Oilfield Trash

Oilfield Trash PDF Author: Bobby D. Weaver
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603442057
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
"Oilfield Trash is written in a charming, flowing style that any reader will enjoy....In Weaver's capable hands, the gypsy lives of a generation of young men unfold on the rigorous stage of drilling fields...."---Paul Spellman, author of Spindletop Boom Days --

Oilfield Trash

Oilfield Trash PDF Author: Bobby D. Weaver
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603442057
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Oilfield Trash is written in a charming, flowing style that any reader will enjoy....In Weaver's capable hands, the gypsy lives of a generation of young men unfold on the rigorous stage of drilling fields...."---Paul Spellman, author of Spindletop Boom Days --

Voices from the Oil Fields

Voices from the Oil Fields PDF Author: Paul F. Lambert
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806164809
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
During the oil-boom days of the early twentieth century, a few lucky or shrewd individuals made millions of dollars virtually overnight. It is a familiar theme in the romantic mythology that sprang up about the era. But the people who produced those millions are the real story, told in these word-for-word recollections of early-day workers in the "oil patch." In vivid, often poignant detail these men and women recall the grueling toil, primitive living and working conditions, and ever-present danger in a time when life was cheap and oil was gold. In the late 1930s employees of the Federal Writers Project, a branch of the New Deal Workers Progress Administration, recorded the voices of these pioneers as they offered their memories, sometimes wryly humorous and sometimes bitter, of the turmoil that was the daily lot of the oilfielders. We meet colorful, tough-talking "Manila Kate," who took over her husband's drilling outfit after he died in an explosion. A welder vividly recalls the death of his closest pal, a skilled hand who loved to take chances. In an oil-field shantytown the support of good-hearted neighbors assuages the pain of a bereaved and impoverished family. A "shooter" recalls the deadly danger of the "soup wagon" the buckboard that delivered the nitroglycerin to the well--or blew up on the way. While many of the individuals witnessed bizarre accidents that became almost routine in the early oil fields, their personal stories also show how uncertain job security and wages could be, even before the Depression, when dry holes and plummeting oil prices left thousands of workers broke and homeless. Many of the interviewers provide valuable technical details about early oilfield operations. Yet it is the stories of the people, the workers themselves, that endure. The early oil industry was built upon their toil, their pain, and their courage, all of which are evident in every word recorded here.

Southwestern Stories & Tales of the Oil Field

Southwestern Stories & Tales of the Oil Field PDF Author: alan w greenwood
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1365305937
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
"This book is an anthology of previously unpublished short stories collected over the years and--up until now--resting in computer files. His wife Barbara and his first editor, Sue Gottwald have encouraged him for years to release them to the public for perusal--so here they are, collected for the first time.".

The Patch

The Patch PDF Author: Chris Turner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 150111509X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
"In its heyday, the oil sands represented an industrial triumph and the culmination of a century of innovation, experiment, engineering, policy, and finance. Fort McMurray was a boomtown, the centre of a new gold rush, and the oil sands were reshaping the global energy, political, and financial landscapes. The future seemed limitless for the city and those who drew their wealth from the bitumen-rich wilderness. But in 2008, a new narrative for the oil sands emerged. As financial markets collapsed and the scientific reality of the Patch's effect on the environment became clear, the region turned into a boogeyman and a lightning rod for the global movement combatting climate change. Suddenly, the streets of Fort McMurray were the front line of a high-stakes collision between two conflicting worldviews--one of industrial triumph and another of environmental stewardship--each backed by major players on the world stage. The Patch is the seminal account of this ongoing conflict, showing just how far the oil sands reaches into all of our lives. From Fort Mac to the Bakken shale country of North Dakota, from Houston to London, from Saudi Arabia to the shores of Brazil, the whole world is connected in this enterprise. And it requires us to ask the question: In order to both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch?"--

Anointed with Oil

Anointed with Oil PDF Author: Darren Dochuk
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 1541673948
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
A groundbreaking new history of the United States, showing how Christian faith and the pursuit of petroleum fueled America's rise to global power and shaped today's political clashes Anointed with Oil places religion and oil at the center of American history. As prize-winning historian Darren Dochuk reveals, from the earliest discovery of oil in America during the Civil War, citizens saw oil as the nation's special blessing and its peculiar burden, the source of its prophetic mission in the world. Over the century that followed and down to the present day, the oil industry's leaders and its ordinary workers together fundamentally transformed American religion, business, and politics -- boosting America's ascent as the preeminent global power, giving shape to modern evangelical Christianity, fueling the rise of the Republican Right, and setting the terms for today's political and environmental debates. Ranging from the Civil War to the present, from West Texas to Saudi Arabia to the Alberta Tar Sands, and from oil-patch boomtowns to the White House, this is a sweeping, magisterial book that transforms how we understand our nation's history.

