DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, two and a half miles up the road from where you're sitting right now. Now, the Permian Basin. You're driving through it.
Billions of barrels of oil underneath your wheels, and it all — commercially speaking — traces back to one well. One man's name on the lease papers. One July afternoon that nobody who was standing there ever forgot.
The well was named for W.H. Abrams, leasing agent for the Texas and Pacific Land Trust. And it started modestly enough, the way big things often do.
February 1920, oil first showed itself at four hundred and fifty feet down. Not bad. But the drillers kept going, and by June of that same year, a better showing turned up way deeper — between twenty-three hundred forty-five and twenty-four hundred and ten feet below the surface of this West Texas plain.
Now here's where the story gets interesting. July 16, 1920. Two thousand people gathered around that derrick.
Two thousand. Out here. Word had gotten around, and people knew something was about to happen, because the well was about to be shot — with nitroglycerin.
And it did not disappoint. A great eruption of oil, gas, water, and smoke shot from the mouth of that well almost to the top of the derrick. Almost to the top.
The crowd of two thousand people watched it climb. You can imagine the silence just before, and the roar just after. The well came in flowing at a hundred and twenty-nine barrels a day.
Then, the way wells do, it settled down — twenty barrels per day. But it was real. It was commercial.
It was the first. From that well, and a well nearby, the Rio Grande Oil Company laid the first commercial oil pipeline in the Permian Basin. And on April 3, 1922, the first load of oil went through it.
A line in the ground, carrying the beginning of something enormous. The well itself kept on living, wearing different clothes as the decades passed. On May 1, 1968, the W.H.
Abrams No. 1 was redesignated — became Westbrook Southeast Unit No. 701 — part of a water flooding operation designed to squeeze more oil out of the Westbrook Oil Field. That enhanced recovery technique alone has pulled sixty-seven million barrels out of the ground. The field total sits at more than a hundred million barrels.
Now, a hundred million barrels is the threshold. That's the number that earns a field the designation of major. And there are only fifty-six major fields in the entire Permian Basin — itself the fourth largest oil producing area in the United States as of 1967.
Fifty-six fields. Fourth largest in the country. And it all started with two thousand people squinting into the July sky, watching nitroglycerin do its work, and a geyser of oil that climbed — almost — to the top of a wooden derrick on the Mitchell County plain.
Almost. But close enough to change everything.
What the marker says
(2.4 miles north) The first commercial discovery oil well in the Permian Basin was named for W.H. Abrams, leasing agent for the Texas and Pacific Land Trust. The well first produced oil in February 1920 at a depth of 450 feet; but in June 1920, a better showing of oil was found at 2345 - 2410 feet. On July 16, 1920 the well was "shot" with nitroglycerin. As a crowd of 2,000 people looked on, a great eruption of oil, gas, water, and smoke shot from the mouth of the well almost to the top of the derrick. Shortly after, the well flowed at a rate of 129 barrels daily, but soon settled down to 20 barrels per day. From this well and a well nearby the Rio Grande Oil Company laid the first commercial oil pipeline in the Permian Basin. The first load of oil went through the pipeline on April 3, 1922. W.H. Abrams No. 1 was redesignated on May 1, 1968, as Westbrook Southeast Unit No. 701, formed to increase oil recovery from the Westbrook Oil Field by water flooding. This enhanced oil recovery technique has produced 67 million barrels of the more than 100 million barrels of oil recovered from this field. Designated as major fields, only a small number produce 100 million barrels of oil or more. Fifty-six major fields are located in the Permian Basin, the fourth largest oil producing area in the U.S. (1967, 1996)