“Hundreds
of gigantic oil derricks, black toothpicks, 20 feet square at the base and as
hight as a 10-story apartment house. To the back of them mighty mountains, the
Carpathians, cutting the sky. In front the vast grain-laden plains throught
which the Danube is flowing to the Black Sea. Underneath hills of black sand tossed up in
all sorts of shapes, with black oil oozing from them and black streams and
pools of oil here and there. Huge, flat, round iron tanks 50 feet high in
groups each holding tens of thousands of barrels of petroleum. Iron pipe of all sizez lying on the ground,
stacked in piles, and being carried by long teams of white bullocks to this
place and that. Donkey engines pumping and bailing and a
myriad of dirty men and women toiling away at all sorts of strange jobs. These are some of the features of the oil fields
of Romania which lie here within gunshot of Ploiesti in southeastern Europe,
not far from the Balkans.
Oil
of Romania
The oil of Romania cuts a large figure in the
markets of the world. This country ranks sixth among the great oil producers.
She is now taking out almost two barrels of every hundread which are mined
throughout the world, and the bulk of her product comes from this little region
where I now am.
The Romanians oil deposits lie in three
zones. One is in Maramures along the Tisa river valley. Another is in the county
of Valcea, but the most important is that of Prahova, lying within two hours by
motor of the capital, Bucuresti, and on the southern foothills of the
Carpathian mountains. Here in a district, 10 miles wide and running for 100
miles along the slope of the hills are something like 1,000 oil wells, which
are producing from 7,000,000 to 9,000,000 barrels of oil per year.
The oil lies in great pools scattered here
and there throughout this 100 miles. They are in fields about 10 in number, and
the most important of all is the Moreni-Tuicani field which I describe in this
letter. It is a small territory. Put it all together and it would not cover
more then four 100-acre farms. Nevertheless, it yields more then half the Romanian
oil activity today. Not far away is the district of Baicoi, which I also have
gone over and in addition are eight or nine other fields, all of which contain
pools of petroleum.
Ploiesti
and its refineries
Ploiesti is a city of 70,000 in the center of
the oil producing territory. The fields run in a great semi-circle around it,
covering an area of perhaps 40 square miles, and the oil is piped here to be
refined. There are a dozen or more different refineries, the largest of which
has a capacity of 20,000 barrels a day. You can see the tank farms on every
side of the city, and the rich smell of petroleum fills the air.
The refineries belong to the great oil
companies which are working the territory. These are know largely by the
nations to which they belong. The Steaua-Romana is the German company; the
Royal-Dutch, is the Dutch-English, commonly known as the Royal Dutch Shell, and
the Romano-Americana is the Standard Oil company of the United States. In
addition there are a dozen or smaller establishments, for more then 100
companies are operating in the territory.
The Standard Oil refineries are the best in
the country. The machinery is all new, for it was built since the World war and
there is no modern process of oil reduction and production which it does not
possess. It is now refining something like 10,000 barrels daily, and it has
very large holdings in several fields. It was in company with Mr. J. P. Hughes,
the director of Standard Oil company here in Romania, that I went over the
fields, and to him and Mr. E. J. Dailey, the manager of the Moreni field, and
Mr. Fredericks, the manager of the Baicoi, and other of the Standard Oil men
employed here, that I am indebted for much of the information given in this
letter.
Great
Pools of oil
In
the first place, the oil formations are different from those of the United
States. In America the oil lies largely in a hard rock strata and the crude petroleum
flows or is pumped to the surface. Here the oil lies in great pools from 1,000
to 3,000 feet below the surface and is mixed with sand as fine as flour and
with the natural gas which permeates the whole. When oil is struck the gas
forces the sand out with the oil. Sometimes nothing but sand will come for
several hours and even days and then the mixture of oil and sand bursts forth.
Even after the wells have been producing for a long time, there is so much sand
mixed with oil that it is impossible to pump it. For this reason when the wells
stop flowing the oil is taken out by dropping a long bailing bucket, such as is
used in the making of any artesian well, allowing it to fill with oil, which is
held in by a valve in the bottom, and then raising it by machinery to the
surface and emptying the mixture of oil and sand. These bailers are driven by
machinery or steam and the bucket, which is as big around as a quart measure
and sometimes as high as a five-story building, is raised and lowered, carrying
up a number of barrels each time. With a bailer 50 feet long as many as 500
barrels of oil are thus raised in one day. Some of the bailers I saw carried
two and a half barrels at one load.
