Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: What was the first company to drill for oil in Venezuela?
Despite the knowledge of the existence of oil reserves in Venezuela for centuries, the first oil wells of significance were not drilled until the early 1910s. In 1908, Juan Vicente Gómez replaced his ailing predecessor, Cipriano Castro, as the president of Venezuela. Over the next few years, Gómez granted several concessions to explore, produce, and refine oil. Most of these oil concessions were granted to his closest friends, and they in turn passed them on to foreign oil companies that could actually develop them.[8] One such concession was granted to Rafael Max Valladares who hired Caribbean Petroleum Company (later acquired by Royal Dutch Shell) to carry out his oil exploration project. On 15 April 1914, upon the completion of the Zumaque-I (now called MG-I) oil well, the first Venezuelan oilfield of importance, Mene Grande, was discovered by Caribbean Petroleum in the Maracaibo Basin.[7] This major discovery encouraged a massive wave of foreign oil companies to Venezuela in an attempt to get a piece of the action.
In 2009, China entered into a partnership with Venezuela to launch a railway company in Venezuela which will be 40% controlled by the China Railways Engineering Corporation (CREC) and the remainder by Venezuela. Venezuela outlined the role of the venture as one which would link Venezuela's oil producing regions and agricultural farming areas. In September 2009 Venezuela announced a new $16bn deal with China to drill for oil in a joint venture with PDVSA to produce of extra heavy crude. Hugo Chavez stated that "In addition, there will be a flood of technology into the country, with China going to build drilling platforms, oil rigs, railroads, houses.". In September 2013, China decided to lend $50bn over 5 years to finance 201 housing projects in Venezuela.
In March 1965 an agreement was signed between Norway and the United Kingdom on the sharing of the continental shelf by the median line principle. That same year a similar agreement was signed between Norway and Denmark. It was designed as a legal regime for oil exploration. The first licensing round on the Norwegian shelf was announced on 13 April 1965, and in August of that same year the government granted 22 licenses for 78 blocks for oil companies or groups of companies. The production license gave oil companies exclusive rights to exploration, drilling and production in a defined geographical area for a given period at an annual fee. Esso was the first oil company to start drilling for oil off the coast of Norway. The semi-submersible drilling vessel Ocean Traveler was towed from New Orleans to Norway, and the vessel began drilling on 19 July 1966, at block 8/3, about southwest of Stavanger.
The company was founded in 1941 in Weatherford, Texas as the Weatherford Spring Company by Jesse E. Hall Sr. In 1948, the company was renamed Weatherford Oil Tool Company (WOTCO) with ownership by Jesse Hall, his son, Elmer, James E. Berry, and Juan A. Perea. From its inception, the company pioneered an innovative technique and equipment for the cementing of cased-hole oil wells. Originally marketed to U.S. well owners, Weatherford drilling and casing equipment was soon being used in the oil fields of Venezuela by the Gulf Oil Company.
Oil exports to China are set to increase substantially. In September 2008 Venezuela signed a series of energy co-operation deals with China with the President of Venezuela stating that oil exports could rise threefold by 2012, to one million barrels a day. In February 2009 Venezuela and China agreed to double their joint investment fund to $12 billion and signed agreements to boost co-operation which include increasing oil exports from Venezuela, China's fourth biggest oil provider. An oil refinery is planned be built in China to handle Venezuelan heavy crude from the Orinoco basin. "It is part of a strategic alliance" Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said, after meeting the visiting Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping who stated that "our co-operation is highly beneficial". In September 2009 Venezuela announced a new $16bn deal with China to drill for oil in a joint venture with PDVSA to produce 450,000 barrels a day of extra heavy crude. Hugo Chávez stated that "In addition, there will be a flood of technology into the country, with China going to build drilling platforms, oil rigs, railroads, houses."
Oil India Limited was formed by the Burmah Oil Company Limited as its subsidiary in India 1887 to explore in the Assam Basin, India ( Corley, T A B, 1983, The History of the Burmah Oil Company, 1886-1983). Staff at the Burmah Oil Company Limited had heard from a geologist with the colonial British Indian Geological Survey, Thomas Oldham, that oil was found on the feet of elephants that were being used as beasts of burden in the vicinity of the Digboi village (Arun Metrie, pers. comm., former Burmah Oil economist, 1988). The oil on the elephants' feet was traced to the Digboi area, where a surface fold (anticline in geological parlance) had formed a broad hill. A successful technique for exploration for hydrocarbons at the time was drilling beneath seeps on anticlines (Thornton, S E, 2015, The history of Oil Exploration in the Union of Myanmar, Paper No. 10807), so Oil India drilled beneath the Digboi seeps and found a giant oil field. Several other oil fields were subsequently found by Oil India Limited in what became India's first oil production.
Petroleum seeps in the area were known before 1880, but oil strikes near Lander led to claims by Schoonmaker and Iba. In 1889 the first well to strike oil was drilled in the Shannon pool by P.M. Shannon, president of the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Company, who in 1895 built an oil refinery in Casper to process the oil. Dr. Porro, an Italian geologist working for the Dutch company Petroleum Maatschappij Salt Creek in 1906, located the Dutch No. 1 near a large oil seep south of the Shannon wells, which was drilled in 1908. The "gusher" well reached an oil sand after drilling through of shale.
