Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
gas companies need to store their product in large quantities, and creating caverns in un-
derground salt formations is one of the best ways to do it. The huge salt dome underneath
Spindletop, along the flank of which so much oil once collected, was now being hollowed
out with caverns, each several hundred feet in diameter, thousands of feet tall, and more
than half a mile underground. Gas storage companies planned to use them as impermeable
storage tanks, each of which could hold billions of cubic feet of natural gas.
So the hill was a giant layer cake, divided for different purposes according to depth.
The storage companies took the bottom layer, from about 6,000 to 2,500 feet belowground.
From 1,500 on up was Radley's territory, the specific depth for which he held the lease for
extracting oil. Then, on top of it all, there was one last, tenuous layer.
“You see those orange fences over there?” Radley said when we were back at the drilling
site. “Those are archaeologist playpens.”
The top several inches of soil on Spindletop were also being prospected—for historical
evidence. A university archaeologist had fenced off the areas he thought most promising
for his investigation of the early oil industry.
“It's kinda neat being part of history,” Radley admitted. “The world changed right here.”
But he took a dim view of the archaeologist, who Radley said hadn't been coming to the
site nearly often enough to get his work done—and get out. Meanwhile, Radley was sup-
posed to stay out of the areas enclosed by the orange fences.
“I've got to get in there and drill a well,” he said, plainly annoyed. “I'm
trying
to be pa-
tient.” It was a testy relationship. Radley had already intruded once into a fenced-off area
to do some maintenance on an electrical line. The archaeologist had complained, upset that
the area had been disturbed.
Radley shook his head, lips pursed. “I said to him, 'I been in there with a dozer ten years
ago. It's already
been
disturbed.'”
In the early afternoon, drilling on the new well broke down. The power swivel was leak-
ing mud, I think, and needed to be pulled apart. Radley's father, a cheerful man in his mid-
seventies who looked likely to show up to work for at least another twenty years, inspected
the power swivel, which now lay on the drilling deck, ready for him to operate. “This busi-
ness would be okay,” he muttered, “if it wasn't for breakdowns.”
I walked over to one of the orange fences set up by the archaeologist.
KEEP OUT!
a sign
read.
AVOID ALL CONTACT AND ENTRY TO THIS AREA
. I peered over it, into the history of Spind-
letop. Tall grass grew out of the gravel.
The last section of drill pipe was just being pulled out of Radley's new well when I
showed up again three days later. The drill head came out caked with earth, dripping with
drilling mud, fresh from its journey a thousand feet into the earth.
