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A New York lawyer, George Bissell, had the idea to somehow collect the oil, refine it, and sell it commercially, and he co-founded the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company to that end. The Drake Well was named for railroad conductor Edwin Drake , who figured out a drilling system to access and collect the oil.
The Drake Well only produced about 20 barrels a day, but it transformed the quiet farming community almost overnight, attracting would-be oil company executives and coopers to make the hundreds of barrels needed to collect the crude. From , the oil industry has risen in Clarion County, to make it one of the wealthiest counties in Pennsylvania. In the graph below it contrasts the price of oil from the dates of: The cost for producing a barrel of oil was about a dollar, the average amount of barrels that where produced was around seven to eight barrels per well.
The oil belt, which ran west of the Clarion River, is where most of the oil came from. It was not until that the search for the limits of this sand-rock on the north-east, and south west line, extended it to the hills at lower Edinburgh , back of Parker and to the mouth of the Clarion river. After leaving Karns City, the belt seems to divide into two well defined and separate beds, known as the east and west belts, one of which has been prolonged to St.
The belt extends over three miles in Clarion Country. Although this method works for producing salt, it was far less efficient for producing oil. Through experimentation and innovation, on August 27, , Drake struck oil when his drill reached a depth of We were led through single-file so everyone could get a look at the steel machinery used in the drill, and the pipes that dispersed oil into wooden barrels clustered in the building.
In my year-old brain there is no way I could properly fathom that this discovery was related to many of the comforts and conveniences I took for granted in my life, such as cars, heating, electricity, plastics, medicines, and even the asphalt roads that we drove on.
Why was Titusville special? More specifically, why did western Pennsylvania have oil in the ground? From about to million years ago, during the span of geological time known as the Ordovician Period and Devonian Period, most of what is now Pennsylvania was an ocean basin teeming with life. Pre-Appalachian Mountains systems eroded over time and deposited sediment of sand, silt, and mud that mixed on the seafloor with the dead plant material.
Currents at the ocean bottom were minimal, leaving the accumulating sediments and organic material relatively undisturbed and oxygen-free. Without oxygen, bacteria that normally break down organic material could not act. A thick, black, anoxic ooze formed, preserving the organic material.
The natural gas extracted from these rock units formed in a similar way to petroleum but was subjected to a much longer period of heat and pressure.
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