Originally printed by WyoHistory.org. Contact WyoHistory.org for permission to republish story, and make contact with proper entities for permission to republish pictures.
In economic phrases, an oil effectively with no pipeline is sort of a heart with no arteries.
When, in its first decade, Wyoming oil production was limited to a couple seeping fractures and shallow wells, conveying petroleum to market might be completed by use of easy whiskey barrels and horse-drawn wagons.
But because the number of prolific wells increased in the 1890s at places like the Shannon and Salt Creek fields north of Casper, Wyo., production outstripped the capacity of operators to move it effectively.
ack of transportation hitherto has saved the Salt Creek oil out of the market,the Casper Press famous on April 21, 1911. he wells have been drilled after which either plugged, or the oil has been wasted./p>
Early transport
Difficulties of oil transportation arose as soon as Edwin Drake grew to become first within the United States to successfully employ a drilling rig to supply oil close to Titusville, Pa., in 1859. Leaky barrels and even washtubs were used to haul away then modest amounts of crude oil.
However as oil exploration increased, extra environment friendly means were required. One early plan known as for a 6-inch diameter picket pipeline to transport oil from an old salt effectively in Wirt County, W.Va., to a proposed refinery in Parkersburg. Because of the Civil Battle, the line was never constructed.
With drilling spreading across the continent, efficient transport of crude oil grew to become much more pressing. Wood pipelines had been ultimately employed on a restricted foundation, along with forged-iron and wrought-iron lines in and around wells, as manufacturing ramped up.
Wyoming oilmen confronted even better transportation difficulties than their counterparts within the East, since oil fields were often developed at distant locations the place terrain was tough even in good weather.
Males dig a pipeline trench by hand by means of Wyoming sagebrush within the early days on this undated picture. (Wyoming State Archives. click on to enlarge)
In the early days of the Shannon and Salt Creek fields, oil was hauled in strings of wagons pulled by so-known as string groups of 12 to 18 horses or mules. The 100-mile round journey could take per week in good weather, or two weeks in bad. Teamsters carried shovel and picks, and generally had been obliged to create a road as they went.
Freight wagons had been used to haul all method of materials from livestock feed and meals rations to oilfield equipment and barrels crammed with oil. A load of Shannon crude sometimes consisted of 45 barrels roped down in two or three wagons coupled collectively.
Previous to 1900, markets for crude oil were limited. The Union Pacific used some unrefined petroleum for lubricating railcar axles, and kerosene was used for lighting in rural properties. However, as the U.S. shifted from an agricultural to an industrial economyoupled with introduction of the internal combustion engine and automobileshe demand for oil accelerated.
A trencher digs a ditch for a pipeline, maybe within the 1920s, on this undated picture. (Casper College Western Historical past Center. click on to enlarge)
Tank wagons and pipeline proposals
In 1895, Wyoming first oil refinery was constructed in Casper. he Pennsylvania Oil and Gas company owns each the wells, of which there are actually seven, and the refinery right here,the Natrona Tribune reported on Sept. 5, 1895. eo. B. McCalmont, who’s mayor of Casper in addition to associate law decide of the district courtroom and an excellent fellow as well, is vice-president and manager of the company. He thinks his firm will lay a pipe line from the wells to town in all probability next 12 months./p>
Despite such pipeline hypothesis, horse power remained the mainstay for hauling crude oil. New horse-drawn tank wagons left Casper in January 1898 for Salt Creek. It was 10 days before the outfit returned.
John McClure arrived in Casper on a Monday, with his 14-horse team and full tanks. The combined weight of his three wagons was 28,400 pounds, including 19,700 pounds of oil. This was 5,000 pounds more oil than was ever brought in through the use of barrels.
ot solely is there a terrific benefit with the new tanks in hauling more oil, but there is way time saved in loading at the wells and unloading on the refinery, and it is rather doubtless that this methodology of transportation of the crude oil from the wells to the refinery be will continued until the demand for the product will warrant the oil company to place in a pipe line,theNatrona County Tribune surmised.
