, and they have cost millions. The port is 3000 miles from New York, 4800 miles from Liverpool, and a little more than 5000 miles from Hamburg, and tank steamers, will soon be carrying oil from here to all parts of the world. The rivers, which join just above Tampico, flow through the oilfields, and during last year 60 steel tanks were built on their banks, all being on deep water. About 30 of these tanks belong, to the Pearson syndicate or Mexican Eagle Oil Company, and the same com-; pany is putting up refineries here. It is a British syndicate, backed by the Pearsons, which has also large interests in Mexican railways, electric plants and mines. Its oil branch lias a paid-up capitalisation of £5,000,000, and the market

J value of the stock is twice that amount. It has altogether more than a half million acres of oil land. The Waters-Pierce Company was until J lately a branch of the Standard Oil Company. It has large interests, including storage tanks on the rivers. And then we have the Mexican Petroleum Company, which is largely controlled by California oil men. It has an authorised 1 capital of £10,000,000, and it owns some- (' thing like 700,000 acres of land, much of which is still unexplored. One of the ; Mexican Petroleum Company's wells has been producing for more than two years, and although only partially opened, it turns out 25,000 barrels, of oil a day. This company is now erecting storage tanks near Tampico, while the Texas Company is doing likewise on a tract of land about a thousand acres opposite this port. The latter company has already constructed a temporary wharf, and is shipping oil to the United States ports. In addition to these companies, there are others operating in the vicinity, and altogether there are over thirty differ- i ent organisations at work. THE NEW OIL TERRITORY. These new oilfields extend for hundreds of miles along the Mexican Gulf. The profitable wells are scattered all the way from Tampico to Vera Cruz, and oil has been found in paying quantities farther south and on the isthmus of Tehuantespec. The exact width of the territory is not defined, but they are strik- . ing oil sixty miles back from the sea, and the region in which the prospecting is going on is said to be about as large as the State of Illinois, and. over a distance twice as large as the State of Massachusetts wells have already been sunk. In many places oil has been struck at I '4OO or 500 ft, but the beat wells are much j deeper, and the great gusheTS have come I from a depth of ISOO or 2000 feet. Take, for instance, gusher No. 4, or j the Potrero del Llano No. 4, which has a ! I capacity of 110,000 barrels a day. That j well belongs to the Pearson syndicate, 1 and I had a talk with one of the enginI eers who has to do with its working. The hole was bored three years ago. ) When the oil was struck it burst forth in a great stream, which rose to a height of 400 feet, and it continued to spout for more than three months before it could be controlled. During that time it was pouring forth petroleum at the rate of 5000 barrels an hour, and it covered the whole country with oil. It filled the rivers and lakes. and contaminated the stream. Thousands of cattle were lost J from the fact that the oil covered their I grazing places, and they could not get J fresh water. Acres of oil flowed out to j the sea, and the .Mexican Gulf had a coating of oil for 300 miles along this part of its coast.

In their efforts to save the oil the Pearsons dug a lake or reservoir cover--ing several acres, and ran the petroleum into it. The lake had a capacity of over 3,000,000 barrels, and it took just twentyeight days to fill it. That lake is still full of oil, and there are guards who watch it day and night for fear of fire. The vegetation ahout the shores has been cut back to a distance of 300 feet, and electric lights are kept burning every night to aid in guarding the oil. I am told that the oil is fast deteriorating. Some of it is caking, and it is questionable whether it will bo worth a great deal when the time comes for it to be exported or sent to the refineries.

The great gusher is now tinder control. The engineers succeeded in putting on caps after this flow of three months, and it is now connected with a pipe line which carries it off to the tanks and the coast. OIL FLAME TWO THOUSAND FEET HIGH. Another enormous gusher was the Dos Bocas, near the mouth of the San Geronimo river, sixty-seven miles south of Tampico. This was struck at 1800 feet on the 4th of July. 1010, and it produced the greatest fireworks that have ever been seen on Independence Day. The oil came forth at the rate-of about 4000 barrels an hour almost immediately, and caught fire from the boiler of one of the engines. It then sent up an enormous column of smoke and flame, which reached, it is said, a height of 2000 feet, the flame measuring "from forty to seventy-five feet in width. That flame lasted for over two months, and at night it could be seen for more than 200 miles away on the Mexican Gulf. Tt illuminated the whole country, and newspapers could easily be read at mid-night at a distance of seventeen miles away. It has been estimated that something like a hundred thousand barrels of oil were daily consumed before the fire was put out.

