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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

GCAGS Transactions

Abstract


GeoGulf Transactions
Vol. 70 (2020), No. 1., Pages 203-212

The Race for the First Louisiana Oil “Discovery”

Jeff A. Spencer

Abstract

There are different interpretations regarding an oil field’s [“discovery well.” A discovery well can be the first well to encounter oil, the first well to produce oil, or the first “commercial” oil well. An early study of Gulf Coast salt domes stated that nine Louisiana salt domes were known long before 1901. The early oil exploration history of south Louisiana began where surface hydrocarbon signs and topographic expressions of salt domes occurred.

Just nine months after the January 1901 Spindletop discovery in Texas, oil was discovered ninety miles east near Jennings, Louisiana. Acadia Parish’s Jennings Oil Field, also known in the early years as Mamou or Evangeline, is generally credited as the first commercial oil discovery in Louisiana in September 1901. As the first well was being drilled at Jennings, a well west of Welsh, Louisiana, encountered oil shows in April 1901 but was not a commercial success. Other wells were drilled later in the year, including an impressive oil gusher, but there was no commercial oil success at Welsh in 1901.

South of Vinton, in Calcasieu Parish, the first well on “the mound” was drilled in May 1901 and encountered a show of oil at a depth of 320 feet. The well was abandoned after problems drilling through a deeper gravel bed. Several wells were drilled in the following years, many encountering indications of oil or gas, but commercial oil production was not established until 1910.

A case could be made that the first commercial oil well in Louisiana was completed 15 years before the Jennings 1901 discovery. A well drilled for sulphur at Sulphur Mines, Calcasieu Parish, flowed at an estimated 25 barrels of oil per day. The oil from the well was sold as a lubricant. Local newspapers reported on the 1886 drilling of the well and the sale of the oil. In early 1901, oil was re-discovered at Sulphur, but area newspapers claimed that the Standard Oil Company suppressed oil development due to the potentially more valuable vast sulphur resources.


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