Southwest USA

History of Luling Oilfield And Photos

The small town of Luling Texas is located about an hour south of Austin. If you’ve ever traveled that way, you may have noticed the unusual water tower that looks like a giant watermelon. Luling Texas was once known as the watermelon capital of the state. Luling is also an oilfield town. Dozens of small aging “stripper wells” are interspersed with homes, schools, and parks in Luling Texas.  Stripper wells are defined as those which make less than 10 barrels a day. Some of the little pump jacks which bring oil up from a depth of about 2500 feet,  have been turned into art objects using wood and metal cutouts. Here are some photos of some of the unusual  pump jacks around Luling Texas.

Below: the Luling watermelon water tower,  and a small oil well pump jack featuring a quarterback throwing a pass.

The small oil wells that you see around Luling Texas are part of an old oil field discovered on August 9, 1922 by Edgar B Davis. Davis had mortgaged everything that he owned and was betting on either finding oil are going broke. The Rafael Rios No. 1 well came in at 2,161 feet and began producing 150 barrels per day, thus ensuring Davis’s fortune and and Luling  place in Texas history.

Although the small independent oil companies that own most of the wells around Luling Texas have made attempts to make them look more attractive to local residents and tourists, quite a few that we saw on our trip were leaking small amounts of crude oil onto the ground from leaking stuffing boxes, leaky valves or busted pipes. The smell of hydrogen sulfide gas or H2S gas, can be smelled throughout the town of Luling Texas, but concentrations from these small wells are usually not a big danger to residents. While driving around the county roads around Luling, just after recent rains, we noticed a sheen of oil on some ponds, and other areas devoid of vegetation due to years of crude oil spilling on the ground. The Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas, along with TCEQ, the TExas Commission for Environmental Quality, apparently has bigger fish to fry with the large Eagle Ford Shale oil discovery just to the south of this area. In that area there are some oil wells making over 2000 barrels a day. These understaffed agencies are struggling to keep up with all the new wells being drilled.

In the very lower left-hand corner of this photo, you can see oil and natural gas bubbling up from a hole in the casing. This small stripper  oil well near Luling Texas had crude oil draining down the hill into a creek which flows into the San Marcos River. It’s hard to believe that things like this still go on, but they do. From personal experience working as an oilfield pumper or gauger, I know that most oil and gas companies nowadays try to keep their locations clean and comply with state regulations, but there seems to be a double standard when it comes to the upkeep and regulation of small stripper wells in Texas. The oil and gas industry is an important sector of our nation’s economy, however all operators, both large and small, should play by the same rules.

For more photos of  pump jacks and oilfield equipment see Energyindustryphotos.com