And indeed, between 1889 and 1910, a number of pipelines and other oil transportation initiatives have been thought-about in the state to handle the quickly rising manufacturing.
il has been pouring out of the gushing Lander wells for a while,oil expert James F. Callbreath noticed in 1907. e have been obliged to burn it to protect surrounding water and lands, as we haven’t any approach to ship it./p>
A pipeline from Fremont and Converse counties to a railroad at Orin Junction was thought-about. One other plan envisioned a 6-inch pipeline with a capability of 10,000 barrels of oil per day working from Casper to Laramie, then to Fort Collins and Denver.
In 1906, an Omaha syndicate proposed a pipeline between Lander and Omahahich would have been the longest within the worldt a price of $2 million. At the time, there have been 13 flowing wells within the Popo Agie fields close to Lander, and wice every month, 1,000 barrels of oil have to be burned to keep the oil from flowing into the river and ruining the crops of the farmers along the stream,according to the Wyoming Tribune.
A line from Salt Creek to Casper
In 1911, the Midwest Oil Co. accomplished a 6-inch diameter pipeline from the Salt Creek Area to a 2,000-barrels-per-day refinery in Casper.
he demand for any sort of oil within the northwest is very nice and the availability very small. The demand for gasoline is great everywhere,defined the Casper Press article heralding the challenge. t the extreme north end of the Salt Creek fields are the wells producing the Shannon lubricating oils, which have the first prize as lubricants at several world expositions, and that are hauled out in wagons./p>
By November 1911, two pipelines had been accomplished from Salt Creek to Casper. Throughout the identical interval, the Franco-Wyoming Co. ran a pipeline between Casper and Drugs Bow, Wyo., bringing oil to the Union Pacific Railroad. One other line was thought of from Casper to Denver via Cheyenne. Along with the Union Pacific, the intention was to supply the Burlington; Colorado and Southern; the North Western; the good Western and the Northern Pacific railroads with oil for fuel.
Some new pipelines were devoted to conveying natural gasoline. In 1911, house use of pure gasoline started in Greybull, Wyo. and Basin, Wyo. In 1912, fuel was transported by way of pipeline from the nearby Byron area to the city of Byron, Wyo.
1920s boom
A major undertaking to expand pure fuel supplies within the Bighorn Basin was completed by the big Horn Gasoline Co. in 1927. This entailed laying a pipeline from the Little Buffalo Basin Discipline in Park and Scorching Springs counties to the Nowood River, the place it tied right into a fuel primary running to Greybull and different factors north. The hassle concerned laying over 42 miles of 14-inch pipe and nearly 14 miles of 12-inch pipe.
A pipeline within the Lance Creek Area close to Lusk, Wyo., was started in 1919 throughout an oil and fuel growth. en working around the clock employed women to attend in line at the put up office for his or her mail,in accordance to at least one account.
In 1921, Producers and Refiners Corp. and the Midwest Refining Co. built a 90-mile pipeline, the biggest pure gas line in Wyoming at time. The state pure gas consumption had reached 15 billion cubic toes in 1921, pushed largely by industrial-refinery and home customers in Casper.
By 1928, a total of 1 gasoline, 20 pure gasoline and 39 oil pipelinesnearly 2,000 miles of pipe in allad been laid in Wyoming. Eight oil pipelines ran from the Salt Creek Field to Casper, the most of anywhere in the state.
Natural fuel service was prolonged to many Wyoming towns within the 1930s, including Laramie, the place the city first gas pipeline opened in 1933.
Oil and gasoline costs fell, however, after the inventory market crash of 1929. One report indicated that soon after the bust, Salt Creek crude oil could possibly be bought for 19 cents a barrel. Costs stayed low, as the great Depression dampened oil and gas exercise by way of most of the thirties.
Longer distances, extra security
The tip of the 1930s noticed pipelines being built over longer distancesnd requiring more security to protect them. In 1938, the primary oil pipeline to cross from Wyoming into another state was laid from Lance Creek to Denver.
Staff use a tractor and aspect boom to put pipe along a roadway, 1960s. (Casper Faculty Western Historical past Center. click to enlarge)
Some pipelines invited thievery, since gasoline might be siphoned off and bought on the black market.
