Bryan Burrough by The Big Rich: The Rise, Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
Tags: United States, General, History, Biography & Autobiography, 20th Century, Biography, Business & Economics, State & Local, Texas, Technology & Engineering, Industries, Corporate & Business History, Southwest (AZ; NM; OK; TX), Energy Industries, Petroleum Industry and Trade, Petroleum, Petroleum Industry and Trade - Texas
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inspect the site. Cullen said he didn’t intend to. “You’re gonna lease it without even looking at it?” West asked. “Are you crazy, Roy?”
“We have geophysical reports on the entire area,” Cullen said. “Looking at it won’t add anything to that. It won’t mean anything.”
“Well, it will to me!” West barked. “I’m going out there!”
“Go ahead, Jim,” Cullen said. “I’d go with you, but I’ll be too busy getting ready to drill it.”
West returned from his inspection trip more determined than ever to stop his partner from drilling. “You’ll have to tear down old derricks to find a place to drill a hole,” he said. “You’ll have to fill in the slush pits. That field is like a piece of Swiss cheese!”
Cullen ignored him. The two men were temperamental opposites, and he suspected their partnership wouldn’t last long. Out at Humble, his men cleared away the old derricks and readied a drill site. As they drilled down toward the Miocene, Cullen began studying the old wells nearby. Most had filled with salt water. Poring over well logs and his library books, Cullen understood that three thousand feet below the field lay a band of blue mud, what the drillers called gumbo. Below that was five feet of salt water, followed by more gumbo. It flooded the wells, and previous drillers had given up trying to get through it.
This was the first challenge a deep driller on the Gulf Coast faced, but Cullen thought he had found a way through it. Once the drill bit sank into the lowest layer of gumbo, he instructed his tool-pusher to set their casings, an outer pipe that shielded the hole from water, all the way down through the salt water to the gumbo. It worked; both the salt water and the gumbo were kept out of the well. Free to go deeper, Cullen hit a pool of pure “pipeline” oil—oil so free of impurities it could be pumped directly into a big company’s pipeline.
But Cullen was determined to go even deeper, into virgin dirt beneath the Humble Field. That, however, brought him face-to-face with the most serious obstacle a deep driller could encounter, the dreaded “heaving shale.” Jackson shale, as geologists termed it, lay about thirty-five hundred feet below most Gulf Coast fields, a tier of crumbled rock that pressed in around a drill bit, freezing it. No driller had defeated it, and with other shallow fields to attack, few had tried very hard.
Cullen ordered his driller, Dalton Brown, to “thin up,” that is, pump water into the hole instead of drilling mud, the better to clear the broken shale from the drill bit. After what Cullen characterized as “a startled glance,” Brown tried it, and the drill began to spin more easily. Still, a thick “bridge” of shale lay at the bottom of the hole, and they needed to get through it. Cullen had his plan ready. It was late at night when he instructed Brown to use the drill bit as a pile driver, lifting it and dropping it onto the shale bridge in an effort to break through. He kept water pumping into the hole to keep the drill bit spinning freely. It took several hours but it worked, and by midnight, when Cullen lay down by the derrick to grab some sleep, they had penetrated the slushy, oil-bearing sand underneath, the sought-after Yegua sand. Four hours later Cullen heard Brown shout: “Wake up, Mr. Cullen. I think she’s coming in!” 5
In the dim predawn light Cullen rose to see oil and gas spewing so violently from their hole that the four-inch flow line, which connected the well to a storage tank, had come loose and was wildly slashing the air. Cullen dashed to the storage tank, leaped atop it, and held the thrashing line until his crew could tie it down. It was the kind of daredevilry other operators might have avoided, but Cullen did it time and again, and his crews loved him for it. Years later, Lynn Meador remembered a dangerous blowout a Cullen crew encountered in Fort Bend County. One spark meant an explosion that would
“We have geophysical reports on the entire area,” Cullen said. “Looking at it won’t add anything to that. It won’t mean anything.”
“Well, it will to me!” West barked. “I’m going out there!”
“Go ahead, Jim,” Cullen said. “I’d go with you, but I’ll be too busy getting ready to drill it.”
West returned from his inspection trip more determined than ever to stop his partner from drilling. “You’ll have to tear down old derricks to find a place to drill a hole,” he said. “You’ll have to fill in the slush pits. That field is like a piece of Swiss cheese!”
Cullen ignored him. The two men were temperamental opposites, and he suspected their partnership wouldn’t last long. Out at Humble, his men cleared away the old derricks and readied a drill site. As they drilled down toward the Miocene, Cullen began studying the old wells nearby. Most had filled with salt water. Poring over well logs and his library books, Cullen understood that three thousand feet below the field lay a band of blue mud, what the drillers called gumbo. Below that was five feet of salt water, followed by more gumbo. It flooded the wells, and previous drillers had given up trying to get through it.
This was the first challenge a deep driller on the Gulf Coast faced, but Cullen thought he had found a way through it. Once the drill bit sank into the lowest layer of gumbo, he instructed his tool-pusher to set their casings, an outer pipe that shielded the hole from water, all the way down through the salt water to the gumbo. It worked; both the salt water and the gumbo were kept out of the well. Free to go deeper, Cullen hit a pool of pure “pipeline” oil—oil so free of impurities it could be pumped directly into a big company’s pipeline.
But Cullen was determined to go even deeper, into virgin dirt beneath the Humble Field. That, however, brought him face-to-face with the most serious obstacle a deep driller could encounter, the dreaded “heaving shale.” Jackson shale, as geologists termed it, lay about thirty-five hundred feet below most Gulf Coast fields, a tier of crumbled rock that pressed in around a drill bit, freezing it. No driller had defeated it, and with other shallow fields to attack, few had tried very hard.
Cullen ordered his driller, Dalton Brown, to “thin up,” that is, pump water into the hole instead of drilling mud, the better to clear the broken shale from the drill bit. After what Cullen characterized as “a startled glance,” Brown tried it, and the drill began to spin more easily. Still, a thick “bridge” of shale lay at the bottom of the hole, and they needed to get through it. Cullen had his plan ready. It was late at night when he instructed Brown to use the drill bit as a pile driver, lifting it and dropping it onto the shale bridge in an effort to break through. He kept water pumping into the hole to keep the drill bit spinning freely. It took several hours but it worked, and by midnight, when Cullen lay down by the derrick to grab some sleep, they had penetrated the slushy, oil-bearing sand underneath, the sought-after Yegua sand. Four hours later Cullen heard Brown shout: “Wake up, Mr. Cullen. I think she’s coming in!” 5
In the dim predawn light Cullen rose to see oil and gas spewing so violently from their hole that the four-inch flow line, which connected the well to a storage tank, had come loose and was wildly slashing the air. Cullen dashed to the storage tank, leaped atop it, and held the thrashing line until his crew could tie it down. It was the kind of daredevilry other operators might have avoided, but Cullen did it time and again, and his crews loved him for it. Years later, Lynn Meador remembered a dangerous blowout a Cullen crew encountered in Fort Bend County. One spark meant an explosion that would
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