DUANE
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Duane's take
The way I heard it told, this comes straight from the official marker out in Upton County, so let me pass it along proper. Now, if you want to talk about scale, about the kind of oil operation that makes a person stop and stare out at the flat West Texas horizon and just whistle low, well. You are standing near ground zero of what was, in the 1920s, the world's largest complex of oil wells.
The world's largest. Right here in the Permian Basin. But here is the thing about pulling oil out of the earth in quantities that grand.
You can drill it, sure. You can pump it up and watch it pool. What you cannot do, not without a plan, is get it anywhere useful.
The oil was here. The markets were somewhere else entirely. And that gap, that is where the real story lives.
The first efficient answer came in 1925, when Humble laid a pipeline from Kemper Station, near Big Lake, all the way to Comyn Station. About five hundred miles of pipe in the ground, connecting up with the existing Comyn to Baytown system. Five hundred miles.
That is not a pipeline so much as a commitment. Then in 1926, when Humble extended its line west from Big Lake Field, they needed somewhere for the construction crews to live and work. So a camp went up right here.
An early camp, practical and plain, built to get the job done. But camps have a way of becoming something more. That camp's location fed the growth of McCamey.
A refinery got built. McCamey grew into an important center of oil production and operation, with a constant flow of oil moving through Humble's pipeline on its long journey down to the Gulf Coast. And still.
And still, there was more oil than anyone could move or sell. Even with the pipeline running hard and railroad tank cars rolling, the production outpaced the market. Something had to give.
New practices had to be found to keep waste and overproduction from swallowing the whole enterprise. So in 1928, something happened that had never happened in Texas before. Humble's pipeline became involved in the first voluntary proration in the state.
The producing capacity of local wells was reduced, deliberately, down to a level consistent with what the transportation could actually handle. Voluntary. Nobody forced it.
The industry looked at what it had built and made a choice. By the time that marker was written, Humble had fifteen thousand oil and gas wells across Texas, nine thousand five hundred and forty-five miles of pipeline, and one refinery. Numbers that would have seemed like a tall tale to anyone standing at that early camp in 1926, watching the crews work and not yet knowing what this corner of Upton County was about to become.
What the marker says
The World's largest complex of oil wells in the 1920s was developed in this area. Key to success of this vast petroleum field lay in finding ways to convey oil to growing fuel markets. First efficient transportation came in 1925 with the laying of the Humble pipeline from Kemper Station, near Big Lake, to Comyn Station (a distance of about 500 miles), to connect with existing Comyn-Baytown system. Early camp for pipeline construction crews was built here 1926 when Humble extended its line west from Big Like Field. Camp's site led to growth of McCamey and building of a refinery. McCamey became important center of oil production and operation. A constant flow of oil went through Humble's pipeline on its long journey to the Gulf Coast. Even with use of pipeline and railroad tank cars, more oil was produced than could be marketed. New practices had to be used to prevent overproduction and waste. Thus Humble pipeline became involved in the first voluntary proration in Texas, when in 1928 producing capacity of local wells was reduced to a level consistent with transportation facilities. Today in Texas, Humble has 15,000 oil and gas wells; 9,545 miles of pipeline; and one refinery.