Alexander Balfour Patterson Interview - Alexander Balfour Patterson Interview [part 4 of 5]

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  • PIONEERS IN TEXAS OIL Topic: Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico Name: Patterson, Alexander Balfour Interviewer: Owens, William A. Place: Nacogdoches, Texas Tape No. 127 Date: 8-4-53 Restrictions: May not be quoted in any form without written permission of A.B. Patterson. O.- Now, Mr. Patterson, I'd like to tell -- you to tell something about your operations off-shore in Louisiana in those early days.
  • P.- Well, when I went to South Louisiana and I took the head-quarters, of course, as Lake Charles, at that time, the only so-called water operations in South Texas or South Louisiana was at Hackberry, near Lake Charles, south of Sulphur, Louisiana, and the Yount Company had some production. Some of these wells were on mats in the marshy ground and the Louisiana Land Exploration Company had one well out in the --about four or five feet of water. And that was built with cribbing, a board mat in the bottom of the bay mud and then cribbing of timbers to get the height for the rig.
  • That's about all there was in water development that I knew of and so it was up to my hand to drill in deeper waters. Some of the waters were 12 and 14 feet deep. I didn't know anything about it. We didn't have any engineers that knew anything about it. I conferred with different people,
  • construction engineers in New Orleans that were building those big buildings there. The chief engineer of the L & N Railroad, Mr. Corbett, was very helpful to me and he advised piling in every instance. He gave me the information of the creosote treatment, what penetration I should need for protection of so many years from these ship-worms, these toridas, and so from that on, we drew our own plans and details for piling operations for steam rigs or, in some of the waters that were seven feet deep, we still used mats. We'd float the mats, and then they'd sink as you build up with the long 12 x 12 timbers or 8 x 10's or 10 x 10's till you get the height that you want.
  • We found after the first mats -- by putting those mats closed, board to board, that with maybe a hade to the bottom a little lean, sometimes the vibration of those rigs made them slip, even without any equipment on them. We had double mats, but I got the idea that I used snowshoes in Canada and I didn't slip with snowshoes. I did slip with skis. So the mats were laid with a break of four inches between each board and when that would settle through the silt and muck of the bottoms, the mat never would slip after that. It just pawned [pawled] itself. And to make the derricks level, we put steel plates, three or four of them, under each corner of the derrick legs with a slot, like a U-boat would be, so
  • that if one side of the derrick went down, you wouldn't build up on that leg. You'd go pull out on the opposite leg and those plates were half-inch and three-quarters and five-eighths of an inch thick.
  • We found that line derricks wasn't very successful. For the piling operations we drove group pilings and laced them and put three guy lines from each corner of the derrick. But someway, waves or vibration, you could not keep those guy lines at all. Same thing with the mat. And, so then, we worked out a feature that we would tie the derricks, each leg to the foundations. With the piling, we belted the post group under each corner with a bar under that belt and a big rod up into a plate at the base of the derrick leg. That meant if a derrick went to go over, the whole thing would have to pull 52 pilings maybe, which is not very easy to do.
  • The mats we would lay four or six-inch, old pipe, eight or nine feet long, under before we put the mat down with a big rod up through that laying flat, horizontal, with the ground and that would fasten the derrick down to that mat. And you know there's an awful lot of suction hold to any-thing laying in mud unless air can get into it. So we did away with the guying entirely and that was one of our prob-lems -- was trying to keep the derricks from blowing over. There was [sic] semi-equinox storms that we used to have.
  • Now when we started, we had no communication with any rig except by boat. And the supervisors under me had speed-boats or cruisers, these 34 or 35 foot boats that would do anywhere from 20 knots to 37 knots an hour, big 200 horsepower motors. The disadvantage was that you never knew what was going on until either a boat came in to you or you went out to those various locations.
  • And to make them in 1929, when we started, if I made one round-trip, it was around 125 miles on the water in a day. And the days turned into nights and we had to have men familiar with the bayous and the bays and the islands 'cause of fogs and no visibility and that sort of condition.
  • We wanted planes, but the executives weren't ready for that sort of an operation. And so we couldn't get around except by boat and almost up to completion of construction, we decided on homing pigeons as our source for morning reports. And we had the post built for the pigeons and, personally, I got all the governmental literature on homing pigeons from Washington and then I conferred with pigeon fanciers and raisers where I knew we could get our starting covy of pigeons and a man that knew how to train pigeons.
