Jim Bradshaw: Ship captains knew about Gulf oil long before drilling began

We knew there was oil under the Gulf of Mexico long before we drilled for it. So much of it bubbled to the surface about 10 miles south of Sabine Pass that schooner captains called the area the “Oil Ponds.”
That was in the 1880s, more than 150 years before Kerr-McGee’s first bit turned beneath the water. But, even then, there was speculation about whether a well could be drilled in the Gulf.
“There is no land within 15 miles, and yet such is the effect of the oil thus cast upon the waters by the lavish hand of nature that even in the severest storms the sea in the Oil Ponds is comparatively smooth,” the Lake Charles Commercial recorded in September 1881.
“So well is this known that when the small vessels that trade between Calcasieu, Orange, Sabine, Beaumont and Galveston fail to make a harbor at Galveston or Sabine they run … for the oil, … let go their anchors, and ride out the gale in safety.”
The Gulf was only about 20 feet deep at that point, causing the newspaper’s editor to wonder if oilmen, who were just beginning to understand about how and where to drill on land, might one day try to tap the Ponds, or at least to scoop up the oil nature provided.
“No one, we believe, has ever attempted to strike oil in the Gulf of Mexico,” the newspaper reported, “but it is not extravagant to expect that some day capital and enterprise will succeed in securing the oil which is now wasting in these wonderful ponds. … There is here a chance for scientific investigation, at least, and it may be that the Calcasieu Oil Company, formed several years ago, may find in the Gulf the oil they have not succeeded in discovering, to any great extent, on land.”
The company appears never to have found “any great extent” of oil on land or water, and the hunt in Louisiana was pretty haphazard until the Spindletop field near Beaumont caused an explosion of drilling in southern Texas and Louisiana in 1901.
The Lake Charles Echo referred to “the Calcasieu Oil Well” in 1896, but it seemed not to be a big producer. The Echo was more interested in the bicycle craze of the time, reporting that a man attempting to ride across the country had stopped in Lake Charles to “grease the bicycle with Calcasieu oil.”
That edition also had a report that “on Thursday last, some forty or more barrels were thrown off the train at sulphur mine, for the purpose of being filled and returned to parties in various towns … who had ordered it. … The stream of oil, free from water, by actual measurement, amounted to thirty gallons per hour. This is certainly an astonishing yield.”
Note that the “astonishing” yield was 30 gallons, not 30 barrels.
That year, 1896, oilmen did drill the first well in ocean waters, but that was off a pier in California. The first over-water well in Louisiana was in Caddo Lake near Shreveport, about as far from the Gulf as you can get and still be in the state. That was in 1911.
Nobody seriously considered drilling in the Gulf until after World War II, when new technology and surplus equipment made it appear to be both possible and profitable. Even then, the first well was in only 15 feet of water, shallower than the 20 feet estimated way back when at the Oil Ponds.
The Ponds presumably continued to bring — to use the Beverly Hillbillies phrase — “bubbling crude” to the surface and to provide a storm haven for small boats for many uninterrupted years.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.