1930 - Energy

Energy

The No. 1 Mary Sudik well in the Oklahoma City Field comes in March 26 with a column of oil, gas, and rock that defies efforts to control it (see 1928). It spouts up to 3,000 barrels of oil per hour and coats the city hall and cars parked near the state capitol building; armed guards keep crowds away and turn back traffic, air traffic controllers order planes flying in and out of the city's airports to maintain high altitudes, citizens are ordered to turn off pilot lights on their stoves, and the gusher continues until April 6, when specially-built equipment finally turns it off; 211,589 barrels of oil are recovered from creeks, ditches, and gulleys. The local Osage tribe takes in royalties amounting to $45 million for the year (in a single day one Osage woman reportedly spends $12,000 for a fur coat, $3,000 for a diamond ring, $5,000 for a car, $7,000 for furniture, $600 to have it all shipped to California, and $12,800 for Florida real estate).

Enron Corp. has its beginnings in Houston Natural Gas Co., a firm that will grow by the end of the century to have more than 22,000 employees engaged in oil and gas exploration, natural gas and electric power transmission, electric utilities, and other activities.

Construction of Hoover Dam in the Colorado River's Black Canyon begins in 100° heat September 17 with a ceremony in which the secretary of the interior drives a spike (see 1929). It is the largest project of its kind ever undertaken, and many engineers express doubts that it can be built (see 1931).

More than 80 percent of U.S. factories are powered by electricity, up from 50 percent in 1920, when steam engines remained a major source of energy.

U.S. gasoline consumption rises to nearly 16 billion gallons, up from 2.5 billion in 1919.

World oil prices collapse after wildcatter Columbus M. Joiner, 71, brings in a gusher October 3 on a farm in Rusk County, Texas, to open what will prove to be a huge new field. Gambler H. L. Hunt suspects that Joiner has merely tapped the edge of a great sea of oil (see 1920); having won his first oil well in a poker game, he has paid $30,000 to buy 5,000 acres of unproven fields in East Texas. Now 41, Hunt pays Joiner $40,000 cash, $45,000 in short-term notes, and a guarantee of $1.2 million from future profits, the field will produce at least 3.6 billion barrels of oil, Hunt will be worth $100 million by 1935, making him the richest man in America (see 1936).