Getting the oil out of the sand is a large
parte of the production of crude petroleum in Romania. Every bit of the oil
comes up loaded, and in a flowing well it poures forth in a mush as thick as
molasses, as black as ink and loaded with these fine rock particles. The
particles are heavy, however, and they rapidly sink. The flowing well runs out
into a great vat half the size of a city lot and below this is a succession of
a half-dozen other vats descending in terraces. The oil flows into the first
vat and much of the sand is deposited as it passes into the second vat through
holes an inch or so in diameter. There more sand is dropped and the oil grows
purer and purer as it flows on through vat after vat until at the bottom it has
no sand at all and can be pumped by an engine through pipes into the great
storage tanks.
As the black, sand-loaded pitch flows from
the well it deposits much sand around the edges. This is scooped up by
bare-legged, bare-footed women, who stand ankle deep and often half deep, in
the hot, slimy mixture and ladle the mush out with scoops into holes or little
pits on the banks of the pool. Other girls lift the mush from these pools just
above, the oil draining out as they do and finnaly at the top, perhaps 10 or 15
feet above the great pool below, they raise the now almost clean sand and empty
it into a steel car in which it is carried away over a track to the sand pile.
In this field there were hundreds of
derricks, each over an oil well, and were mountains of sand here and there and everywhere among them, all
of which had been lifted out in this way. I asked as to the wages of these
girls and was told that they got 15 cents for a day of eight hours, or less
then two cents an hour for this back-breacking,
filth-scooping labor under the hot semi-tropical sun.
I took some pictures of the women at work.
They were almost in rags and some of them modestly arranged their short skirts as
camera snapped. A large part of the labor in the oil fields is done by women,
and here, as throughout the farming district, there are far more women workers
than men.
The wages of the men are more then those of
the women. Drillers get as much as 75 cents a day, but the common laborer
seldom recives more than 20 or 30 cents. The labor is not nearly so efficient
as that of the United States. The cost of living is very low and the people
think they do well.
Shooting
Grindstones
The sand mixed with oil entails difficulties
in drilling which we do not have in the United States.
The sand is as sharps as that of a
carborundum grindstone. It cuts like diamond dust and when a gusher is struck
it comes out with such force that the mush-like mixture will saw its way
through iron and steel. It will spray itself over a large part of the
surrounding country, and it is for this reson that the derricks are not left
open as in the United States, but boarded in from top to the bottom. In order
to break the force of the geyser of oil and sand a sheet of steel rails such as
are used for railways is hung about 20 feet above the mouth of the well. Every
other rail is inverted and the whole makes a solid block of steel.
Sometimes
a cap of iron, weighing three tons, or as much as three horse can haul, is
poised above the well and the sand cuts its way throught it as though with a
saw, the well shooting grindstones as it were.
The other day there was a man on top of a
derrick when one of these wells burst loose. He was 100 feet from the ground,
but the mixture of sand and oil lifted him 30 feet higher and when he fell it
was on the side of a soft sand pile, copiously tarred and ready for feathers.
Strange to say, he was not injured and got up and walked away.
Slides
like Panama
I stopped at some of the wells and watched
the drilling. The wells are never shot here with dynamite or other explosives,
as in United States. This is an account of the sand. The drilling is difficult
also on account of the different degrees of density of the various strata,
which causes the earth to slide in much the same way at it does at the Panama
canal. This forces the drill out of the perpendicular and often to such an
extent that a second hole is put down or the bent drill is cut through and the
hole extended. The soft earth formations add to the difficulty of carrying the
casings, and in a deep well the pipe sunk down at the top may be 25 inches in
diameter. After some distance a smaller casing is run down from the top and the
drill continued, growing smaller and smaller until the last casing which
strickes the oil is perhaps so small that a cat could nit run through it
without striking off electrical sparks with its fur.
I asked as to the cost of drilling and found
that the average expense of the well is 50,000 or 60,000 dollars, whereas 15 years ago oil was usually struck at a cost of about 15,000 dollars. Thirty years
ago, I am told, the cost of drilling a well at Lima, Ohio, was about 1,000 dollars.
