Testers & Acid Doctor

In 1896 Antoine Henri Becquerel of France left some uranium salts lying in the dark near a photographic plate. When he developed the plate he found that some sort of rays from the uranium, passing through a metal container and several other obstacles, had left an image on the plate. Thus by accident Becquerel, who shared a Nobel Prize with Pierre and Marie Curie, discovered radioactivity.

The same principle underlies a technique, explained last week, for ferreting out defects in thick masses of steel. At the convention of the American Society for Testing Materials in Manhattan, Physicist E. V. Lange of Radium Chemical Co. demonstrated with a capsule containing one-tenth of a gram of radium. Gamma rays shooting out at a million or more volts passed through steel castings a foot thick, photographed the interior structure on X-ray films 10 by 12 in. in size. Tested by this method are steering posts of ships, turbines, valves, high-pressure steam pipes. Dr. Lange reported that in most Army and Navy purchases of heavy steel equipment, radium-testing is now required.

Another testing device described at the meeting was a vibrator which causes a battleship "to shiver like a man with the ague." The machine has two heavy weights rotating eccentrically so that vibrations are set up in all riveted joints or welded seams and unhealthy tremors exposed. Declared C. H. Gibbons, technical adviser to Baldwin-Southwork Corp.: "When this machine is attached to a battleship still under construction, it is possible to simulate the stresses and strains to which the ship would be submitted during a storm at sea."

Dr. Arno Carl Fieldner of the U. S. Bureau of Mines raised the old bugaboo about the imminent exhaustion of oil & gas. There was enough coal, he said, to last 2,100 years. But the known reserves of natural gas were 30 to 40 trillion cu. ft., of oil 13 billion barrels. At the present rate of consumption the petroleum would be gone in 13 years--but Dr. Fieldner predicted that discoveries of new pools and more efficient production techniques would stretch out the supply for a century. Unless "greater social control" was forthcoming, known supplies of gas would vanish in 20 years.

One impressively successful technique for hiking oil production is treatment with acid. In certain limestone formations, acid treatment not only "brings in" or increases production on new wells but rejuvenates old ones. Object of pumping in acid is to eat out new channels in the limestone. Hydrochloric acid is used, chemically inhibited so that it will not attack steel casing or tubing. The acid doctor pulls out the tubing and pumping equipment, runs the tubing back with a packer 15 ft. above the bottom so acid will not run up the hole, squirts in 1,400 to 3,000 gal. of HCl. Rushing through a two-inch tubing, the acid eats into the | limestone so fast that it creates a partial vacuum at the top of the line.

The only acid doctor doing a brisk business in the eastern U. S. is James G. Vandergrift, 30, grandson of old "Captain" J. J. Vandergrift, a onetime river boatman who accumulated a large fortune in oil, land and steel, had a Pennsylvania town named for him. Energetic young James Vandergrift is the son-in-law of William T. Mossman, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. executive who made news copy in the last Presidential campaign because he is an uncle of Alfred Mossman Landon. Young James went to Ohio State, studied chemistry and geology, taught swimming, worked in the oil fields of Texas, California, Pennsylvania. New York, South America. In Michigan he saw some experiments with acid, decided to move east and hang out his own shingle as a well doctor.

First attempts in sandstone failed. When experiments in limestone began to look promising, Vandergrift decided to confine his practice to the limestone formations of West Virginia, moved to Spencer, arriving there in 1934 with a few gallons of acid, a few dollars, no orders, much confidence. Now he has dozens of admiring customers, including subsidiaries of Standard Oil of New Jersey, South Penn Oil Co.. Columbia Gas & Electric. Carnegie Steel, Chesebrough Manufacturing Co. Some Vandergrift results:

A well in Roane County was yielding a dribble of twelve barrels per month. Acid treatment boosted production to 628 bbl. per month. The company gained $12,000 for a treatment costing $400.

Another well in Roane County was giving 52 bbl. per year. After Vandergrifting, it leaped to 2,336 bbl. per year.

In Clay County, 1,450 gal. of acid was driven into a well and rammed home with 165 bbl. of crude. The acid fanned out in a 90DEG arc, increased the yield of six adjoining wells in addition to the one treated. In ten months production was up by 10,000 bbl.

Mr. Vandergrift has had even better luck with gas wells than with oil. It is not unusual for a Vandergrifted gas formation to increase its yield by 1,000% to 7,000%. Few weeks ago a gas well in Boone County jumped after treatment from 800,000 cu. ft. daily to 3,600,000 cu. ft. Last month Vandergrift branched out into Ohio and Kentucky, did the biggest month's business since he started. Because he knows his trade from the ground down and is willing to go out on a case at any hour, in any season, over any sort of roads, James Vandergrift has the eastern field to himself. Dow Chemical Co. is having comparable success with acid treatment in Oklahoma, Chemical Process Co. in Texas.

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