W. M. Hudson Interview - W. M. Hudson Interview [part 4 of 6]

PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL TOPIC: Beaumont; Sour Lake NAME: W. M. Hudson INTERVIEWER: Wilson M. Hudson, Jr. PLACE: Austin, TexasTAPE NO. 80 DATE 9/18/52 RESTRICTIONS: None H. --Later took a bath, rolled in sand, a bath in gasoline, a bath in water, and cleaned up what I could. While I was cleaning up, Mr. Trammell and Mr. Lane were outside talking.

W.- Well, why did you have to go into that creek?

H.- Well, to get some, get some trash off of the suction.

W.- Oh, I see.

H.- The pump wouldn't pick up. So Mr. Trammell and Mr. Lane were outside talking and I heard Mr. Trammell say, "Well, Tom, I don't know why we didn't get in on the ground floor on this field." And I, without drying my face I jumped out the door and I said, "Let me tell you, you old S.O.B.," I said "I know why. It was because I mentioned, the suggestion come from me, I was a kid, you thought you knew so much more you was so much older. Let me tell you. We've been partners here a good while, now you boys give me $35 and let me quit." And I went from there to Matagorda, where Mr. Lane and Mr. Griffith had a lease on Will Williams' 1360 acre tract of land, five miles up the bay from Matagorda, where they was drilling a well. My brother Jessie, and Mr. Lane's brother Will were the well drillers. There had been an old well drilled in that region, a gas well. At that time as little, from little experience in such things nobody thought there might be anything but gas, and gas wasn't valuable, or at least not controllable at that time, so the well just stood there making gas.

W.- Wasn't capped or anything?

H.- Wasn't capped. We took, we'd make, hooked on to that and used that gas for fuel in the boiler to drill the first well. Well, I was still at Batson's Prairie when they were drilling the first well, and kept the log of the well that was sent to me daily by either one of the drillers. And they had reported 92 feet of crystallized sulfur in this first well. Later, the well come in making some oil. Then moved down, and I did move down, they put me to work as a roughneck on this other rig. They had a driller, a Pennsylvania driller.

W.- You say there were 90 feet of pure crystaline sulfur in that well?

H.- Crystallized sulfur, yes. And there must have been some of it, because when I went down and the cuttings had been washed out of that well, it was the yellowiest, crystalline sulfur that was, oh, as big as a peanut, plenty of them all over.

W.~ This was near Freeport, was it?

H.- Well, it's on the Matagorda Bay down there, close to that, close to that sulfur company, the Freeport Sulfur Company.

W.- Well, you just drilled into the world's richest deposit of sulfur, and didn't know it,

H.- Didn't know it, well --

W.- You didn't know how to get it out then anyhow, did you?

H,- No, And didn't anybody else. So, in working on this well, old Jake had a pet fireman, called him Dad. Our, our fires, our boiler was about three hundred yards from the derrick. One day the ring slipped on the pipe, and I tried to close the valve, tried to close it with a wrench, and so much mud on it, it slipped off and the wrench caught my finger against the edge of the rotary table, and mashed the end of it pretty badly.

W.- While the rotary was moving?

H.- While the rotary was moving, supposed to catch it while it was moving, but it was going too fast. So I drew back the wrench and told Jake. I said set them down or I'll knock you off the stool. Well, he was accommodating, he set it down. Well, the next day, Dr. Griffith came along. Well, Dr. Griffith said, "Mr. Hudson, would you mind taking the boiler over for awhile and letting old Dad come over here and work in your place until your finger's better?" He was an awful nice, smooth-talking old man. "Why no," I said, "I'm not a fireman, but I'd be glad to do it if it would ..help out any." Well before that, Jake apparently wasn't much fireman. Anyway, we just run half an hour, had to get up steam to run half an hour, and then shut down another half hour for him to get up steam to run another half hour. Well, when I took over the boiler I cleaned out the burner, and started in, had the fire up, plenty of steam by seven o'clock when they started to work, on the rotary and pumps. Well, we was, as a consequence we had only been working half the time, just half the time. I worked all day that day without any shutdown, set out in the sun on a board bench, but not in front of the boiler, because I had learned in Beaumont which way a boiler jumped when it exploded, I set out to one side, so if this one took a jump, it wouldn't climb on me. Along about noon I looked over at the derrick, and all the boys on one rig were standing on the edge looking over at the boiler to see what was wrong, they'd been working all morning. At noon, Dr. Griffith says, "We ought to had you on the boiler all the time."

W.- Well, how did you keep the pressure constant?