  • And just about the time that was completed, why, we got authority for our plane operation and radio. That was turned down twice by the government and we finally got
  • a license, port-to-ship. And the only way we could use it was by putting our receiving station on a barge at the headquarters on Terrebonne Bayou, south of Houma. We had to move that barge. Oh, we'd move it five or ten feet every 24 hours. It must move because it was floating. And we had to put the radio on boats at each camp. The camps were built on piling in the water out in those bays. You couldn't put them in a building on piling. No, they'd take the license away from you.
  • And, but those things we worked out and, finally, before I was through with the whole operation and came back to Houston, we had nine producing fields and we had built our first two drilling barges and some of us thought we originated the idea of a submerged barge. Now, floating drilling barges was [sic] something that had been in existence for a long time. They used them in the Hudson, the sounding for the tunnels. Drilling rigs on floating equipment.
  • And a young Frenchman name Leguerre [?] drilled wells for sulphur at Jackson, uh Jefferson Lake out of New Iberia in non-tideland water where the barges floated, and were stationary with big posts that go down into the water from the barge. And when we started our first barge, we built one similar, no license demand on It. And we took it down to the mouth of the Mississippi River and the problem there was tides two or three feet a
  • day. It was very difficult to keep our hole centered.
  • When the tide would run out, It would bend our tie-downs on the barge and we'd be out of the center of the hole. For your blow-out preventer equipment, you had to design a stuffing box slip joint fastened to the blow-out preventer that would go up and down on the casing. It was very difficult operation and we got away with it, however. But, we took a barge and put some boilers on it with the idea of submerging it. And some of our associates weren't very keen for that test but we did it and we drilled several wells by sinking the barge on the bottom of seven, eight or nine feet of water and then the structures above the deck for the boilers to be on were always free of water. And then when we want to move, [sic] we just pumped water out of the different bulkheads and the barge floated and we'd tow it away and sink it again.
  • Then the Idea came, the drilling rig absolutely on a barge that would submerge and be floated. And we found that the idea was patented and it had been patented by an Italian Merchant Marine captain. He got the Idea from going into Merichibeau Lake where they had drilling there on that lake on piling, and he just thought, Why couldn't they build a barge with a rig on it and sit it on the barge?" Didn't take any consideration of depths, was just the idea. Well,
  • anyway, at the end of 18 months or so, they located him, and the Texas Company bought the patents. And they can let anybody build them. They pay the Texas Company so much for the permission to build the barges.
  • But anyway, that was the beginning and I stayed until we had first of the bigger drilling barges into operation. I never drilled out in the Gulf of Mexico as they're doing today. While I thought the work I did and those with me, and I call them all engineers, because every man, drillers, pumpers, and roughnecks, gave me ideas that brought the development to where it is and where it was when I left, but it was really kindergarten work compared to the present day operations. Now, you go out in your plane. You can make around all those domes in half a morning where I was going 16, 17 hours a day, in boats. And lots of times, you couldn't make it. And it's -- it's really -- was a fascinating thing.
  • In fact, when I left the Rocky Mountains, I was a mile high at Denver and in five days I slept below sea level. I slept on the bottom of a little schooner, that we were going out [in] to look at the water area. And I've often laughed at four days from a mile high to below sea level. And I had the pleasure of drilling in the Rocky Mountains at, I guess, the highest above sea level, well, at that
  • time. Over 8,000 feet above sea level in Wilson Creek.
  • O.- Did you get oil?
  • P.- I didn't. The geologist said, "No. Deep enough. Water. And we turned it over to another company, a half interest. And there's plenty of oil there today.
  • O.- Is that right?
  • P.- We didn't go deep enough. It was deep for those days. And that's the history, Mr. Owens, of all of our development. Now, a lot of people in the oil industry have taken great credit for this idea of flank production, and the man that definitely is due all credit was Frank Yount, who--who
  • O.- Spindletop.
  • P. - Absolutely. Well, he came out to Sour Lake. That man, after he got production in the Spindletop, he took over all these flanks. See, the Standard took over all those domes that he had and every one of them productive. His idea was that the sands came up, of course, on a hade, the result of a salt dome pushing up. And there were sands that you could go into salt and stay in salt the rest of your life. But if you'd get off far enough, you'd find virgin sands with oil and Frank Yount really was the man that started deep flank drilling. Not a geologist, just a good, thoughtful, common-sense man that had a good head on him
  • and, of course, made a fortune, incidentally. But he really was the one as far as I'm concerned entitled to the idea of flank. Now, all geologists know it today. All geologists know that East Texas was the Gulf of Mexico at one time, but up to the time that Barber brought in that well, there was very little interest in East Texas. After it came in, everybody knew it was there. And so, all of us are familiar with the flank production and the linticularity of some sands and the blanket feature of the sands and, I guess, how the domes were formed, but there was a day when we didn't know those things. I think the first paleontologist that came into the oil industry was for the Southern Pacific, the Rio Bravo Oil Company. None of the major [companies] had a paleontologist till years afterwards.
