Oil Miner

News of a sensational new method of getting oil spread through the Pennsylvania oilfields last week like the report of a great new gusher. On Thanksgiving Day a group of oilmen had gathered in Franklin, Pa. around an oil well whose like they had never seen before--a sizable hole in the ground that looked more like a coalmine shaft. Someone threw a switch, setting off 12,000 Ib. of explosives deep underground. There was a rumble, a burst of steam and gas from the hole, and then an amazing flood of hundreds of gallons of oil and water from underground wells into the bottom of the shaft.

The inventor of the new technique, a grey-thatched, mild-mannered engineer named Leo Ranney, beamed triumphantly at his guests. His oil mine had got off to a good start. If it lived up to its beginnings, Ranney had hit on a simple way to make old oilfields gush again. Pennsylvania's old wells, though they still yield the richest crude oil in the world, have slowed down to an average of less than half a barrel a day from each well. From his single shaft at Franklin, Ranney expects to get more than 120 bbl. a day.

Ranney's well actually works on the same principle as a coal mine. In coal fields, miners dig a shaft down to the layer of coal, then work horizontally through the layer, cutting the coal away.

Conventional oil drilling is vertical: drill ers bore a narrow shaft down through the layer of sedimentary rock in which the oil is stored. From the small shaft surf ace they usually get only about 20% of the oil actually present.

Horizontal Man. Ranney reasoned: Why not drill horizontally for oil, as miners dig coal? He designed a"Ranney-well" for oil mining -- a vertical, concrete-lined shaft, sunk to the oil level, and a circular chamber at the bottom from which drillers might bore horizontally into the surrounding layer of oil sandstone. By drilling 24 holes, each radiating 2,500 ft.

from the chamber like wheel spokes, he thought he could expose about 3,000 times as much oil-bearing surface as a conventional well driven vertically through the 20-ft. oil-bearing layer--and presumably get 3,000 times as much oil.

During 20 prewar years Ranney's idea made no headway among oilmen, but he found that his scheme was just as good for tapping sources of water and gas. He drilled Ranney horizontal water wells in London and Lisbon and for 20 U.S. industrial plants, started a $20.000,000 water well in Paris just before the war. In Sydney, Australia, a Ranneywell yields 1.500,000 cu. ft. of gas a day.

When he tested his oil mine in Franklin last week,. Ranney had as backers the Pennzoil Co. and nearly a score of other companies and oilmen. They believe that the Ranneywell may be a godsend to the dwindling U.S. oil supply. Ranney believes that it could tap 60% of the 6,364,000,000 bbls. in the Pennsylvania region unobtainable by previous methods.

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