H.- Well, I sent just a little stream of cold water going in the boiler through the injector, so as to never have to throw in any big amount of cold water which would lower the pressure. I kept the steam with five pounds all, all the time I fired the boiler. Well, we finally got down in that well and struck a high, a heavy gas pocket, nine hundred pounds pressure to the square inch. We let it blow dry for two or three days, then Mr. Lane said, "Boys, lay a four inch pipeline out across the prairie there apiece and we'd let it blow out there."

W.- Mr. Tom Lane.

H.- Tom Lane. We did lay that four inch pipe out on hard clay and turned the well loose. I turned it loose for it to go wild. After a few days we began to see the grass show up with some oil on it, close to the pipe. Then, then it wasn't long till you'd see a little spray of oil a mile or a mile and a half away from where, the end of this pipe. And in the course of a week, the suction or pressure from the expansion from the mouth of this pipe, there was a hole in the ground in that hard clay, big enough that you could bury, buried a wagon and team in it. Finally one day Mr, Lane says, "Let's set that gas afire." Alright.

W.- Why did he want to set it on fire?

H.- I couldn't tell you, but he said, "Let's set that gas on fire." Well alright, so he went and set the gas afire. And there was all this grass across the prairie was already had a fine spray of, as all this oil had been going across the prairie on this high grass for several days, it had a coating of oil and when we, I did finally put a sack on a shovel, put some oil on it, and get up to the back side where the gas wouldn't come back and backfire. I tried to throw the shovel, the sack in the fire in the gas, but it stuck to the shovel so I throwed shovel and all in. Went off like a cannon, and I'd say in less than twenty minutes the fire was a mile and a half from there across that prairie where that gas seemed to be carrying. Well, it, it made so much blaze that night, that up at Bay City, twenty two miles from there, where some interested parties were, interested in this lease, so much excitement up there, they all come down on the train the next day and hired all the buggies and wagons and horses and everything they could get in, in Matagorda, to ride out and see the big oil fire, but it wasn't nothing but gas. Well, later on we decided to try to kill that gas pressure and drill deeper. Set a six inch pipe upon top of the valve at the top of the well with the valve on top of it, which come up about to the twenty foot girth, and a tank across that with a little incline on one side of the pipe, and on the other side, was the valve handle, valve wheel. Well, the only way we could do anything with it was to close the bottom valve and pull up oil, water with a bucket, mud, pulled up dry mud with a bucket, to stuff it in that six inch pipe, till we got it full, and then closed the top valve and opened the bottom one. The gas pressure would shoot it right to the bottom of the well. After we had the pressure partly killed off why we could pump in thick mud with the pumps, and close it, then open the valves. In doing that, I moved the hose once as though I was going to wet the boys with mud on the derrick floor. Well, they had a man up in the derrick with me to look out for me in case anything should happen to me. So one of the boys, Will Lane, --

W.- Tom's brother.

H.- Tom's brother, says, "I'll wait, I'll get you, I'll get you." Well, when I got the pipe full the next time, and reached over to close the valve, he thought I had the valve probably closed and he didn't intend to open the valve, but he caught the valve and made a little movement, and cracked it enough that the pressure was enough to shoot the whole volume of mud out and hit me in the stomach and the face. It lifted me off this plank, but as luck would have it, came back with the down, with my feet on the plank, and if the plank was a little angling, leaning, it was hard to follow. I couldn't see anything, I had my mouth all full of mud, but I worked my way out best I could, leaning off to try to be on a perpendicular with the plank, so my feet wouldn't slip out from under me, till finally, finally I got my eyes open enough to see the cable coming down from the crown block to the rotary drum, and caught hold of that to save myself. And I got my eyes open so I could see, my helper was standing on the outside of the derrick on the end of the plank. Reached in to catch a hold of me, I said don't catch hold of me, or I'll kick you off the end of that plank.

W.- Too late to give you any help.

H.- Too late to give me any help, I don't need it now. Well, that's all, cut it off for a little bit.

W.- You mentioned Dr. Griffith a couple of times, who was he?

H.- Well, he was an oil operator at Beaumont, Sour Lake, and different oil fields, and Mr. Lane's partner in the oil lease down at Bay City, at Matagorda. Well, he always wore a stove pipe hat, a hard derby and a long, Prince Albert black coat, and a large long black beard. First time I ever saw Dr. Griffith was over in the Hogg-Swayne district in Beaumont. There was so much sand pumped out, and sun drying the sand, and the wind blowing the sand on these slush pits that were full of thick mud. Had made something that looked like a smooth floor. Dr. Griffith walking around through the fields, stepped off into one of these smooth floors. But he, he was rescued, but almost to his neck in mud, but happened he was getting out of the hole.

