As the capital of the West Texas oil industry, the town of Midland (pop. 23,000) had an odd distinction; it had never had a boom of its own. The land around Midland had been drilled repeatedly and found wanting. But last week all was changed.
Prices were soaring in Midland; office space was at a premium. In the suburbs, palatial ranch-style houses were going up almost overnight. Downtown, modest skyscrapers poked into the air. One small operator called Jack Kelsey caught the spirit by buying an 8-ft.-by-13-ft. shack, moving it into his backyard, and putting up a sign—'The Kelsey Building."
The Big Play. Midland owed its boom to a quirk of nature and a persistent wildcatter named Arthur ("Tex") Harvey. Though Harvey knew that little oil had been found around Midland, he decided three years ago to take a chance anyway. He drilled down 12,000 feet to a stratum in which oil has been found elsewhere in Texas. The hole was dry. Then Harvey wondered what he might have missed on the way down. Working his well back, he got a little oil. Finally, in the fine-grained, hard-packed sands of the "Spraberry trend,"* at 8,000 ft., Tex Harvey found oil in commercial quantities. But Harvey's well was like none he had ever seen before.
Normally, a new oil well gushes, has to be pumped only after it has been producing for a while. But Harvey had to pump his well to get it started; not till it had been going for a few months did oil gush up. As his output rose from 60 to 125 bbls. a day, the rush began. By last week, the Spraberry trend was the biggest oil "play" in the U.S., with 522 Spraberry wells completed (including 23 owned by Harvey), 200 being drilled, and 3,000,000 bbls. of oil already out of the ground.
Soft Soap. Like Tex Harvey, other drillers have found that a Spraberry well must be coddled. Because of the hard-packed nature of the formation, ordinary drilling methods will not release the oil; instead, a gelatinous compound of soap and kerosene, followed by coarse sand, must be pumped into the hole under tremendous pressure. This loosens the fractures and the oil begins to flow freely.
No one yet knows how big the yield of the 1,000,000-acre Spraberry trend may be. Geologists' estimates range all the way from 2,500 to 20,000 bbls. an acre, which would make it the biggest field in Texas in 30 years.
But the great number of wells with low production has some oilmen worried. On the usual basis of one well to every 40 acres, Spraberry drillers could put down 25,000 wells, and might need 4,500,000 tons of scarce steel for pipe—more than is normally used by all the oilfields of Texas in the course of a year. Furthermore, the investment required for such a program would be huge and risky. In Fort Worth last week, a group of independent operators met to discuss a proposal to limit the number of Spraberry wells to one for every 160 acres. When Texas oilmen talk of voluntarily limiting their production, it is a sure thing that they are both scared and baffled.
* Named for Farmer Abner Spraberry, on whose land Seaboard Oil Co. first struck the formation (but no oil) in 1943.