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The Effects of the Boom |
How Did the Boom
Affect the
Petroleum Industry?
The huge amount of oil that gushed from Spindletop brought a new problem,
what to do
with all of this oil!
This was the turning point for industry.
Before Spindletop, petroleum had been used mainly for
burning in stoves and lamps or for lubrication.
Railroads and factories used coal as an energy 
source because it was cheap and there was a big supply of it. The use of oil had been limited
because there was not a big supply of it. Spindletop changed this! The cost of oil went down
to only a few cents a barrel because of the huge amounts of oil that Spindletop was producing.
Railroads and factories quickly converted their equipment to use oil instead of coal. 
There
were many advantages to using oil. The oil was:
It did not take long before ships and tankers also converted to the use of oil as their source of energy for power. Immediately after the Spindletop discovery, 500 to 600 oil companies were formed. Some, like the Higgins Oil and Fuel Company, stayed in business a short time. Others went on to become giants in the petroleum industry. 
One such company was the J. M. Guffey Oil Company. The Guffey Oil Company built the
first oil refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, which is located only a few miles from Spindletop.
This company later became known as the Gulf Oil Company.
Another company that managed to become very successful, was the Magnolia Petroleum
Company. It was the first company to build a refinery in Beaumont. Later, this company
became known as Mobil Oil.
Other companies that became well-known leaders in the petroleum industry are the Texas
Company
(now Texaco) and the Sun Oil Company. Still another company founded later by families
connected with Spindletop was the Humble Oil Company (now Exxon). Exxon is now the
largest oil corporation in the world.
Even an English trading company became interested in transporting oil from Spindletop to
England. This company became the Shell Oil Company. Within a year from its discovery,
Beaumont oil was burning all over the United States, as well as Germany, England, Cuba, and
Mexico. This was the beginning of the fuel age for America. Spindletop restored to the
United States the title of world's leading oil producer. Spindletop is a name that would go down in history as the site of the greatest oil well of all time
and a living symbol of the incredible oil industry.
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