Sex work in Venezuela is closely tied to its economic history and the history of oil production. Venezuela received an influx of population after the first significant oil wells were drilled in the beginning of the 20th century. The presence of relatively well-paid foreign oil workers greatly expanded the sex trade in port cities. In particular, black women of a lower socioeconomic class who could not get jobs as domestics or selling sweets and candies as street vendors in urban areas turned to prostitution for money.
Superior Oil Company (1921–1984) was an independent American oil company that is now part of ExxonMobil. Founded in 1921 in Coalinga, California, by William Myron Keck, Superior Oil began as a drilling contracting firm and grew into the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. In 1930 the company was the first to successfully use directional drilling in California. Moving to Houston, Texas, by 1931 the company had wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana and Venezuela. In 1938, the company constructed the first offshore oil platform off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. In the 1970s, Superior Oil was involved in the oil shale industry developing the Superior multimineral process. In September 1984 the company, then based in Houston, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Mobil.
The first country to act was Venezuela, which had the most favorable concession agreement. In 1943, the country increased the total royalties and tax paid by the companies to 50% of their total profits. However, true equal profit sharing was not accomplished until 1948. Because oil companies were able to deduct the tax from their income tax, profits acquired by the oil companies did not change significantly and, as a result, the oil companies did not have any major problems with the change imposed by Venezuela. Even with increased oil prices, the companies still held a dominant position over Venezuela.
Desmarest has multinational and continental experience within the oil industry. As a head of the exploration and production department at TotalFina he was stationed in Venezuela and Algeria. During his time over seas, he procured oil and gas reserves to add to Totalfina's oil supply. In 1995, Desmarest he closed a landmark deal with Tehran in Iran making Totalfina the first oil company outside of Iran to drill for oil since 1979. Desmarest's contemporaries have nicknamed him "Le Petit Prince" (The Little Prince).
The oil company representative (Company Man or "CoMan") together with the tool pusher, and well-site geologist (WSG) provides mud loggers their instruction. The mud logging company is contracted specifically as to when to start well-logging activity and what services to provide. Mud logging may begin on the first day of drilling, known as the "spud in" date but is more likely at some later time (and depth) determined by the oil industry geologist's research. The mud logger may also possess logs from wells drilled in the surrounding area. This information (known as "offset data") can provide valuable clues as to the characteristics of the particular geo-strata that the rig crew is about to drill through.
The Superior Oil Company was founded in 1921 in Coalinga, California, by Keck, after he had accumulated enough leases to start his own firm. Superior Oil began as a drilling contracting firm and grew into other oil services including exploration and production of oil and natural gas. The company soon focused on the exploration and production of oil and gas, and was involved with a number of new methods. In 1930 the company was the first to successfully use directional drilling in California. Keck was one of the first oilmen to move his business to Houston, Texas, and by 1931, the company had wells in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Louisiana and Venezuela.
Richfield Oil Company, ancestor of ARCO and then part of BP, drilled the first well into the field in 1929, but the well was poorly placed and failed to find a commercially viable gas or oil zone. Several other firms tried the area, with mixed luck: Shell Oil drilled a well all the way to , but both oil and gas failed to produce, though they showed in drill cuttings; Fullerton Oil drilled seven separate holes, one of which blew out ten million cubic feet of gas per day, but then stuck shut, and had to be abandoned. In 1935, Standard Oil Company of California finally was able to complete a gas well which was self-sustaining at 3,193 feet, and was therefore considered the discovery well for the field.
The Canadian petroleum industry developed in parallel with that of the United States. The first oil well in Canada was dug by hand (rather than drilled) in 1858 by James Miller Williams near his asphalt plant at Oil Springs, Ontario. At a depth of he struck oil, one year before "Colonel" Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States. Williams later went on to found "The Canadian Oil Company" which qualified as the world’s first integrated oil company.
The question of what constituted the first commercial oil well is a difficult one to answer. Edwin Drake's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, discussed more fully below, is popularly considered the first modern well. Drake's well is probably singled out because it was drilled, not dug; because it used a steam engine; because there was a company associated with it; and because it touched off a major boom. However, the first well ever drilled anywhere in the world, which produced oil, was drilled in 1857 to a depth of 280 feet by the American Merrimac Company in La Brea (Spanish for “Pitch”) in southeast Trinidad in the Caribbean. Additionally, there was considerable activity before Drake in various parts of the world in the mid-19th century. A group directed by Major Alexeyev of the Bakinskii Corps of Mining Engineers hand-drilled a well in the Baku region in 1846. There were engine-drilled wells in West Virginia in the same year as Drake's well. An early commercial well was hand dug in Poland in 1853, and another in nearby Romania in 1857. At around the same time the world's first, but small, oil refineries were opened at Jasło, in Poland, with a larger one being opened at Ploiești, in Romania, shortly after. Romania is the first country in the world to have its crude oil output officially recorded in international statistics, namely 275 tonnes. In 1875, crude oil was discovered by David Beaty at his home in Warren, Pennsylvania. This led to the opening of the Bradford oil field, which, by the 1880s, produced 77 percent of the global oil supply. However, by the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire, particularly the Branobel company in Azerbaijan, had taken the lead in production.
