National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1884-02-14

very touching, indeed"
go
1.-THE OH business gives employment to
thousands of mon and brings millions Of
money into this country" said DR.. W. b.
Roberts, tho oil we'll torpedo man Of Titus
vile, "and IL has all grown mp within twenty
four years. The first oil we'll was sunk in
1860. There had been oil springs for years
nobody knows how long--and the Indians had
collected the oil for medicine. They used IL for
themselves and sold some of it TO white peo-
pie. 1t was called rock OIL or Seneca OIL
The Indians had queer way of gather
ing It. They used to scoop out little basins in
the ground, and the water oozed out OF the
ground and filled the business. Tho oil rose
to the top of tho water and the Indiana
threw their wooden blankets over 1t aud let
thom soak up tho OIL Then they wrunG the
oil out of the blankets into tho vessels in
which they stored IL. You can see those old
basins around Titusville now. Drake drilled
sixty feet into tho rock and had vol which
flowed seventy barrels u day. That glutted
tho market. Some other wells were put
down, ono Of them n 3,000-barrel we'll. Oil
went down almost to nothing. 10 wasn't
worth 20 cents q barrel. They had TO find
something beside medicine to use 1t
for. After they found out what it was
really worth was when the bust
ness began For q time during tho war 1t
was worth $15 q barrel at the wells That
was when we used oil instead of gold to pay
for articles that VIC had to import. After
q while some of the wells stopped flow
ing and others only produced little.
Ny brother conceived the idea
that by blowing up the bottoms OF these
dry wells che old seams in tie rock could be
cleaned out and now ones opened. In 1864
he applied for his patent for reviving oil
wells by blasting. They used to call him
Crazy Roberts 1t was in January, 1865,
that no got permission to blow up the first
we'll and demonstrated the value Of his in
| vention. For a long time oven after that
the owners of feebly flowing wells would not
| let him use his invention on their wells for
! fear of running them. Whom they did find
out what effect the blasting produced they
would pay us almost any price. Plenty of
men who had never made q dollar
from their wells were made rich by
two or three shots There were
only 1000 or 5000 pounds of nitro-g lycerine
| uscu buO year budU WO DbRtu W uuAkO
pedoes of it. Now there are about million
pounds year used. In 1860 seventy barrels
of oil glutted the market. Now we produce
in the Pennsylvania oil region $1,000 barrels
a day. The world uses of this amount from
| $4,000 to $4,000 barrels n day. So you see we
are continually piling upa surplus We have
now got on hand in iron tanks scattered
through the oil regions 100000 barrels of
surplus OIL"
"What will be the result if you continue to
produce moro oil than can be used ~
That's what can't tell"
as the amount produced increasing or de-
creasing?"
Decreasing. The time of the greatest
production was about two years ago, when
the Garfield oil district was discovered. They
couldn't find a we'll there that didn't produce
5000 barrels day, and the production was
then more than 100000 barrels day. That
| lasted about min city days, and then those
wells all gave out. Nitro-glycerine even
wouldn't dc them any good. 1t was the
worst black eye the business ever got. Only
a few men who sold out early made any
money ont of that district. Since that time
production has steadily decreased, and un-
| less some new field is discovered within the
lext six months the demand will be greater
than the supply, and prices will 60 up. That
will settle the question Of production"
"Will the oil ever give out eutirely"
"Many people think it is being made down
in the rock all the time, and that the reason
that it flowed SO much more freely at first
was because great quantity had been stored
up and the gas drove it to the surface. The
wells give out after q time, but some of them
have been blasted twelve or fifteen times
before they have been abandoned. Col.
brakes original well has been dry, of course,
for long time, but there arc good producing
wells within Eve rods of it which have
been recently sunk. They are close by
the basins from which the Indians used to
get their oil, and near the springs that used to
run with oil and water.
GLOW deep do you drill wells now2"
"From 800 to 1000 feet There are three
layers of oil rock. Col. Drake, with his sixty
foot we'll, struck the top layer. There are
two layers beneath that, and the lowest one
produces the most. The attempt has been
made to find a still lower layer, but without
SUCCESS One we'll was put down ovor 1000
feet without finding oil. Then it was aban-
doned."