The first commercial oil well in the world was drilled in Baku in 1847. Then came wells in Romania in 1857 and eventually Edwin Drake's well in Pennsylvania in 1859 Almost every country on the planet lay's claim to having drilled the first oil 'well' in the world, some, like China, as far back as the 5th century. Most of those wells however, appear to have been open pits, or mine shafts dug to very shallow depths near natural occuring bitumen seeps. The first actual wells drilled, mostly by...

The capping stack above consists of two-inch O.D. line pipe screwed into a flange half, a flange-to-flange top half screwed into a 150 PSI rated ball valve and another 2-inch line pipe flange with 1/2 bolts to the production tree, seen below. It's rated to 150 PSI but if the FTP below this stack was 90 PSI and you had to shut the well in, you'd close the handle and take cover behind the closest house. To date this water well is the biggest onshore, and off, thankfully, blowout in the...

This in Canyon Lake in the Texas Hill Country, halfway between Austin and San Antonio. I watched it being built in the early 1960's. Its 8,230 acres big and at normal water levels it is 134 feet deep. The water is so cold coming out the discharges at the bottom of the lake, down the Guadalupe River, rainbow and brown trout can survive in it. In 2002 the area received over 30 inches of rain in <30 hours and the earthen spillway around the dam at Canyon Lake cut out, exposing Cretaceous age...