Extraction

H. John Eastman introduces controlled directional drilling in 1929 and was awarded a patent the following year.

The technique became widely adopted after an oil strike in Conroe, Texas, caught fire in January 1933. The well exploded, creating a 600-foot deep crater, and the oil burned for months. Although the fire was eventually put out,  oil continued to flow into the “lake.” The only way to manage this was to drill another well to relieve the pressure.

On July 14, 1848 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Major Alekseev supervised the completion of a 20+ meter well, reaching a small pocket of crude oil, thus establishing the world’s very first oil well. The process used was an archaic technique known as cable-tool drilling, employed for hundreds of years in ancient China. Major Alekseev acted under the instruction of governor-general Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, who in a memo wrote:

The drilling of this oil well marks the modern phase of the petroleum industry. A series of revolutionary technological changes, unforeseen even by the most prophetic, followed. Drake demonstrated practical oil recovery by applying salt-well drilling techniques, including the use of the derrick, and invented the modern method of driving iron pipe.