W.- That was the first time you saw him, wasn't it?

H.- That's the first time I saw him. Later on in years later he went to Mexico and I saw him in Mexico and I reminded it to him, he still had, was able to laugh about it. After telling me not to mention it, he was able to laugh about it.

W.- Well, what happened to the well that Tom Lane and Dr. Griffith were drilling there at Matagorda?

H.- Well, I left before the well was finished. After we got the well full of mud, killed off the gas, and drilling started, I went, went to Llano with my family that live on a ranch where my mother and father were, on Riley Mountain. But I've heard that that well made a small producer, thirty barrels or more. And there was seven or eight more wells drilled in the district, but all small producers. This first well that we drilled, the formation was so soft, that when the well came in flowing, it sucked out the rock formation that the oil was in, and it, chunks would come out as big as your fist. And saturated with oil and lay it on the ground, or lay it up till the next day and it would be white as snow.

W.- After the oil had drained out of it.

H.- Porous and white as snow. So porous that they couldn't work it without getting so much, sucking so much water in, there was enough pressure to work it. Gas pressure was heavy.

W.- Did you ever try to follow up on that big sulfur deposit?

H.- Well, during the First War I, the United States Government was looking for sulfur deposits. And I got in contact with some of them in Houston, and later went to Oklahoma to see my brother about it. And he made light of it, said it wasn't anything that amounted to nothing. But I had kept the log on this well, and I knew it was 90 feet, but he said no, it wasn't, so ---

W.- Was he the driller on the well?

H.- Yes, he and Will Lane were drillers on the well. But sent me a log, or a report of the well every day, drilling report, and I'd put it on my log, and it summed up around 92 feet. Since that time there has been a great development in oil industry along that region.

W.- Well, that, that sulfur has been pretty well mined out there --

H.- The sulfur has been, been mined out also ---

W.- At Freeport and New Gulf they ---

H.- One time I heard that the Freeport put a battery of fifty boilers on and turned the steam on for two or three weeks in these different wells, then melted down the sulfur and then blowed it out with the compressed air like water, like oil, and they stacked up mountains of sulfur.

W.- Well, that's right, they do melt it with steam and blow it out. I've seen those piles of sulfur, well it looked to me as if it would be about fifty or a hundred feet high ---

H.- A mountain high.

W.- Just scraped squares of sulfur there. Now you went to Llano from Matagorda?

H.- Yes, stayed on the ranch in 1906, Mr. R. Thomas went to Mexico on a visit, and came back so enthused over what he saw that he got Mr. J. C. Stribling agitated on the same thing, and as I was living on Mr. Stribling's ranch, he told me that Thomas was going to make another trip and if I would like to go that he would go with me.

W.- Mr. Thomas was from Burnet?

H.- From Burnet, Texas, yes.

W.- And Mr. Stribling was then living at --

H.- Mr. Stribling was from Llano.

W.- He was living down at the Graphite Ranch.

H.- Down at the, living at his ranch at Graphite.

W.- Now you went down there then, didn't you?

H.- Well, about two weeks later Mr. Stribling called me on the phone and says, "Thomas is going, is here today and he's going on to Mexico tomorrow, and he says, you come down tonight we'll go the next day." So we did, we went to Mexico and looked around two or three different pieces of land, some of them up in the state of San Luis Potosi, some of them in Vera Cruz, and some other, some in the state of Tamaulipas. Well, one night we came in the Southern Hotel, and I was in the lobby of the Southern Hotel, some of our friends that were with us were very much interested about, or enthused about some of this property, this cheap property, and good land. Somebody put out the report that there was yellow fever in Tampico. Well, they all broke their necks to catch the train the next morning and get out. And Mr. Thomas stayed in Mexico three months, looking over different tracts of land but before I left, Mr. Stribling and I stayed and looked at a piece of land on the Pantico River called the Santa Fe Ranch. Had about 19 miles of waterfront on the river.

W.- You were looking for farm land or ranch land?

H.- Farm land, and this was as rich farm land as anybody could ever hope to find. Well ---

W.- It fronted 19 miles on the Pantico.

H.- On 19 miles on the Pantico River.

W.- That was a tidal river too, wasn't it?

