Oil Disasters of the past: Possible to have prevented?

[Crossroads Inc.]

With the ongoing oil disaster going on, I recently decided to look up disasters of the past. Not just other offshore oil spills, or ones in the past 50 years or so. Looking back to the 1900's, I found one case that boggled my mind and seemed to be almost as bad in terms of volume, as what is happening now.

The Lakeview Gusher of 1910.

On March 14, 1910, just as the drilling reached 2,440 ft, the immense pressure rushed upwards, blowing the drill rig apart and ejecting much of the casing outwards. The flow of oil was measure at over 18,000 barrels per day. Initial attempts to stop it began with simple sandbags around the hole, then the construction of a box to enclose it. All efforts were destroyed under the high pressure. The oil eventually flooded the entire valley, destroying all other oil sites in the area.

It took over 18months before the flow was brought under control and an estimated 9 million barrels of oil had flooded the valley.

The company that started drilling at the time, was only looking for gas and a "small" amount of oil. They never dreamed of hitting such immense pressure. But in retrospect, one has to wonder even if they anticipated such a gusher, if technology at the time could have prevented what is held as the largest land oil spill in history.

[Sea Skimmer]

Remember back then they had no means of seismic surveying that was worth anything. So drilling into the ground was a complete mystery, the only way to know anything was to drill the damn well. They could make guesses as to the underground geology based on exposed rock formations, and based on other wells in the area but that's it. Blowout preventors did not exist until after WW1, so nothing could be done at the time to stop gushers when they happened, and happen they did all the fucking time. This one was just really big. Capping technology didn't get good until the 1930s which is why this well was gushing for so long.

Mind you, in the early history of the oil industry it wasn't uncommon to use natural ponds to store oil in giant pools, so its not like anyone really cared about developing containment technology. I don't really see any glaring reason why a blowout preventor couldn't have been invented by around 1900, but it would not have been easy. As the BP fuckup shows, even the modern ones with absurdly better materials and a near century of design experience aren't idiot proof when you are idiot enough not to test one.