An enormous amount of money was sucnt in the efforts to shut off thjs Dos Tlocas well. The owners tried everything to extinguish the (lames, but it was only when the salt water of some subterranean channel broke through that they were choked. This water became mixed with the oil and ruined the well. T am told the oil still (lows, and that there is a lake of oil and water there which is hot now, although (he fire itself has disappeared. The mixture is valueless. Another well is the Tasiana well, which produces 24.00(1 barrels a day. and scattered, over the field are other wells which are running from 000 to 2000 barrels a da v.

These are not fain' stories. I bave before me a report of the United States geological survey as to the big gusher of 110,000 barrels daily capacity. Tt was drilled under the supervision of Dr. C. W. Hayes, who formerly belonged to the survey, and he had left the discouraged drillers, two davs before it was struck, ifor a trip into (lie country. As he went awav on his mule he told them that they would probably reach oil within twelve I feet or liiore. He had gone only 50 miles and the drill had gone down only seven

feet when the oil and gas threw the tools out of the well, and it began to flow at a

IOjOOO'-barrel rate. It steadily increased. Within 24 hours the (low was 20,(MH) barrels, and the gain continued until it reached 160,800 barrels, after which it subsided to its present How, whk'i it has kept up for three years. The well has a pressure of over 800 pounds to the square inch, and is now controlled by eight-inch pipes, which carry the oil to the tanks. This is said to be the largest oil well of history. The Lucas gusher at Spindletop, Texas, flowed 73,000 barrels a day for a day or two, and the production of some of the Russian wells is reported at slightly over 100,000 barrels, but none has approached the yield of big gusher No. 4. A GREAT SUBTERRANEAN OIL LAKE. The Potrero del Lano, or big gusher, is supposed to Have tapped a mighty subterranean lake of oil which lies something like 2000 feet below the surface of the earth, and is capped by a solid shell of stone 300 feet thick. This stone shell does not require iron casing, and it so protects the reservoir that the top can never cave in. This is said to be the first well of the kind which has ever tapped a lake of petroleum beneath a solid rock capping. All the great wells of Russia and California have been in dirt formation, and they have had trouble with cavings, fires and other handicaps before they could be controlled and their flow cared for. This was the case with the Dos Bocas well, which, as I have written, caught fire and was destroyed also by the salt water rushing in. Even should the big gusher take fire it would form only a thin column of flame, which could he extinguished above the surface and the flow of oil preserved. The big gusher is supposed to come from an entirely different field from the Dos Bocas, and there appears to be no Connection between the giant reservoir which feeds it and that which supplies the Dos Bocas. The pressure of the lake must be enormous, as may be seen when it is remembered that it threw a column of heavy crude oil as big around as a nail keg more than 300 feet into the air.

STREAMS OF GOLD. Oil wells like these are very streams of gold. I am told that the oil as it comes forth is worth here in the storage tanks about 58 cents a barrel. At 50 cents a barrel, the big gusher, if it could be allowed to flow at its full capacity, would realise £II,OOO a day, or more than £540 every hour, or between £8 and £lO every minute, day and night all the year through. That 'is one kind of gold that old Mother Earth is now spitting out in this part of the world. The big gusher belongs to the British.

This same Pearson Company has large interests all over Mexico. It has oil wells on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; and it pumps that oil to its refinery at Mina'titlan, where there is a branch of the Tehuantepec National railway. That oil is intended for the export trade, its situation giving it easy access to the Pacific ports through Salian Cruz, while tank steamers on the Atlantic side can be loaded at its own wharves.

I am told that they are now loading steamers which cannot cross the bar at Tuxpan near here by running six-inch pipes out into the sea to where the water has a depth of.sixty feet. Here the tank steamers can catch up the flexible pipes and thus take on the oil. The pipes are about one mile long, and they are connected with ten great tanks on the. shore, each of which holds 55,000 barrels.* These ! tanks arc filled from the big gusher I have already referred to, which is thirtythree miles away. As to the present oil product of the world, it is now more than three hundred million barrels per annum, and of this the United States is producing more than two hundred millions. Russia takes out something like seventy millions, and in 1911 Mexico produced more than any country except the United States and Russia. In 1012 its product probably approximated twenty-five million barrels, and, as I have said, the output of the present is about 200,000 barrels per day.