H.- Yes. Well at that time there was, they had started a Short Line road, Railroad, a branch line from Tampico, that cut through the mountains to Mexico City, called it the Short Line. And there was some contractors working on this road out beyond the Santa Fe Ranch, but transportation was so bad, that these contractors, that come down from Mexico City, when they'd come to Mexico, come to our place on the launch. Then they'd get off and take horses and go out to the work or where they were working. And one of these men was, had a power of attorney from the Mexican Fuel Company, which was a company that was organized to give bond to the railroad companies and take Mr. Duhaney's oil which had been discovered up at Ebanol. Apparently he ---

W. - To what place, what place was that? H.- Ebanol, in the state of San Luis Potosi, and Mr. Duhaney apparently wasn't able to make bond so that the railroad companies would convert their engines from coal burners to oil burners, so the Mexican Fuel Company, a subsidiary of the Water Spearce, was organized with that special purpose. They received oil from Mr. Duhaney at 50 cents a barrel, and at the time they received it, it was the same operations were turned over to the railroad company, and the Mexican Fuel Company received a peso, a dollar a barrel for it. Well, Mr. Temple, who was their power of attorney, also had something to do with this contract work on this Short Line Railroad. And had, at one time he stayed all night at our ranch, and we got to talking to him about the oil business, and asked him why it wouldn't be more convenient for the Water Spearce Oil Company, which was the only oil company in that part of the, in that country. The other oil company was down in Meneke Plant, way south in Vera Cruz, it was an English company. But the Water Spearce had been importing all their oil, until Mr. Duhaney discovered oil up at Ebanol. And asked them if it wouldn't be more profitable to them to do some drilling operations. Well, they said no, that they were not operators, that they were just refiners. Alright, but it would be much more convenient to have oil where you could get it, right at home, without paying duty on it and bringing it in.

W.- Where was this branch line being built?

H.- Built from Tampico to Mexico City, and never has gotten any farther than a place out there in the mountains called Mao Salud.

W.- Still there.E. - It's now running a train every day out there. "Well, well," Mr. Temple says, "You've given me something to think about boys." Says, "When I go to Mexico City I'll take it up with the bigger fish." Well about two weeks later he come back and he says, "Well, I fell on fertile ground. They're willing to take a lease on your place." We had five thousand acres of land. "Tell you boys what you do. I'm going on out to the construction work on the railroad; you go on to Tampico and go before these Sanchoda Ruiz, Garcia Rojas and go make a lease contract for twenty years on this place, giving you 10% of all the oil produced. And he says, "We'll agree in that contract to drill as many as three wells. If it's oil we'll punch the ground full of holes." So he went on to his work, and we went on to Tampico, and made the contract with them without any other agreement to our own convenience and signed the contract. When he came back through he signed the contract. And in less than two months they had a rig out and went to work. Well, this well ---

W.- How'd they get the rig up there?

H.- They brought the rig up on barges, tugged it with tugboats, pulled up on barges, just about, I guess it was forty miles up to where the well was drilled. Well, they unloaded it on the Topela Estero on the upper edge of the ranch. And they sent up the derrick and started in the well, and after they got down, well about eighteen hundred feet, I suppose, they began to get a little oil smell. At around two thousand feet they got in to what they called a redrock, that's what they all figure on getting before they get into the oil formation. While this well was being drilled, Mr. Duhaney, that had discovered the oil up in the state of San Luis Potosi, at Ebanol, had moved down and started operations down south at a place called Serasul. Mr. Charley Radford also drilled at a place called Portre Del Llano and while this well was drilling on the Santa Fe Ranch this well at Portre Del Llano came in and run wild, and caught fire, and supposed to been the biggest producer of any well in the world. Anyway, it's seventy kilometers from the point where our first well was drilled, and from the light of the fire a newspaper could be read at night very easily.

W.- How much do you think that well was flowing when it was out of control?

H.- It's impossible to say. It's made a regular crater and it's still flowing, and that's been since 1908.

W.- Still bubbling up gas there.

H.- Still bubbling up gas, and there's a salt water lake there I'd say two miles long and a half a mile wide now, like a crater.

W.- It must have been throwing out about 350,000 barrels of oil a day.

H.- I should say something like that. Well, this was the first, the discovery well was the first well drilled on the Pantico River, in that whole region.

W.- Your, your well?