After graduating from Texas A&M in 1948, Blocker worked on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig for several years. In 1954, he established a South Texas drilling company with his father. When an oversupply of oil on the market crippled the contract drilling business, the company was dissolved. In 1958 Blocker went to work for Dresser Industries as operations manager for the oil equipment division in Argentina and Venezuela, a natural fit because he had grown up in South America, learning Spanish before English. In 1965, he moved to Dresser's Houston office and ultimately rose to the level of a senior vice-president.
The area was worked initially in 1885, followed by Ventura County Power Company drilling 7 shallow gas wells in 1903. While they reached depths of between 400 and , it is not known if they produced oil. In May 1916 the first commercially viable well, No. "Lloyd" 1, was drilled by State Consolidated Oil Company to a depth of 2,555 feet. Initial production consisted of 100 barrels a day. Shell Oil drilled the first well into what is now known as the 2nd Pool, in the Pico Formation, in March 1919, reaching a depth of .
Chávez proposed in December 2006 that Venezuela would build an oil refinery in Malaysia, and Golden Hope, a Malaysian state-owned palm oil company, agreed with the Venezuelan state oil company to cultivate 40,000 ha of oil palms in Venezuela, while Malaysian company Petronas would start oil exploration in Venezuela. Malaysia also agreed to help Venezuela with city planning.
He moved to Alberta in the fall of 1950 and founded Peter Bawden Drilling in 1952 shortly after his arrival in Calgary. In 1960, at the age of 31, Peter Bawden’s first drilling rig struck oil. With its acquisition of Trident Drilling, Bawden Drilling became Canada’s largest drilling company. In 1968, Peter Bawden Drilling acquired Brown Drilling in California. Thereafter, as a land drilling contractor, Bawden expanded the company's on-shore operations throughout North America, from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, to Norway, Algeria, Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, Philippines, Guatemala, Venezuela, Colombia, Madagascar, and the Middle East. Eventually having operations on every continent in the world.
The company was established in 1969 when Odfjell took orders of three drilling rigs delivered from Aker. In 1973 the company was formerly established as Odfjell Drilling & Consulting Company AS. In 1974 the first rigs were delivered, and started service for Conoco and Saga Petroleum. The first production drilling contract was awarded by Statoil on the Statfjord oil field in 1979. In 1984 Odfjell Drilling started with operation on the British sector with a semi-submersible rig for Hamilton Brothers Oil & Gas. Since the mid-1990s Odfjell has made a strategic decision to concentrate on the North Sea market, resulting in the acquisition of Norwegian Drilling Management and the creation of the joint venture Deutag Norge Drilling with Deutsche Tiefbohr.
The Aban Pearl was a twin-hull, column-stabilized, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned and operated by Aban Offshore drilling company. It is registered in Singapore. In 2009, the "Aban Pearl" became the first offshore gas rig operated by the Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA. In May 2010, the rig sank into the sea though all workers aboard at the time were saved.
In 1941, before AD's entry into policymaking, Venezuela received 85,279,158 bolívars from oil taxes, out
of a total oil value of 691,093,935 bolivars. Before Betancourt's changes in the taxing system, the state of Venezuela was making only a fraction of what foreign oil companies were making in profit. President Betancourt had overthrown the Isaías Medina Angarita government which enacted a law to tax oil companies up to 60%, and reserved for the government the right to raise more taxes as needed. Betancourt changed the law to "Fifty Fifty."
One of Betancourt's original objectives was the nationalization of the country's oil industry. Mexico had nationalized its oil industry in 1938, and because its economy was more diversified than Venezuela's, there was little to no backlash. Though oil nationalization became one of AD's main objectives, Venezuela's economy was not stable enough to handle potential boycotts by foreign oil companies and would have left nation fiscally vulnerable.
The area was known as the "Orinoco Heavy Oil Belt" and which was also named "Venezuela's Black ace-in-the hole". The concessions for the Gulf Oil Company were obtained by Addison M. Mcay of the Sun Oil Company. Gene Brossard founded the town. Gustavo A San Roan was the contractor who built it. Henri Pittier, from Switzerland, a botanist, an engineer and also a teacher was responsible for bringing in trees and planting them in the town.
The Mene Grande Oil Company was the subsidiary of Gulf Oil Corporation and had their main camp here. Hollis Dow Hedberg, the well known geologist and petroleum scientist, served as the Chief Geologist of Gulf Oil Company. As the industrial site is located within barbed wire fencing, which created a constricted atmosphere, the camp residents nicknamed the camp "Santomaniacs". On 18 September 2006 an oil drill was inaugurated in San Tome by Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadto.
National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) is an Iranian company. The company was founded in 1979 and is based in Tehran, Iran. NIDC operates as a subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company. NIDC engages in the exploration, development, and delineation drilling of oil and gas wells. It owns and operates drilling rigs and equipment for providing drilling services.