Tom Heaney, a particular deputy sheriff engaged on contract with the Stanolind Oil and Fuel Co. within the late 1920s and early 1930s, patrolled a pipeline carrying naptha gasoline from refineries in Casper back to Salt Creek to run the pumps on the oil wells. This particular line was constructed of four-inch, welded steel pipe, buried about 30 inches deep. Heaney and his men had been armed, and very often, so have been their adversaries.
As World War II loomed, officials within the U.S. authorities grew more and more concerned about oil transportation safety.
After America entered the battle, Secretary of the Inside Harold Ickes supported pipeline development so as to move crude oil overland from Texas to the East Coast, thus avoiding attacks by German U-boats on the high seas. The end result was two pipelines he 24-inch diameter ig Inchand the 20-inch diameter ittle Huge Inch.The traces were constructed by the Warfare Emergency Pipelines Co., a nonprofit corporation backed by the biggest U.S. oil companies. Both have been accomplished in 1943.
At the identical time, advances in metals, welding techniques and pipe manufacturing through the warfare made major pipelines economically engaging.
New, more distant markets
In 1952, the Platte Pipeline was constructed. This landmark venture opened wholly new markets within the Midwest for oil produced in the Rocky Mountain area. When accomplished, the pipeline linked Wyoming oil fields through Casper to points as far east as Wooden River, Ill., a distance of 1,056 miles. It was initially known as the ownhill Pipelinefor the reason that journey to Illinois was all downhill.
The Platte Pipeline was constructed by the 5 owners of the Platte Pipe Line Co. Gulf; Conoco; Marathon; Pure Oil, a division of Union Oil of California; and Sinclair Pipeline. Total cost (in 1952 dollars) was $sixty nine.35 million.
The Belle Fourche Pipeline was constructed within the mid-1950s to carry oil from fields in northeastern Wyoming, the place the river of the identical identify is positioned.
fter making an attempt with out success to get every pipeline even remotely associated with northeastern Wyoming to construct a pipeline, we determined we might have to do so ourselves,True Oil Co. founder H.A. aveTrue said in an Aug. 23, 1991 speech earlier than the Newcomen Society of the United States. o the 5 working homeowners, together with True Oil Co., in our group of Donkey Creek leases formed the Belle Fourche Pipeline Co. €?/p>
By 1967, Casper-based mostly True Oil Co. had bought out the remaining outside interest in the Belle Fourche Pipeline Co.
Throughout early 1980s oil-price bust, petroleum manufacturing declined, and lots of the Platte Pipeline working amenities were primarily mothballed. In the mid-nineties, oil sands petroleum from Alberta entered the market, and along with it, elevated demand from Midwestern refineries for use of the Platte Pipeline.
Alberta Energy and TransCanada bought the Platte Pipeline and in addition built the Express Pipeline between Hardisty, Alberta, and Casper. In the process, the Platte Pipeline was upgraded.
Recent booms
The Specific Pipeline, transporting crude from Alberta to U.S. markets, linked to the prevailing Platte Pipeline community late in the nineteen nineties. (Spectra Vitality. click to enlarge)
Booms in pure gas activity ushered in a brand new chapter in Wyoming pipeline history within the 1990s. New initiatives, especially associated to coal-mattress methane within the Powder River Basin and tight-sands natural fuel manufacturing in Jonah Discipline and on the Pinedale Anticline, resulted in the construction of long-distance strains to both the West Coast and Midwest.
As a result of export pipeline capabilities were severely limited, Wyoming natural fuel producers were receiving only a fraction of the national average value. So building new pure gas pipelines became a excessive precedence.
In 1985, Kern River Fuel Transmission Co. submitted an application with the Federal Power Regulatory Commission to build a excessive-strain natural gasoline pipeline from southwestern Wyoming to southern California. It went into service on Feb. 15, 1992.
In 1997, the Express Pipeline out of Canada started operations, and now connects with the Platte Pipeline. The Express line transports crude from Alberta to markets within the U.S., including a new crude-oil-to-railroad loading facility in Casper. Oil within the Platte Pipeline comes principally from home sources just like the booming fields of the Bakken shale of western North Dakota.
