WorldWide Drilling Resource

14 AUGUST 2017 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® The Key to Ending Oil Gushers Information Courtesy of the American Oil and Gas Historical Society The sight of oil erupting out of the ground up into the air makes for exciting movie scenes, but in reality, oil gushers are not only wasteful, but extremely dangerous. One of the most famous gushers, or high-pressure blowouts, happened at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, on January 10, 1901. A three-man crew was drilling when a six-inch stream of oil and gas erupted 100 feet into the air. The local newspaper described the event as, “An Oil Geyser - Remarkable Phenomenon South of Beaumont - Gas Blows Pipe from Well and a Flow of Oil Equaled Nowhere Else on Earth.” It took nine days and 500,000 barrels of oil before a shutoff valve for the well could be attached to the casing to stop the flow. Then, two men came up with an invention which would forever change the industry - James Abercrombie and Harry Cameron. Having narrowly escaping a blowout himself, James Abercrombie had personally experienced the dangers associated with gushers. “With a roar like a hundred express trains racing across the countryside, the well blew out, spewing oil in all directions,” notes one account. “The derrick simply evaporated. Casings wilted like lettuce out of water, as heavy machinery writhed and twisted into grotesque shapes in the blaz- ing inferno.” Abercrombie started as a roustabout in 1908, working for the Goose Creek Production Company. By 1920, he owned several rigs in south Texas, and was a regular customer of the machine shops belonging to the Cameron-Devant Company, where he met Harry Cameron. In 1920, the two friends decided to become busi- ness partners and formed Cameron Iron Works to repair drilling rigs, and offer supplies and parts to oilmen. The company employed five men with two lathes, a drill press, and hand tools. Abercrombie said, “Harry Cameron was a great machine-tool man. You could give him a piece of iron and he could make just about anything you wanted.” James Abercrombie came up with the idea for a ram-type blowout preventer (BOP) using rams (hydrostatic pistons) to close on the drill stem and form a seal against the well pressure. He sketched his idea on the sawdust floor of the machine shop. The two men worked out the details, using simple, rugged parts. Once installed on a wellhead, the rams could be closed off, allowing full control of pressure during drilling and production. In 1922, their Type MO BOP could withstand pressures up to 3000 psi. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers shows Abercrombie and Cameron filed a patent application for their MO BOP on April 14, 1922. The application was acknowledged and a basic patent was granted January 12, 1926 - U.S. patent number 1,569,247. In December 1931, Abercrombie patented an improved BOP (patent No. 1,834,922, reissued in 1933). In addition to saving lives, the BOP quickly became an industry standard. Editor’s Note: In between our print issues, the WWDR Team prepares an electronic newsletter called E-News Flash . Based on readership, this was the most popular E-News Flash article of the month. Get in on the act ion and subscr ibe tod ay at : www.worldwidedrillingresource.com Modern onshore BOP configuration from Schlumberger. This ram-type BOP patent was filed in 1922.