Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ON THIS SPOT, ON THE TENTH DAY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, A NEW ERA IN CIVILIZATION
BEGAN.
But someone should carve that obelisk a footnote. This was not, in fact, the spot where
it all happened. The obelisk had been moved from the original site when the ground began
to subside. This was merely the front lawn of the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Mu-
seum.
It's not a bad museum, otherwise. They have built an entire replica boomtown village,
and next to the obelisk, there is a life-size replica of the Lucas No. 1 oil derrick, fitted with
a large nozzle, as if from a fire hose. For a hundred dollars, I was told, you can have this
nozzle turned on, and it will spray water at the same pressure and to the same height as the
original Lucas Gusher. Oil companies sometimes bring new hires there to celebrate.
As for the actual Lucas Gusher, it's about a mile south of here, on private land. The
Spindletop oil field has been designated a national historic landmark, but it's also desig-
nated
Authorized Personnel Only.
The oil that once came from Spindletop now comes from more remote oilfields, or from
offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico, or is imported by tanker from overseas. One day it
may come, by pipeline, from Alberta. In any case, the refineries of Port Arthur are tied less
to the people living outside their fence lines than they are to the distant sources that keep
them humming.
But in Southeast Texas, oil sustains more than refineries. Its nourishment spreads out
through circle upon circle of lesser players that cluster and compete at the oasis of its
wealth, living off its power and success—and even off its disasters.
On January 23, 2010, an oil tanker called the
Eagle Otome
entered Port Arthur's ship
channel, the Sabine-Neches Waterway, with 570,000 barrels of crude oil on board, destined
for the ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont. To make its delivery, the tanker would have to
transit the length of the ship channel, a thin, man-made strait that runs inland from the Gulf,
along the frontage of downtown Port Arthur, and then up toward Beaumont. The channel
measures not even three hundred yards wide at points, and the navigable waterway—the
part deep enough for ships—is even narrower. It is a hard needle for any large vessel to
thread, and the
Eagle Otome
was more than eight hundred feet long.
While the age of gushers is long past, there is still occasion in Port Arthur for the un-
planned flow of petroleum. As the
Eagle Otome
came around a mild bend in the channel,
it swerved off course, fishtailing slowly down the channel as it approached the wharf