The twenty first Century
In 2003, a serious growth elevated Kern River capacity on the Wyoming-to-California line. Additional expansion tasks boosted the capacity even more, bringing the 2014 design capacity to 2.17 billion cubic ft per day.
Pipeline beneath building west of Douglas, Wyo., September 2014. (Tom Rea photograph click on to enlarge)
In 2010, construction started on a significant project between the pipeline hub at Opal, in Western Wyoming, and Malin, Ore. The 680-mile-lengthy Ruby Pipeline gives pure gasoline from Rocky Mountain manufacturing zones to customers in California, Nevada and the Pacific Northwest.
The 1,698-mile-long Rockies Specific pipeline system was the largest pure gasoline pipeline in-built decades and certainly one of the largest such strains ever built in North America. It grew to become absolutely operational in November 2009 with a design capability of 1.Eight billion cubic toes of pure gasoline per day.
Rockies Categorical was meant to maneuver a glut of pure gas from Wyoming and Colorado to markets as far away as Ohio, and thus address low pure gas costs by offering an option in high-demand markets. And for a time, western costs began to rise.
hat was unforeseen was the finding of natural gasoline in the Marcellus and Utica shale,Matt Sheehy, president of the Rockies Express Pipeline, stated in a 2014 interview with North American Oil & Gas Pipelines. These huge reserves are located primarily in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio.
On account of developments within the Marcellus and Utica shale, the importance of the Rockies Specific as a protracted-haul option was diminished. But because it was a relatively new line, Tallgrass Power and other owners additionally saw a possibility. They sought to ship fuel in two instructions, thus making it possible to provide extra natural gas to massive Midwestern markets.
With the pipeline shipping each west to east and east to west, natural fuel customers can be afforded a alternative of provides from both the Rockies or from the Marcellus and Utica dry shale developments in addition to from conventional Gulf Coast sources.
In 2013, Tallgrass Power gained the best from the FERC to ship natural gas from east to west within the Midwest without violating agreements with western shippers.
Between 1999 and 2008, no less than seven large-capacity header-laterals, which transported natural gas from local gathering systems to interconnections with main interstate pipelines, were in-built Wyoming.
Altering fortunes within the oil and pure fuel business have generally meant switching a pipeline goal.
The Pony Categorical Pipeline, which now runs from Guernsey in jap Wyoming to Cushing, Okla., was converted from crude oil to natural gasoline in 1996. However in 2014, its use changed again when a Tallgrass Power offshoot, Tallgrass Growth LP, decided to transport oil in the pipeline at a time pure gasoline prices had been low while petroleum costs remained strong. The line transports crude oil from Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana. Tallgrass Power acquired the Pony Categorical Pipeline from Kinder Morgan in 2012.
By 2014, there have been at least 9,235 miles of crude-oil and 24,726 miles of pure-gas pipelines in Wyoming, including both gathering and transmission traces. The Wyoming Pipeline Authority additionally reported at the very least 1,896 miles of pipeline used to move refined commodities resembling diesel and gasoline, in addition to 1,758 miles for pure fuel liquids.
Along with pipelines, railroads turned more and more necessary as a means of transporting oil and pure gasoline. A Casper Star-Tribune analysis discovered that whole Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe rail shipments of crude oil, gasoline and pure gas elevated to about 16,400 vehicles in 2013, up from roughly 10,200 in 2012. Shipments originating in the state had been up 70 percent, whereas shipments from outside the state increased fifty six percent.
Originally revealed by WyoHistory.org and republished with permissions.
WyoFile Commenting Coverage
No nameless feedback. To be considered for publication, every remark must be accompanied by the writer first identify, last title, and metropolis of residence. This identifying data can be revealed with the remark. It’s possible you’ll request an exemption from the editor if there may be an inexpensive expectation that by associating your identify together with your comment you could face undue retribution (e mail [e mail protected]).
Use your personal words. Comments with excessive quotations and hyperlinks may be trashed.
Feedback could also be trashed for name-calling, personal attacks, threats, derogatory or defamatory feedback, racism, sexism or any form of bigotry.
Do not discourage others from commenting.
Be reasonable with the size of your comment. When you have more to say, submit a guest column proposal to the editor (email [e mail protected]).
