Refinery

“ The elder Ross was naively proud to have a “professor” visiting him, and to show him the well that was spudding in, and the one that was bailing, and the score that were drilling. They inspected the new refinery, something really special, that had been exploited in the newspapers as the latest miracle in petroleum engineering; incidentally it was a work of art, buildings of concrete and shining, newly-painted metal, set in a regular pleasure park. Oil wells are black and greasy, incurably so, but a refinery is different ”

“ A few years ago all sugar went out in barrels or bags, while today a modern refinery turns out about twenty different styles of container, and twenty-four kinds of sugar. It is obvious, therefore, that the packing room of a refinery is an interesting place, covering as it does a large area and including a great amount of special, intricate machinery for filling, weighing and sewing or sealing packages. ”

“ Finally, we need to expand and enhance our refining capacity. It has been 30 years since a new refinery was built in our Nation, and lawsuits and red tape have made it extremely costly to expand or modify existing refineries. ”

“ The refinery proper is the largest building in the Western country used for manufacturing purposes, and, together with its adjuncts of cooper-shops and warehouses, covers five entire blocks and employs 500 men. It has a capacity of working up 400 tons of raw sugar a day, but runs only to the extent of about 200 tons a day, making the value of its present product $7,500,000 a year. ”

“ About three-fourths of them, owning wells with 40 per cent. of the total potential capacity of the field, have no pipe lines or refineries, and are entirely dependent for an outlet for their crude upon others who purchase and transport oil. Five companies, owning wells with about 13 per cent. of the potential production, have pipe lines or refinery connections affording a partial outlet for their production. ”

“ At the start the difficulty of getting the apparatus for a refinery to the creek had been so enormous that the bulk of the crude had been driven to the nearest manufacturing cities—Erie, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Much had gone to the seaboard, too, and Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were all doing considerable refining. There was always a strong feeling in the Oil Regions that the refining should be done at home. Before the railroads came the most heroic efforts were made again and again to get in the necessary machinery. ”

“ With wondrous speed and unfailing certainty it conveys crude-oil from the wells to the refineries in or out of the region, climbing hills, descending ravines, fathoming rivers and traversing plains and forests. Methods of refining have kept pace with progress in transportation. The smoky, dangerous, inconvenient kettle-still of the pioneer on Oil Creek has given place to the mammoth refinery of to-day, with its labor-saving appliances, its hundreds of skilled employés and 332its improved processes. ”

“ Many practical men, real refiners, who have been forced to give up their business to refiners of railroad privileges, have testified to the same effect as the manufacturer who said to Congress in 1872: "I believe a refinery of 100 barrels can be run cheaper than the larger establishments." ”

“ Nature certainly spared no effort to bring petroleum into general notice ages before James Young manufactured paraffine-oil in Scotland or Samuel M. Kier fired-up his miniature refinery at Pittsburg. North and south, east and west the presence of the greasy staple was manifested positively and extensively. ”

“ Attracted early in life to the newly discovered oil fields of Pennsylvania, he became a dealer in the raw product and later a refiner, acquiring with capital, laboriously saved, first one refinery, then another. ”

“ He started a little refinery in Cleveland, hundreds of miles from the oil wells. The sixty and more manufacturers who had been able to plant themselves before 1860, when they had to distil coal into petroleum before they could refine petroleum into kerosene, had been multiplied into hundreds by the arrival of petroleum ready made from below. Some of the richest and most successful business men of the country had preceded him and were flourishing. ”

“ A hundred million people, occupying one-sixth of the earth’s surface, had taken over their industries, and were running them, and would make a success of them—if only the organized greed of the world would stand off and let them alone!
Bunny took Paul in his car, to show him all the field. They investigated the new refinery, that wonderful work of art. Before them rose a great building, made entirely of enormous baking-pans set one inside another—a stack half way to heaven ”

“ All petroleum gathered as aforesaid and delivered from trunk lines of pipe for export in its crude state by or for any party hereto or by or for any refinery or refining company then embraced in either of said schedules shall constitute seaboard exporting, and the business of receiving and exporting such petroleum in its crude state shall be the business of said seaboard export department. ”

“ The first structure—or the one nearest the city—was called the Refinery building, because the central portion was used for such purposes, but it included a saltpetre and sulphur warehouse, of a capacity of fifteen hundred tons, on the east end, and a charcoal department and machine shop with a steam engine on the west end. Rifle and ballistic pendulums on the northeast, and the steam boiler house on the northwest portions. ”

“ In the face of these difficulties the company continued work, and in the spring of 1894 succeeded in making arrangements to ship crude-oil. Storage-tanks were erected at the wells and at the railroad, and a refinery is now in operation at Caspar. The wells vary in depth from nine-hundred to fifteen-hundred feet and three companies are operating. The oil is a valuable lubricant. The transportation of the oil to the railroad is effected by freight-wagons of the ordinary sort. ”

“ Affiant says the said Standard Oil Company owns and operates its refineries at Cleveland, Ohio, and its refinery at Bayonne, New Jersey; that it has no other refineries nor any interest in any other refineries, nor does the Standard Oil Company operate or control in the United States any other refineries of crude petroleum ”

“ In connection with every refinery there are many shops, where mechanical work incidental to repairs and construction is carried on. These shops are equipped with the necessary tools and implements for quick repairs and are under the supervision of the chief engineer. ”