  • O.- What was his name, do you remember?
  • P.- The paleontologist?
  • O.- Yes. P.- A lady. It was a lady.
  • O.- A lady?
  • P.- Yes, I used to take samples down to her.
  • O.- What was her name?
  • P.- I can't remember it to save my life.
  • O. - But she was with Rio Bravo, huh?
  • P.- Rio Bravo. That's the Southern Pacific. And Dumble was the head of that.
  • O.- Yes.
  • P.- And Kennedy, the geologist that taught me most of my geology, he's the man that gave me all my books and used to catechize me and have me write articles just as a kid looking up to a master. That's what it was, really. And he left and went to the T. P. Company, Texas Pacific, T. P. Coal. But he was a grand old Scotchman and-- but they had the first paleontologist I know of. The Humble had the next. We were third maybe, the Texas Company. And the first geologist we had was back in '20, '21. That's the first geologist Texas Company had.
  • O.- Well, while we're on this matter of geology, what about some of the superstitions for finding oil? Weren't there any of those?
  • P.- Yes, sir. Lots of them. Of course, in the early days, wherever any gas showed on the surface, it was proof con-clusive it was petroleum gas. There was no thought that it was marsh gas. There was no thought of capturing that gas and having it analyzed for hydro-carbon. So there were many, many, many dry holes drilled just due to surface marsh gas. But Jennings was drilled because there was gas there
  • and they used to light some of it and have soirees, those Cajuns. They'd have a two or three day and night soiree and dance. That came in after Spindletop. And everybody looked for terrain similar to Spindletop. They all looked for humps, domes, and lots of dry holes drilled on those. And Sour Lake had its gas and its sour waters. At one time Sour Lake was the most elite summer resort in this whole area, in this southern Texas area. They had a big hotel, the Spring Hotel. They had the quarters for bachelors. And, of course, the hotel where families could come and they had these mud baths and they had four different types of water that you'd drink for whatever was good for you. Some of them had sulphur in them, and iron, magnesium. Some of it smelled terribly, but lots of the old dowagers came there and soaked in a mud pit for hours a day and cured their arthritis or rheumatism.
  • O.- Did you have any of those baths?
  • P.- No, sir, I didn't. When I went there, the hotel-- when the Texas Company or the Producers Oil Company hit their first well, and there's a monument to it by the way, over there at Sour Lake, why, they took over that whole property. It was one of the outstanding operations of those days. Nobody in that period of time took big blocks of acreage. You
  • were satisfied to get 20 acres or 10 acres and drill on it and try to find out who owned the other land. But Walter Sharp had blocked up and had options on, I think, seven or eight or 900 acres, 810 acres, maybe. And the exercise of that option took place when this first big well of the Texas Company came in. And then he took over the hotel property and men that worked there, slept there. Some of the homes were turned over to men that had families, and those bachelor quarters were turned into where men had a room or two men to the room. And the baths were just let go, that's all.
  • It was an old lake. That's where the sour smelling lake came. If you'd go to see it today, you wouldn't see it. You'd see a sunken hole. Just a few years ago, that whole top of the dome dropped. The whole shoestring area dropped. Some of the wells were ruined and some of them have been recovered. They were shallow wells. But it's a different type today. There's not even a hotel there. They had beautiful horses there for the people to go driving and it was the wealthy people were the ones that went to the Spring Hotel at Sour Lake. It was quite an institution. And so it's a thing of the past now.
  • O.- Did you see men try to locate oil with wiggle switches or equipment like that?
  • P.- Yes, Mr. Owens, it would take a long time to go into it, more but you may be able to get some more information from some.
  • There were wiggle stick men. There were these water well locaters that did it. Dr. Griffith of Houston had a contrivance that nobody else could work but he could. He had little lugs that looked like the size of a silver pencil and it had a plate that would fit the palate, the roof of his mouth. And from each side of the -- this plate that protruded from the mouth -- were coiled, highly coiled, springs of six or eight inches long, on the end of which had little silver looking plates that he could take between his forefinger and thumb of each hand. Then out of the bottom of this plate came his mouth. He would screw, thread screw, one of these little lugs marked silver, or gold or iron, or oil, or gas, or sulphur, and then he would walk. This would be pointing vertically, and sometimes he would start and tremble and you'd see this lug draw down toward the ground. There he'd make a mark. And then he would go at right angles to what he said would find where sands crossed one another. His idea of an oil field was a gridiron, sands going east and west and sands going north and south. His instrument impressed a lumberman named Mr. Burt, R. E. Burt, who gave him a half interest in many of his properties, the oil interests. He was a lumberman. And while the production was brought in,
  • particularly the Humble, Texas, on some of his property, it wasn't the result of his instrument, but he made, checked every location. Sometimes the company would move a location five or six feet. And, of course, there were dry holes drilled, too, in different counties of the state of Texas, but both parties became very, very wealthy.
