OIL: West Edmond’s Hour of Glory

The greatest concentration of rotary drilling rigs in the world were biting their way into West Edmond oilfield last week, 15 miles from Oklahoma City. West Edmond was spewing out a $500,000 monthly payroll and a major housing headache for the already oil-booming capital and its environs.

To petroleum geologists, concerned with the nation’s future oil resources, West Edmond is a welcome find. Its proven reserves are now indicated at 117 million bbl. (20 million bbl. qualifies a field to be classed as major). And West Edmond is young, its capacity still not fully plumbed. Further development may raise its estimated potential. In 1943 only 212 million bbl. were added to the proven U.S. oil reserves through the discovery of new pools. West Edmond will probably give 1944 a better record. But geologists look back to 1937. That was the year the new oil-discovery graph line began to turn down from a peak of 929 million bbl. It has trended downward ever since.

To most Oklahomans, these are remote considerations. They have an oldtime oil boom on their hands, and they like it. The West Edmond boom has robbed the Kentucky and Illinois fields of every rig capable of boring deeper than 5,000 feet. Phillips Petroleum is curtailing its wildcatting in the Panhandle, moving its equipment east to develop its Edmond leases. Over West Edmond’s 27 square miles, Oklahomans could count 102 producing wells, with 88 more being drilled—and only six dry holes so far. Ready to be drilled when rigs are available are 150 locations in proven areas.

Aloof from the mud and excitement last week was the man who started it all. A wildcatter and full-fledged promoter, Ace (for Assaph) Gutowsky is a 58-year-old Russian with a Gregory Ratoff accent. On 28 previous occasions he had sunk his money and drills into the soil, found nothing.

He located his first well at West Edmond with the aid of his partner’s “doodlebug,” the wildcatter’s equivalent of a divining rod, which geologists scorn as witchcraft.

Even as he was drilling—on borrowed money—Gutowsky’s geologist friends were advising him to quit. These recollections were sharp in his mind last week. Ten major oil companies—including some that had rejected the field—were drilling furiously in the field he found, almost all under leases acquired from Gutowsky at high prices.