“ It has rich agricultural surroundings, as well as natural gas, oil and coal in the vicinity. Among its important industries are an oil-refinery, a packing-plant, sash and door factories, bottling-works, foundries, cottonseed oil and flour mills and casket, soap and broom factories. ”

“ It has approximately 735 tank cars, operates about 470 miles of pipe line, including adequate facilities for the transportation of crude oil from the fields to its refinery, and has about 256 wholesale and 263 retail gasoline stations in Oklahoma and other states which are supplied from its refinery. At the refinery it has gastight steel storage tanks with a total capacity of about 645,000 barrels. ”

“ Half a million tons of coal are annually produced, 1/10 of which is used by the Company for smelters and their own steamships, the rest being sold.
To visit the mines there is a drop in an electric car of nearly 1⁄4 of a mile. There are streets, shops, offices, restaurants, stalls for horses, black-smiths’ shop, etc., down below; and the workings go far under the deep sea where ships are sailing above. There is good rock and no drip. The Company owns copper mines, smelting works, pottery and brick works, glass and bottle factories, etc., with a fleet of steamers and sailing vessels. ”

“ The smelting of ores is carried on here actively and successfully, the convenience of coal, coke and fluxes, and the hauling of the ores down hill, giving the place marked advantages for this industry. Superior opportunities are likewise presented for a great variety of manufactures, foremost among them being iron and steel productions,—iron ore, limestone and all other necessary ingredients abounding in the locality, and being of easy access. The fall of the stream,—two hundred feet per mile,—supplies a water-power of never failing volume. ”

“ At one time, the refiner had to consider the saleability of his refined products before he commenced to refine them, but to-day, with the perfect system which prevails for the handling of huge quantities of refined products, and the transporting of them to the most distant markets, the one desire of the refiner is, naturally, to secure from his treatment of the crude oil, as many refined products as possible, always keeping an eye on the production of the largest quantities of the higher priced products than upon those which are of low value. ”

“ But the great industrial development of the 19th century, with its growing necessity for fuel, has brought about the exploitation of the rich coal-fields of the country, and to-day the coal mines yield the heaviest output of any mineral products. To instance the rapid growth in the extraction of coal, it is worth mentioning that in 1825 its output was about 150,000 tons; in 1875, or only after half a century, the output has become 100 times greater, namely, over 15,000,000 tons ”

“ It is true hundreds of inferior refineries have been dismantled, not because they were frozen out by a crushing monopoly, but because they lacked requisite facilities. The refineries in vogue when the Standard was organized could not stay in business a week, if resurrected and revived. A team of pack-mules might as well try to compete with the New York Central Railroad as these early refineries to meet the requirements of the petroleum-trade at its present stage of perfection. ”

“ The Standard Oil Trust offers to prove by various witnesses that the disastrous condition of the refining business, and the numerous failures of refiners prior to 1875, arose from imperfect methods of refining, want of co-operation among refiners, the prevalence of speculative methods in the purchase and sale of both crude and refined petroleum, sudden and great reductions in price of crude, and excessive rates of freight ”

“ The coal used in the furnaces is converted into gas, which is found to be the most economical and most easily regulated fuel. This industry has drawn together a population of about 1500. I was interested to learn that labor in the production of this glass is paid twice as much as similar labor in England, and from three to four times as much as similar labor in France and Belgium. As the materials used in making plate-glass are inexpensive, the main cost, after the plant, is in labor. ”

“ From the time of the industrial revolution till the present, then, a well-developed iron industry has demanded the following:—fuel, usually furnished by coal; an abundant supply of the ore, either furnished locally or easily obtained by water carriage, ores being so bulky that land carriage is rarely profitable ”

“ There are several well-equipped independent refineries in operation at the present time in Pennsylvania [Pg 430] and Ohio oil-fields where the refiner has his own crude oil, his own pipe line, and produces his own natural gas for fuel purposes. It is needless to say that an experienced and skilful refiner operating under such favorable conditions can manufacture at less cost per barrel than any trust with a long list of pensioners and burdened with the control of two political parties and the maintenance of numerous city mansions, stock farms, and theological seminaries. ”

“ The same is true of the raw materials of industry—they must be hauled from the place where nature has stored them to the place where there are people ready to work them. And as these raw materials are not often found assembled in one section, a considerable amount of transportation to a central assembling place is necessary. The coal comes from one section, the copper from another, the iron from another, the wood from another—they must all be brought together. ”

“ We also bore thousands of artesian wells throughout the country, some of them to the depth of five thousand feet, for artesian water, gas, and petroleum, and occasionally we locate fine bodies of coal by those means and those that we don't need to supply the market we cap and stop the flow and use them in the future, always using the best flowing wells for the present time. ”

“ But steamboats, railways and telegraphs brought all parts of the land into actual contact; the discovery of petroleum and the cheapening of kerosene by improved methods of refining carried light into the most secluded corners, and added several hours of life to each day among farming communities; the vast expansion of manufactures during the Civil War led to modifications in educational methods, which in their turn made possible the utilization of our mineral resources. Each advance made others imperative. ”

“ Bulk-boats, leaky barrels and long hauls through fathomless mud are superseded by pipe-lines, which pump oil from the wells to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago. The rickety stills and dangerous devices of former times have yielded to the splendid refineries that utilize every vestige of crude and furnish two-hundred merchantable commodities. For much of this important advance in tools, appliances and machinery the great Oil-Well Supply-Company is directly responsible. From small beginnings it has grown to dazzling proportions. ”