This Week in History

 June 25, 1889 – First Oil Tanker catches Fire.
The first oil tanker ever built, the W. L. Hardison, burns at its Ventura, California, wharf. The Hardison & Stewart Oil Company (forerunner of Union Oil Company) built the revolutionary schooner as an alternative to paying one-dollar per barrel railroad tank car rates to reach markets in San Francisco.
June 25, 1901 – Tulsa blooms with Red Fork Gusher
The Oklahoma petroleum industry takes off – and Tulsa begins its journey to becoming the “Oil Capital of the World” – when two Pennsylvania oilmen make a wildcat discovery in the Creek Indian Nation.
June 26, 1885 – First Pennsylvania Gas Company
The Hardison & Stewart Oil Company incorporates. It is the first natural gas company to be chartered under legislation passed in Pennsylvania for that purpose.
June 28, 1967 – Hall of Petroleum opens in Smithsonian Museum
The Hall of Petroleum opens at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of History and Technology on the national mall in Washington, D.C. Multiple exhibits feature exploration and production technology advancements – and the resulting oil and natural gas discoveries essential to development of America’s energy supplies.
June 29, 1956 – Interstate Highway System enacted
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, becomes law. It provides 90 percent federal funding for a “system of interstate and defense highways” (in case of the need to flee cities during a nuclear attack). The 41,000-mile system is designed to reach every city with a population of more than 100,000.
June 30, 1864 – Oil taxed for First Time
The federal government taxes oil for the first time when it levies a $1 per barrel tax on crude oil. As early as 1862 – needing revenue to fund the Civil War – Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase had advocated a $6.30 tax per barrel on crude oil and $10.50 per barrel on refined products.
July 1, 1859 – First Issue of Pipeline & Gas Journal
The first issue of the American Gas Light Journal is published. It is the first to report on the manufactured gas industry and subsequently the natural gas industry. Publication continues after 1917 as the American Gas Journal, which later combines with Pipeline Engineer International and continues today as the Pipeline & Gas Journal.
July 1, 1914 – Petroleum Technology Office established
Four years after the United States Bureau of Mines is organized under the Department of Interior, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Division is established. W. A. Williams is named Chief Petroleum Technologist. The division’s Petroleum Experiment Station is in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. In 1977, under the newly created U.S. Department of Energy, the site becomes the Bartlesville Energy Technology Center (joining the Morgantown Energy Technology Center in West Virginia and the Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center in Pennsylvania).
July 1, 1919 – Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association expands
The two-year-old Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association establishes its Kansas-Oklahoma Division in Tulsa. The association’s members had helped provide essential supplies of petroleum and petroleum products, allowing the Allies of World War I, “to float to victory upon a wave of oil.”
July 1, 1938 – Major Illinois Oil Discovery
The Texas Company – later Texaco – strikes oil in Marion County near Salem, Illinois. By January 1939 the field is ranked seventh in U.S. daily production.