When an oilman’s gamble pays off with a producing oil well, much remains to be done before the oil can make it to market. In 1859, “Colonel” Edwin Drake used a common water well hand pump to retrieve oil from 69.5 ft (21 m) at his pioneering well in Pennsylvania in the Appalachian Basin of the eastern United States. It wasn’t long before necessity and ingenuity combined to find something more efficient.

Oil wells will run dry, but advances in technologies can put off the inevitable. Even with the best technologies, more than half of the oil can remain trapped.

The evolution of oil production is reflected in thousands of marginally producing oil and natural gas wells quietly reaching for often stubborn reserves. Low-volume “stripper” wells produce no more than 15 b/d.

“The object of our invention is to enable the pumping of two or more wells with one engine,” notes a patent from 1875. The illustration reveals the system’s simplicity, but it did not last. (Drawing by Historic American Engineering Record, National Park Service, Eric S. Elmer, 1997)
The average stripper well produces only about 2.2 b/d. However, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), these wells comprise 84% of domestic oil wells and produce more than 20% of all domestic oil — an amount roughly equal to imports from Saudi Arabia.

Marginal oil and natural gas wells number about 650,000 of the nation’s 876,000 wells, IPAA notes. Once shut down, they are lost forever. Keeping them in production has long been a challenge for a special breed of oilman.

“This is an occupation where most of your work is done in all types of weather while working alone, with few thanks, and possibly only a small herd of cattle as company. This takes a high level of self-motivation,” noted the Oklahoma Commission on Marginally Producing Oil and Gas Wells in 2003. “Everyone is not capable of working alone and efficiently directing their own work efforts and work ethics and be successful.”
It was the same at the dawn of the Petroleum Age.

From jerk lines to eccentric wheels

Marginal quantities of oil always need help leaving the well. In the early days of the industry, oilmen adapted water-well technology to the problem and used steam-driven walking beam pump systems. At each well, a steam engine rhythmically raised and lowered one end of a sturdy wooden beam, which pivoted on a Samson post. The walking beam’s other end cranked a long string of sucker rods up and down to pump oil to the surface. The beam walked and the oil surfaced, but a more efficient system was needed.

One of the early oil pumping innovations came from an 1875 patent: “Heretofore it has been
The modern oil pump resulted from a design by Walter Trout, inventor of “the enclosed worm gear and counter-balanced pumping unit.” Lufkin Industries began in 1902 as a small machine shop in Lufkin, Texas. (Image courtesy of Historic American Engineering Record, HAER PA, 42-KLON.V,1-8)
necessary to have a separate engine for each well, although often several such engines are supplied with steam from the same boiler. The object of our invention is to enable the pumping of two or more wells with one engine. By it the walking-beams of the different wells are made to move in different directions at the same time, thereby counterbalancing each other, and equalizing the strain upon the engine.”

However, it was not long before a more compact and efficient mechanism replaced the multiple wooden Samson post and walking beam arrangement.

The 1913 Simplex Pumping Jack was a widely popular offering from Oil Well Supply Co. of Oil City, Pa. A central power source could connect and operate several of these dispersed Simplex units by way of steel rod lines (also called jerk lines.)

Steam power initially drove many of these eccentric power units, but some engines were converted to burn the natural gas or other inflammables often found with oil.
Early internal combustion engines produced only a few horsepower and could not replace steam engines in most applications, but by 1890 they were powerful enough for most portable or remote operations.

A belt brings power from the engine to “eccentric” cams, which alternately push and pull rod lines to remote pump jacks (a widely used engine manufactured in Franklin, Pa., is in the illustration at left). The historic technology is rare but still used in several early oil producing states, including Oklahoma, New York and Pennsylvania. A working central-power unit is preserved at the Drake Well Museum in Titusville, Pa. (Patent No. 162,406 April 20, 1875 Albert Nicholson & Levi Streeter)
Electrification arrived and the heyday of central power units passed, but not entirely. Today, a few miles from Flat Rock, two of Illinois’ once abundant central power units still operate in Crawford County. Ninety-five-year-old Herman Tohill still remembers when Ohio Oil Co. installed the units and rod lines on his grandfather’s land. A pair of sturdy 35-hp Superior gasoline engines provide the power.

Prototypes

A new icon of oilfield success appeared and was soon known by many names: donkey, grasshopper, horsehead, thirsty bird and pumpjack, among others.

As East Texas timber supplies dwindled and the sawmill business declined, the long-established Lufkin Foundry & Machine Co. discovered new opportunities in the oil field and not only survived but prospered.

Walter C. Trout was working in Texas for Lufkin Foundry & Machine Company in 1925 when he sketched out his idea for the now familiar counterbalanced oilfield pumpjack. Before the end of the year, the prototype was installed and working near Hull, Texas, in a Humble Oil Co. field.

Today’s stripper-well pumps still look much like Walter Trout’s original, but they enjoy the reliability and efficiency that 80 more years of evolving technology have produced. Today, Lufkin Industries produces a wide variety of oilfield pumping units designed to meet worldwide customers’ needs. More than 200,000 units have been sold.