  • And Dr. Griffith died not many years ago, and I think he has a son-in-law in Houston and maybe a son in Houston. And there was many a wildcat projected on the result of locations he made with these-- with this contrivance or apparatus that he used. And he used to go into people's offices and sometimes they would put a box of silver coins somewhere. And the idea was, he could locate it. And his explanation was that it in was something in these lugs plus a magnetism of his in his body, some companion property of chemistry that made it possible for him to locate these things.
  • I can't say that I believed in it. I've walked with him many, many times and made locations for the Texas Company and had him check them. And sometimes if he didn't get a good well, he'd come out and locate the sand at the end of your pipe rack. Drill the hole there. And on the pipe rack was all the iron in the world, and it didn't affect it. It would find it down there. So, that's one definitely and we've had some amusing ones, too*
  • But [in] the early days, it was hunt gas, surface gas, hunt ground comparable with the shape of Spindletop Dome. And Sour Lake certainly wasn't a dome in the sense of high and low. Batson wasn't. Saratoga, to some extent. And the big domes were Hoskins Mound out at Danbury, Texas, very pronounced. Big sulphur operation there. Damons Mound is, I guess, the largest and most noticeable one we have in the Gulf Coast. I imagine It's 60 feet elevation above the prairie ground and covers a very large area. Non-eroded, you see, but it pushed up there, and they are now starting sulphur development there. And there's been oil around it for years. Never the big, deep production that we got in other places.
  • In West Columbia, it happened that the high point of the surface was the low point. Or the high point, let me put it this way, the high point of the dome, the submerged dome, was the low point of the surface. It had eroded away in the Brazos River at one time, been in there. And you got your salt at very shallow depths there, five, six, seven hundred feet, so that the production is not in the high point of the dome, off on the peripheral area.
  • O.- Well, while we're talking about the folklore, I'd like to ask some questions aside from the drilling and so on. What about the songs about the oil fields? Were there any?
  • P.- Mr. Owens, I certainly cannot give you a thing on that.
  • I don't know of a song that, in my mind, that was composed and in using oil terms entirely. I just don't recall it. Most of the songs were-- that I heard when I was first in the field, were men-- songs that the miners used to sing, to cowboys used/sing, folklore things that the farmers used to sing. I don't remember any particular oil-- and yet there may be. There could be, but I don't recall one.
  • O.- How much did they sing around the wells and around the camps?
  • P.- Well, a good deal depended upon what inspiration they'd had, a liquid inspiration. Cause the men did work longer hours in the early days and now they work these short hours and most of them have their homes wherever they are working. And they work those three eight-hour shifts. You see, we had the twelve-hour shifts.
  • When we first started the water operation in 1929 in South Louisiana, the crews never came into town or to the community until the casing was set. That is, what we call the oil string casing. It might be 20 days; it might have been 30 days; it might have been 40 days. Now, they go out for so many days and come in so many days. See? Now, like nine days out and five days in. It's all the result of organization and how the men stand it better, but that twelve hours, they'd work twelve hours and then they were in the up on piling, fishing. They just
  • couldn't go anywhere. Water all around them in those camps out in the water.
  • O.- What kind of stories did they tell when they were out on the water there?
  • P. - I don't know. Most of them, or a great number of them, you wouldn't tell in mixed company.
  • O.- Did they tell any Gib Morgan stories?
  • P.- Morgan?
  • O.- Gib Morgan.
  • P.- Oh, I remember Gib Morgan stories. They told some of those, and the boys, of course, were I think as a camp organization in that operation we had a wonderful experience in that we-- the men were willing to stand by us and not gamble, not play for money so that there would be anger developed and have your problems of man to man. They played dominoes and they played dice and we had reading material for them.
  • Meals were wonderful and I got the boys to even shave at least every other day so we wouldn't be like beasts, because they didn't have any refining influence in the first water operations. Now, they can get into town, five days in, nine days out, and their families are where they are and you've got your churches and your schools and your libraries. But it it-- After I became a supervisor, about that time, the conditions in the oil fields began to improve right along. Not
  • due to me. I mean, it