TABLE OF CONTENTS In the earliest days of oil exploration, oil was collected from surface seepages. Herodotus, writing in about 450 B.C., described oil seeps in Carthage (Tunisia) and the Greek island Zachynthus. He gave details of oil extraction from wells near Ardericca in modern Iran, although, as mentioned in Chapter 1, the wells could not have been very deep, because fluid was extracted in a wineskin on the end of a long pole mounted on a fulcrum. Oil, salt, and bitumen were produced simultaneously from these wells. In China, Burma, and Romania mine shafts were dug to produce shallow oil. Access was gained by ladders or a hoist, and air was pumped down to the mines through pipes. Oil seeped into the shaft and was lifted to the surface in buckets. This type of technology was not conducive to a healthy life and long retirement for the miners.
Oil has also been mined successfully in several parts of the world by driving horizontal adits into reservoirs. Oil dribbles down the walls onto the floor and flows down to the mine entrance. This technique has been used in the North Tisdale field of Wyoming (Dobson and Seelye, 1981). Conventionally, however, oil and gas are located and produced by drilling boreholes. Before exploration for oil began, cable-tool drilling was an established technique in many parts of the world in the quest for water and brine (Fig. 3.1). The first well to produce oil intentionally in the Western World was...