H.- Yes, on the Santa Fe Ranch, Later on, the East Coast Oil Company drilled some wells up at Pantico. Then, scattered around wells on our place too, and several wells were drilled. And in one well, had an eight inch casing to the bottom, when they broke into their oil formation, it blew out the drill stem out the top of the derrick and came down, straight down, and the drill stuck in the ground, and the five inch drill stem doubled over like a piece of hot putty. Well, had a flow tank alongside this derrick, and it probably didn't take more than two minutes to have that tank full of rocks. Blowed out of the bottom of this well. And some rocks came out of the well so big that nobody was able to put the rock in any position that they could put it back down in a pipe the same size. But all these rocks were crusted over on the outside with dry asphalt, as though they had been rolling around in the cavity in oil for centuries. This well was gauged, on a twenty four hour gauge, and made two hundred and seventy thousand barrels of fluid, not all oil. But from sucking out all these rocks and making such a cave or cavity in there, it probably allowed water to get in and was a very small producer from there on because, and when this well was flowing there was another well across the river probably three hundred yards from there that had been a good producer, well it stopped all together when the pressure was coming out of this other well on our side of the river. So they must have been connected together through some crevice.

W.- This was well #5?

H.- No, yes, that was number 5, yes.

W.- You called it #5 because it was #5 on your place

H.- Yes, yes.

W. How did you save, did you save any of that oil?

H.- Well, there was some of it saved, but it had to be worked under a choke and not very much oil ever made out of it. There was a small creek close by this well, and took some mules and scrapers and throwed up a dam across this creek between two little ridges, and put a bunch of blivers in with shovels, and after running the well twenty four hours, took a measure on this oil, the depth of the oil, and figured that there was 270,000 barrels a day of fluid came out of the well.

W.- Well, that was well #5. Was there any more production on the Santa Fe Ranch?

H.- Yes, there were several wells drilled on there, and didn't any of them amount to anything over fifty or sixty barrel wells. But across the river, in a place called Pasencha Navicate, Topela Hacienda, Tampioche, there were several wells come in there. One well came in, a Texas Company well, no, the Mexican Gulf. Then I took a lease on tract in there of fifteen acres of land close to this well. Well, drilled on it, and for awhile it made five thousand barrels a day, but now it's making a small amount, probably not enough, warrant enough to pay the watchman, but that's been, must have been, 30, over thirty years ago that that well came in. And I have a lot of interest yet in a well that's drilled on some land the Texas, by the Texas Company. It was drilled in 1918 and it's still making oil, making oil for the last eight years at the same rate, whether it would make more or whether that's all it will make, I don't know, but it's making the same amount of oil it made eight years ago. Then production started up at Pantico, farther on up the river, and farther west by the East Coast Oil Company which I understood is the Southern Pacific Railroad. And from that, that was the first well that was a producer up there. And there was many big wills drilled in that district from ten to twenty thousand barrels. Oil was still being brought down the river in barges, and since the Mexican Government was taking over the oil business they used some pipe lines that the foreign companies had to bring the oil down the loading stations down to Tampico.

W.- How far up is the Pantico navigable?

H.- Well, I don't know. There was a flat bottom steamer that ran considerably farther up than Pantico, up to a place called El Ego. And the name of the boat was El Ego, that use to be my transportation from the ranch to Tampico. And of late years, there's a road or highway that runs through from Pantico up to El Ego. In the rainy season there's some places that's underwater, and the communications cut off. But from Pantico, back into Tampico, there was a road made by the oil companies, a graded road, which is now partly asphalted, and continued from the, where the road turns to Pantico on up to Vallas, to make a connection with the road direct from Tampico to Mexico City, connects with a highway from Laredo to Mexico City. That's a place called Vallas.

W.- Was there oil development east of you?

H. - Well, yes, and south. Big oil development south and it hasn't stopped yet.

W.- When did, when did those developments come in? After your Santa Fe pioneering?

H.- Yes, yes. All the big companies are in there, and the time I was there the furtherest company south, say 27 years ago, the Ten-Mex Oil Company had some land, called El Alamo, and they had big production there. Well, the last year I was through there and they still had considerable production there around all these old fields, the Mexican Government are drilling, letting out contracts to drill in all these old fields. And they don't get any big wells but they're still getting production just working around the edge of these old discovery wells, and a lot of these discovery wells are still making plenty of money. Making plenty of oil. And farther south they have discovered a field that's called Posarita and the companies seemed to have thought that that was the end of the oil depth, but the Mexican Government geologists done some work farther south, and they're still, the last two months discovered some wells further south.

W.- When was the Posarita discovery made?

H.- I couldn't say, I wasn't there, but ---

W.- Well ---

H.- Before the companies left there, had done some work there.

W.- Well, when was the expropriation, general expropriation?

H.- In March 18, 1938. --end of tape--