The Texas Rio Grande Valley started getting oil and gas well tests drilled in it by the late 1910's and early 1920's; some Miocene tests closer to the Laguna Madre were showing gas, then further inland the Oligocene, Frio sands began looking very liquids-rich gassy. This area lacked surface anomalies indicative of salt, like Beaumont, Houston, etc., so a lot of initial testing was done based on gassy water wells and gas seeps in dry arroyos. Commercial oil was found in 1924 in Hidalgo...

Oily Stuff is revisiting a significant blowout in Italy in 1994, thanks mostly to additional information provided by my friend, Dan Eby, with Blowout Engineers . A number of years ago Dan had personal conversations about this well with one of the world's renown blowout specialists, Pat Campbell (1945-2013); a number of additional photographs are now included, also thanks to Dan. This is the ENI AGIP, Trecate No. 24 in the Villafortuna Field; Po Valley, Northern Italy, 1994. A large diameter...

This is a wonderful story I've known about for many years and never got around to writing about it. There are numerous books written about Sarah Rector and last November a movie was released about her life in Oklahoma in the early 1900's. The movie, I understand, is terrific and worth watching on Netflix. Sometimes I would want to take a story like this and write about it myself, but I can't do it any better than what has already been written. The months American Association of Petroleum...