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The Oil Situation(Galveston Daily News, February 21, 1901) Beaumont, Tex., Feb. 20--There Is No New Feature Save The Constant and Steady Work of Drilling--Oil Magnates Dumb--Are Difficult To Approach and Once In Their Presence, Nothing Is Obtained--Pumping Plant Machinery--Has Nearly All Arrived and Is Being Placed--The Southwestern Company's Well. The oil situation here has reached that condition where there is no feature save the constant and steady work of the drillers in the field and the workmen who are constructing new derricks and locating wells. The oil derrick over the Lucas well was removed. Development of the work on the Guffey and Galey pipe line, storage station, and pumping plant might be interesting if it were possible to ascertain daily just what is going on, but the work is remote, and the press must depend upon reports for news of progress. The office of Guffey and Galey in this city is as difficult to enter as in the official abode of some potentate, and once one forces an entrance, the inmates are as dumb as clams and will not vouchsafe the simplest news of the work going on and will deny on general principle anything suggested as to future plan. As well as can be learned, nearly all the machinery for the pumping plant, which is located about one mile south of the well on the Sabine and East Texas Railroad, has arrived and is being placed as fast as men can do the work. The pipe line between this plant and the storage tanks at El Vista has been completed, and men are now laying the pipe on to the Port Arthur ship channel near Taylor's Bayou and from the pumps to the well. Sturm Brothers report that the well on the Southwestern Oil Company lease is doing nicely and the drill is constantly pushing into the oil regions. Here direct information must cease. Once the drill enters the ground, then all reports as to the depth of the well are entirely unreliable and apt to be misleading. Hamill Brothers are putting a smaller pipe inside the big one which is stuck in Gladys City No. 1, and will endeavor thus to loosen the one which has become fastened. Two other rigs in this neighborhood are either drilling today or are ready to begin in a short time. Oil leases are not being made as rapidly now as in the past. The records today failed to show a single oil lease of any sort nor did it evidence any transaction in oil lands. The weather remains all that could be desired and will materially advance the progress in the drilling territory. (comp. by W. T.Block) |
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