History of Oil-Finders Friday: “Shooting” Wells with Nitroglycerin - Time to Revisit?

When I was a little girl, I would overhear my geologist dad say to my mom, “We’ll be shooting the well tomorrow,” a concept that mystified me. I had never seen my dad with a pistol.

Sometimes I would accompany my dad to the well and would peer through the microscope and squeeze a dropper containing dilute hydrochloric acid to see if the rock chips had limestone. Images of “gushers” with oil raining from the sky filled my head. For years I assumed they were the result of drilling into an over-pressured high-porosity, high permeability zone with good oil saturation and using the wrong mud-weight.

Actually, both well “shooting” and “blowing in a gusher” were tied to the old, and incredibly dangerous practice of using liquid nitroglycerin to stimulate the well.?The well “shooters” would lower explosives to the bottom of the hole and then detonate them. ?

SHOOTING THE WELL: The well was considered a success if the explosion resulted in a “gusher,” with oil spewing high into the air, coating the derrick, doghouse, trucks, mudpits, the earth, and workers with oil.

The explosion reduced the formation around the charges to unconsolidated rubble, and after the initial flow had subsided, the completion crew spent a few days “swabbing down” the well, basically cleaning out the material that would impede flow. Despite the initial success, it was not an efficient method to complete a well, and many depleted quickly. This and other na?ve practices led to scenes of old cable tool rigs literally next to each other on what appears to be less than five-acre spacing. When one depletes, spud another. ?

THE BEGINNINGS OF OIL WELL STIMULATION: The practice of well stimulation started in the mid 1800s when engineers experimented on wells in the tight, jointed Dunkirk shale in western New York. Fracturing the rock allowed the gas to flow through the joints where the gas accumulated. Igniting the in-situ natural accumulation of produced gas was first attempted, but it was bulky and not as powerful as the newly synthesized nitroglycerin, which was developed in 1847 in the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero.

Nitroglycerin, an oily, colorless liquid, can be produced by nitrating glycerol with white fuming nitric acid. Alfred Nobel and his colleagues quickly identified its efficacy in blasting for mining and tunnel construction. However, compound is notoriously unstable. Just the slightest shake, jolt, or jar will cause a violent explosion.

NOTORIOUS INSTABILITY: The accidental detonation of nitroglycerin in transit caused spectacularly large and deadly explosions, leading to an outright ban in California, England, and other locations. Consequently, “nitro shacks” popped up in rural areas, far from houses and barns, but near the oil and gas operations. These operations could be as risky and deadly as the transport of jars of liquid nitroglycerin.

But, despite the dangers, the practice of using nitroglycerin to stimulate production grew, particularly after it found that the previously insuperable paraffin problems of the Pennsylvania fields could be solved by “shooting” the wells.

THE TORPEDO: Methods of shooting the well varied, but one of the most widely adopted was Edward A. L. Roberts’s “Roberts Torpedo,” patented as a “an exploding torpedo to fracture oil-bearing formations to increase oil production.” The Roberts Torpedo was an empty shell filled with nitroglycerin just before lowering it down the hole.?A more primitive, but less expensive technique involved simply lowering glass jars of liquid nitroglycerin down the hole.?The nitro was detonated with a “go-devil” – a weight dropped onto a percussion cap.

You didn’t have to be a geologist or engineer to drop the go-devil: in 1897, Jenni Cass (stepdaughter of George Keeler, one of the partners of the operation) would be given the honor of dropping the “go-devil” for what would be Oklahoma’s first commercial oil well, the Nellie Johnstone No. 1, drilled in the Cherokee Nation to a depth of about 1,300 ft.?The well “blew in” and made approximately 75 barrels of oil a day. The well was named after Nellie Johnstone, the young Delaware woman who owned the land and the mineral rights.

RAMPING UP THE VOLUME: The volume of nitroglycerin varied based on the depth of the hole, the thickness of the productive zone, and the estimated reservoir volume. The early wells used 10 quarts of nitroglycerin. Later, as many as 1,000 quarts were used, as was the case in 1902 in a well in the Lima, Indiana oil trend. Onlookers described the experience as remarkable – a deep rumbling was followed by a surge of water, oil, melted paraffin and shattered drill pipe pieces shooting into the sky through the derrick. Oil field fatalities were a reality.

