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from the yates field

Flush production from Yates field presented storage and transportation problems to the operators. On October 1, 1927, the first field-wide proration in Texas went into effect. Allowables were based on the total potential production of all wells in the field. Each well was given a share of the pipeline outlet equal to the ratio of its potential to that of the total field. Shortly thereafter, a rule that limited each well's penetration of the lime formation to 225 feet was adopted to allow each operator the same advantage in the cavernlike reservoir. On June 1, 1928, an official order placed the proration enforcement in Yates field under the direction of the Railroad Commission.qv On July 1 a new proration program was adopted, based on both potential production and acreage holdings. In October 1928 oil migrating from poorly cased deep wells was discovered seeping under the banks of the Pecos River and floating on the surface. Thousands of barrels of crude were recovered daily by skimming the river and by drilling 20-foot to 400-foot wells. By mid-1933 over 3.25 million barrels of seepage oil had been gathered. Drilling activity in the field peaked at the end of 1928, when 175 producing wells were completed and ten dry holes were plugged. By July 1929 the field consisted of 15,000 proven acres. In September 1929 the Yates 30-A, operated by Transcontinental and Mid-Kansas and located a few hundred yards down the canyon from the discovery well, set a world record when it produced 8,528 barrels of oil per hour or 204,672 barrels per day. Field production peaked in 1929, when more than 41 million barrels of oil was produced. In 1930 Transcontinental sold its interest in Yates field to Mid-Kansas.

By 1941 Yates field production had dropped to under six million barrels of oil, and on August 31, 1943, the Railroad Commission ordered the observance of special rules to reduce water production in the field. Oil production climbed to over thirteen million barrels during 1945 and to more than eighteen million by 1948 from 22,671 proven acres. The number of flowing wells that year was 511, seventy-eight of which were on artificial lift. In 1962 the Ohio Oil Company and its subsidiary, Mid-Kansas Oil and Gas Company, became known as Marathon Oil Company. From November 1968 through December 1972 five operators in the field were permitted by the Railroad Commission to inject salt water and gas into producing formations to maintain field pressure and to store gas temporarily. On July 1, 1976, unitization became a reality in Yates field with Marathon as unit operator. The injection of gas back into the reservoir maintained pressure and retarded water encroachment, thus exposing a greater area of the reservoir to gravity drainage and doubling field production. On January 11, 1985, Yates field produced its billionth barrel of oil. By 1988 new techniques were in use in the field-secondary recovery methods of water-flooding, polymer injection, carbon dioxide flooding, and the sinking of new wells within the proven acreage, or infill drilling. At the end of 1989 Yates field reported a yearly production of 27,292,621 barrels of oil and 56,120,285 million cubic feet of gas. Cumulative crude production of 1,180,073,629 barrels over the first sixty-three years placed Yates among the most prolific oilfields in the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sam T. Mallison, The Great Wildcatter (Charleston, West Virginia: Education Foundation of West Virginia, 1953). Samuel D. Myres, The Permian Basin: Petroleum Empire of the Southwest (2 vols., El Paso: Permian, 1973, 1977). Edgar Wesley Owen, Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (Tulsa: American Association for Petroleum Geologists, 1975). Thomas H. Smith, "Yates Field Claims World's Biggest Well, Basin's Largest Production," Drill Bit, March 1954. Hartzell Spence, Portrait in Oil: How the Ohio Oil Company Grew to Become Marathon (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962).

The Beasley Elementary service-learning club, the Generous Jaguars, teamed up with the third graders at their school to help with a recent project. The school participated in a shoe drive to help provide clean drinking water to people living in third world countries. Students, parents and staff donated 728 pairs of shoes to the Shoes for Water program led by George "The Shoeman" Hutchings. This program takes used and new shoes, resells them in other countries, and uses the profits to purchase water well drilling equipment. The equipment is shipped overseas so people can access clean drinking water in places such as Haiti, India and Kenya. The Generous Jaguars coordinated the Beasley shoe drive and the third grade students collected and counted the shoes during the collection. At the end of the drive, a representative from the Shoes for Water program collected the Beasley donations and was very moved by the students' hard work and generosity.