Business: Derrick’s End?

Year and a half ago two veteran Oklahoma oil men put a fancy new, aluminum-colored portable rotary drilling rig on display at the International Petroleum Exposition in Tulsa, Okla. It attracted little attention. Then the rig’s attendants began to drill. At 540 feet they struck oil. Surprised, they capped the hole, turned the oil well over to Tulsa County.

This answer to a promoter’s dream was fine for the rig’s inventors: Carl White Jr., master salesman, and Harry H. Franks, master mechanic. Their Franks Manufacturing Co. has sold 35 truck-mounted rigs to date at $50,000 apiece. The rig eliminated the cost ($650-$2,000) of putting up a drilling derrick, paid for itself by drilling 18 wells a year. It also set blond Larry O’Donnell, Shell Oil Co.’s chief mechanical engineer in the Texas-Gulf area, to thinking.

He was worried because Shell expected to have to spend a million dollars to erect permanent derricks on its 900 East Texas wells as soon as the oil stopped flowing freely and pumping became necessary, The derricks had to be there for pulling and cleaning the wells’ rods and tubing once or twice a year. He asked for sketches and bids on a portable unit to do the job, and Franks Co. engineers went to work.

Three months ago they turned out their first unit: a portable derrick high enough (84 feet) to pull the double-jointed tubing of the deeper wells. One of its two sections telescoped inside the other to make it short enough to transport. Shell tried it, liked it, bought two at $20,000 apiece, ordered more.

Last week little Franks Manufacturing Co. had better than $200,000 worth of unfilled orders that had piled up in 40 days, an anticipated 1939 gross of $600,000, net of $150,000. Portable derricks seem to be catching on. Humble Oil Co. has ordered an initial two. If enough U. S. producers figure the same way, the derrick, ugly symbol of a fabulous industry, may disappear from the skyline of oil.