New-York tribune., 1901-08-04

feet in week. For working in rock a circular
circular saw is used The drill Inn must be whdSa xn
frequently to be sh3rPened Usually the string Of
,,1s easing, mas te be withdrawn from the wen each
ard la6orious operation. Often g we'll caves n
while WHILE the casing is out Recently the workmen at
became necessary 70 sharpen the drill The we'll
Was then 500 feet deep When the casing was again
deep. The quicksand had caused cave In.
A COMBINATION OUTFIT.
With a view of utilizing the special features OF
the rotary machine for work in soft ground and
the superiority of the standard drill for smashing
rock and hard sand. of the operators in Texas
are now using a combination outfit. To the rotary
machine is added the compact standard outfit
known as the Parkersburg rig In clay and quick
is reached the rotary is detached and the tig
been smashed by the standard tools the rotary is
again set TO WORK. With this combination great
But this combina tion outfit no cure for the evils
The reason that it is designed merely to make rapid
progress IS through rock ana not to prevent the en-
The difficulties of working with the rotary ma
chine have made the exploration of the Texas Gil
figures it costs about $1,000 to drill test well 20o
deeI deep The time required, may be anything from
slowness with which the Beaumont oil field has
been developed. More than six months have passed
since the Lucas we'll was brought into active x
istence yet In all that time only fifteen additional
SuShsr with a capacity or fabulous proportions
Will satisfy Texas oil operators. A we'll good for
five hundred barrels obtains only five lines in the
newspapers. The J. NJ CiUffey Company is at the
present moment drilling a well the edge of Sour
Lake, about twenty miles northwest of Spindle Top.
few weeks five line news item in the local
papers announced that at depth of five hundred
feet the well was 10 md TO be good for five hundred
barrels of oil day, but that the Ciuffey company
had decided to case off the oil and go deeper In
the hope of striking a gusher This five hundred
barrel well actually attracted more attention in the
Pennsylvania newspapers than il received in the
newspapers of Beaumont and Houston. The fact
that FIVE hundred barrel wells may be found in the
Sour Lake district 'reates little interest here or
elsewhere in Texas The public eye is turned tow
ard Sour Lake only in the expectation that another
field of wonderful gushers may be found there. II
one may believe the apparently authenticated re-
ports of tests of the producing capacity Of the
Spindle Top gusherS. might be parioned for
turning from $40 barrel we'll with gesture of i'm
patience One Is sometimes tempted to actually be-
lleVe the assertion that any of the Spindle
Top gushers can produce more oil in twenty-four
hours than all the rest of the wells the United
States combined The Spindle Top wells are Ger
tafnly wonderful Of their kind The ONLY Iv In the
Texas ointment Is the fact that there are larger oil
wells in Russia well near Baku. Russia flows
at the rate of 10000 barrels day. These are the
hgures of the Russian Government The well flowed
for forty days at that rate. and then sUbsded into
good pumper.