The larger the volume of nitroglycerin used, the greater the ultimate recovery of oil and gas. However, such was not always the case because the practice was very imprecise and could result in breaching the oil-water contact, where the oil saturation below the productive zone was very low. The oil would be displaced with water, and the water drive would continue, but producing only water. Where the oil-water contact was not breached, there was a serious risk of formation damage, coning and sanding.

Further, it was necessary to clean up the hole after the nitroglycerin well stimulation. Innovation was spurred by necessity, and new techniques were developed, which included acidizing and heated oil injections, just to name a few.

THE HAZARDS OF TRANSPORT:?Transporting liquid nitroglycerin was never safe, although some individuals seemed to find ways to minimize the hazard of detonation at the slightest jolt.?Early methods involved a driver who was paid well for his services, a wooden cart, and an unfortunate horse. ?The profession was notoriously dangerous, and even the most experienced individuals who carefully outfitted their wagons and poured the nitroglycerin into the jars or torpedoes, were always just a jostle away from death.

Later, special trucks were customized for safer transport. For example, the 1948 Dodge Power Wagon was modified by the Otto Torpedo Company (Duke Center, Pennsylvania) to haul liquid nitroglycerin in ten-quart copper cans (AOGHS, 2007).

It’s hard to believe but nitroglycerin was used through the 1980s until 1990, when the National Transportation Board prohibited the use of public byways for its transportation.

TOMORROW’S OPPORTUNITIES:?MICRO-DOSE THE PROPPANT? While “shooting” wells with nitroglycerin has been supplanted by hydraulic fracturing, it might be worthwhile to look at nitroglycerin’s essential qualities to determine if it could be revisited and reconfigured. ?Instead of pouring liquid nitroglycerine into a torpedo, could micro-nitro beads be interspersed with proppant to produce micro-charges at fracture level??In this case, could we think of nitroglycerin in almost a medicinal fashion, and incorporate pharmaceutical delivery system technologies and approaches such as coated beads that could be mixed with proppant??It may be worth a thought.

A LITERARY ADDENDUM

Here is a passage from Booth Tarkington’s 1918 novel, The Magnificent Ambersons, ?in which the riches-to-rags George Minafer has found a way to earn money to support his frail family members, but at great risk. His labors are for love, and they are frighteningly sacrificial:

“He’s an expert on nitroglycerin. Doesn’t that beat the devil! Yes, sir! Young Akers told Fred that this George Minafer had worked like a houn’-dog ever since he got started out at the works. They have a special plant for nitroglycerin, way off from the main plant, o’ course—in the woods somewhere—and George Minafer’s been working there, and lately they put him in charge of it. He oversees shooting oil-wells, too, and shoots ’em himself, sometimes. They aren’t allowed to carry it on the railroads, you know—have to team it. Young Akers says George rides around over the bumpy roads, sitting on as much as three hundred quarts of nitroglycerin! My Lord! Talk about romantic tumbles! If he gets blown sky-high some day he won’t have a bigger drop, when he comes down, than he’s already had! Don’t it beat the devil! Young Akers said he’s got all the nerve there is in the world. Well, he always did have plenty of that—from the time he used to ride around here on his white pony and fight all the Irish boys in Can-Town, with his long curls all handy to be pulled out. Akers says he gets a fair salary, and I should think he ought to! Seems to me I’ve heard the average life in that sort of work is somewhere around four years, and agents don’t write any insurance at all for nitroglycerin experts. Hardly!” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8867/8867-h/8867-h.htm

REFERENCES

Adomites, Paul. (2013) The first Frackers: Shooting oil wells with nitroglycerin torpedoes. Petroleum History Institute.

“Marietta Torpedo Co. Nitroglycerin Wagon in Shinnston, W. Va. Oilfield” West Virginia History OnView. West Virginia University. https://wvhistoryonview.org/catalog/000686

“Nellie Johnstone Number One.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=NE003

“Shooters – A “Fracking” History.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/technology/hydraulic-fracturing. Last Updated: April 24, 2023. Original Published Date: September 1, 2007.

Spencer, Jeff. (2011).?The early petroleum history of Petrolia, Ontario illustrated on postcards. Petroleum History Institute.

Spencer, Jeff. (2017). The Independent Torpedo Company – Oil well shooting in the Lima-Indiana oil fields and beyond. Petroleum History Institute. Oil-Industry History. Vol 18.

Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Amberson. 1918. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8867/8867-h/8867-h.htm