Salt
Bed of Moreni
The queer feature of the Moreni field, the
producing area of which is only about 400 acres, is a huge wedge of salt, a
mile or so wide at the point and broadening out as it extends from the hills
down to the plains. The salt goes down no one knows how far. They have drilled
into it more than a half mile from the surface and have not found the end. The
wedge runs east and west, with the oil on both sides of it, and strange to say,
the oils are of different character. Those on the northern side of the wedge
have a paraffin base and those on southern side have an asphalt base. Standing
on the apex I could see the great derricks forming long lines on both sides of
the wedge. They were all black and somber, made so by the black sand and black
oil spray. This somberness is one of the features of these Romanian oil fields.
The pitchy fluid paints everything the color of jet. The buidings are black,
the machinery is black and even the ground is of a rich dark hue. In walking I
had to look out for my steps for fear I might sink to my shoe tops in one of
the oil swamps which are to be found here and there. I had to be especially
careful also, as I had an appoiment to lunch with the queen the following day
and had no other shoes with me but those on my feet.
What
a Geologist Said
A common expression in gold mining is that
the gold is where you find it. It is much the same with oil. Petroleum has been
mined commercially two years before Drake well was put down in the United
States. For a long time the wells were dug by hand and large basins about 15
feet square and 50 feet deep were made to hold the oil. At first the drillers
were not able to go below 150 feet, and they dropped snow in the well to purify
it. At least they claimed this purified it. Later wells were made by hand 600
and 800 feet deep and the oil sands were washed in large wooden vessels half
filled with water. The water forced the oil out of the sand and it floated on
the surface. Later still the oil was hauled out those dug wells in wooden
barrels up by means of a windlass, and sometimes ox-skins were used the same way,
just as they raise water in northern India today for irrigation.
After the foreing drillers came in
prospecting went on everywhere and new fields were discovered. Among those
tested was this Moreni field, against the advice of Geological Institute of
Romania. The Moreni field is now producing more than half the output and it yeld this year something
like 4,000,000 barrels.
Opportunities
for Foreigners
There are but few opportunities for wildcat
oil men in Romania. American prospectors come in, look over the ground, and go
away in disgust. One reason is the difficulties of drilling and another the
expense and last, but by no means least, is the strangle-hold which the government
has on industry. Acording to the laws enacted before and since the warm all the
oil taken out of the ground must be refined in Romania, and no crude oil, fuel
oil, or naphtha may be exported. Two-thirds of every oil product must be sold
in Romania at prices fixed by the government. This makes it possible to export
only one-third of the product. The gasoline, kerosene and other oils made in
the refineries have to be sold at miserable prices. For a long time the foreign
companies were delivering gasoline at four and five cents a gallon, when it was
selling at home for 27 and 30 cents. It is now selling here at eight or nine
cents a gallon, although the export price is 19 or 20 cents. The average price
of a tank car from the oil refineries is now 110 dollars in Romania, whereas the crude oil itself
at home is worth 132.5 dollars.
I understand also that preference is sometimes given to the Romanians as to oil
concessions, so on the whole I would not advise Americans to come here to make
oil investments.
In closing this letter I want to say a word
or so about the Standard Oil company here in Romania. Its investments amount to
upwords of 20,000,000 dollars.
It was one of the first foreign companies to aid in establishing the industry
and today it does a business larger than any other company with the exception,
perhaps, of the Royal Dutch Shell.
I have gone over its works and they are
wonders of efficiency and modern invention in a land where most of the methods
are crude to extreme. It has a high class force of men, and the American colony
which lives here at Ploiesti is a refreshing oasis in this great desert of East
Europe. On the outskirts of the town the company has some thousands of acres,
and here it has built up a settlement which might be transplanted bodily to the
best suburbs of any American city and not be out of place. Beautiful brick
houses of two stories each facing large, well kept lawns, decorated with trees
and flowers, run for perhaps a mile on each side of a wide macadamized roadway
not far from the refineries. The settlement has a good school and clubhouse. It
has tennis courts, ball grounds, and its swimming pool of the purest spring
water would cover a good-sized city lot. Every family has its own house, and
the homes are well furnished, having hot and cold water and being lighted by
electricity. The home life of the people is delightful and I am told that none
of them is anxious to leave."
BL FRANK G. CARPENTER
Carpenter’s World Travels, Copyright 1924.
Toledo Blade-Mar 27, 1924