Texas Ranger in the Oil Patch

Texas Ranger in the Oil Patch PDF Author: John Mansel Wood
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780964312609
Category : Petroleum industry and trade
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description


The Good Hand

The Good Hand PDF Author: Michael Patrick F. Smith
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984881523
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
“A book that should be read . . . Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor.” —The New York Times Book Review “Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.” – Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic “Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy should have been.” —Kirkus Reviews A vivid window into the world of working class men set during the Bakken fracking boom in North Dakota Like thousands of restless men left unmoored in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, Michael Patrick Smith arrived in the fracking boomtown of Williston, North Dakota five years later homeless, unemployed, and desperate for a job. Renting a mattress on a dirty flophouse floor, he slept boot to beard with migrant men who came from all across America and as far away as Jamaica, Africa and the Philippines. They ate together, drank together, argued like crows and searched for jobs they couldn't get back home. Smith's goal was to find the hardest work he could do--to find out if he could do it. He hired on in the oil patch where he toiled fourteen hour shifts from summer's 100 degree dog days to deep into winter's bracing whiteouts, all the while wrestling with the demons of a turbulent past, his broken relationships with women, and the haunted memories of a family riven by violence. The Good Hand is a saga of fear, danger, exhaustion, suffering, loneliness, and grit that explores the struggles of America's marginalized boomtown workers—the rough-hewn, castoff, seemingly disposable men who do an indispensable job that few would exalt: oil field hands who, in the age of climate change, put the gas in our tanks and the food in our homes. Smith, who had pursued theater and played guitar in New York, observes this world with a critical eye; yet he comes to love his coworkers, forming close bonds with Huck, a goofy giant of a young man whose lead foot and quick fists get him into trouble with the law, and The Wildebeest, a foul-mouthed, dip-spitting truck driver who torments him but also trains him up, and helps Smith "make a hand." The Good Hand is ultimately a book about transformation--a classic American story of one man's attempt to burn himself clean through hard work, to reconcile himself to himself, to find community, and to become whole.

Tales from the Oil Patch

Tales from the Oil Patch PDF Author: William J. Murchison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Oil well drilling
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description


Boom or Bust

Boom or Bust PDF Author: Sheena B. Stief
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806169982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
A vast number of studies have documented the economic and geological effects of oil production, but the impact of boom-and-bust cycles on individuals and communities has received less attention. Boom or Bust remedies this gap by highlighting the personal experiences of those directly affected in an economy dominated by oil and natural gas production. The Permian Basin is one of the largest oil-producing regions in the United States. People who live there have benefited from explosive growth, only to see opportunities vanish with sudden industry downturns. In 2016, the National Endowment for the Humanities funded a grant for the study and collection of energy narratives in this economically volatile region. Boom or Bust derives from that community initiative and offers a unique contribution to the developing field of energy humanities. The oil-field industry may seem to be all about numbers, but as Boom or Bust demonstrates, residents of oil-and-gas country, whether they work in the oil field or not, are at the mercy of an ever-shifting economy. When the price of oil rises, companies move in and newcomers flood the area, expanding the employment force. And as the population booms, so does the infrastructure of cities. When prices drop, though, families must make difficult choices: whether to stay put or follow the oil to another location. With the ensuing declines in population, small businesses close their doors and unemployment levels rise. Despite the inevitable declines and despite the increase in alternative energy resources, many West Texans feel a sense of pride that borders on patriotism. Boom or Bust reveals the full complexity of boomtown culture.

The Great Texas Oil Heist

The Great Texas Oil Heist PDF Author: Robert Cargill
Publisher: Stephen F. Austin University Press
ISBN: 9781622884025
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
It was 1946. World War II was over. The thieves went to work. They drilled deviated wells from outside the East Texas Oil Field back into the oil that remained after 16 years of production. This was the oil field that supplied the oil needed for an Allied victory in 1945. The deviators continued their nefarious activity until an angry and aggressive attorney general led his posse of lawmen, including the Texas Rangers, into East Texas to stop the theft and administer Texas justice. I tell this story on the basis of 35 years of research and my father's well files. Yes, he drilled six of the nearly 400 deviated wells. I first learned of the so-called Slant-Hole scandal in late spring 1962. That's when colleagues in my research group at the University of California at Berkeley accosted me with the morning's San Francisco Chronicle. They knew my father was an East Texas oilman. One pointed to an article reporting that oilmen in East Texas had drilled "deviated" oil wells from beyond the known productive limits of the East Texas Oil Field to steal oil. "Has your dad been stealing oil?" "Of course, not!" I replied. I had known nothing of the illicit activity until that morning. Then a report in TIME further exposed the East Texas oil scandal that had erupted in my hometown of Longview. Here, then, for the first time, I reveal the story of how a few dozen oilmen stole up to 20 million barrels from the East Texas Oil Field. I am eager to share what I have learned and to tell the truth of the slant-hole scandal--the circumstances that made it inevitable, who did what to whom, and how the matter eventually reached its conclusion. Much of what I reveal in this book has been the tightly guarded secrets of the families of the participants so that grandchildren can be kept from knowledge of granddaddy's scandalous behavior. But most of what I reveal here lies barely hidden in the public record. The slant-hole story is a significant piece of Texas history, and it must be told before no one is left to tell it.