`
`aoghs.org/technology/hydraulic-fracturing/
`
`April 22, 2023
`The evolution of technologies for fracturing geologic formations to
`increase oil and natural gas production.
`Since America’s earliest oil discoveries, detonating dynamite or nitroglycerin downhole
`helped increase a well’s production. The geologic “fracking” technology commonly used in
`oilfields after the Civil War would be significantly enhanced when hydraulic fracturing arrived
`in 1949.
`
`Modern hydraulic fracturing — popularly known as petroleum well “fracking” — can trace its
`roots to April 1865, when Civil War Union veteran Lt. Col. Edward A. L. Roberts received the
`first of his many patents for an “exploding torpedo.”
`
`In May 1990, Pennsylvania’s Otto Cupler Torpedo Company “shot” its last oil well with liquid
`nitroglycerin as the company abandoned using nitro while continuing to pursue a
`fundamental oilfield technology. Company President Rick Tallini credited Col. Roberts’
`original patents for leading to the modern fracturing systems.
`
`In 1862, E.A.L. Roberts was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the Union Army.
`In December he “conceived the idea of opening the veins and crevices in oil-
`bearing rock by exploding an elongated shell or torpedo therein.” Images
`courtesy Drake Well Museum, Early Days of Oil, Princeton University Press.
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`When the Roberts patent expired in 1883, his company was sold to former employee Adam
`Cupler Jr. (who died in a 1903 nitro explosion). The Cupler Torpedo Company became Otto
`Cupler Torpedo Company in 1937 after Otto Torpedo Company purchased it.
`
`“Our business since Colonel Roberts’ day has concerned lowering high explosives charges
`into oil wells in the Appalachian area to blast fractures into the oil bearing sand,” Tallini said.
`
`Roberts’ torpedo company operated in the Allegheny region of Titusville, where the U.S.
`petroleum industry began in August 1859 with the first American well specifically drilled for
`oil. His explosive method for fracking wells in Pennsylvania’s oil-bearing geologic formations
`would be adopted as other states made their first oil discoveries.
`
`Civil War Veteran’s “Torpedo”
`
`Civil War veteran Col. Edward A.L. Roberts led a New Jersey Regiment at the bloody 1862
`Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Amid the chaos of the battle, he saw the results of
`explosive Confederate artillery rounds plunging into the narrow millrace (canal) that
`obstructed the battlefield.
`
`When E.A.L. Roberts founds his company in 1865, his many patents give
`him a monopoly on torpedoes needed by the oil industry.
`
`Despite heroic actions during the battle, he was cashiered from Union Army in 1863. But the
`Virginia battlefield observation gave him an idea that would evolve into what he described as
`“superincumbent fluid tamping.”
`
`Roberts received his first patent for an “Improvement in Exploding Torpedoes in Artesian
`Wells” on April 25, 1865. His oilfield invention of fracturing to improve a well would vastly
`improve oil production from America’s young petroleum industry. Many more of the
`technology patents would follow.
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`The Roberts torpedo system eclipsed earlier oilfield methods, including black powder or
`dropping sticks of dynamite down a well, which often collapsed boreholes and ruined
`production.
`
`The same month Roberts was awarded his first exploding torpedo patent, an actor with a
`failed Pennsylvania oil well assassinated President Lincoln. In June 1864, John Wilkes Booth
`left Pennsylvania’s oilfields after a botched fracturing attempt at an oil well drilled by his
`Dramatic Oil Company.
`
`Roberts received another U.S. Patent (No. 59,936)
`in November 1866. This improved device would
`become widely known as the “Roberts Torpedo.” The
`advanced petroleum production technology used a
`column of water on top of an explosive device
`downhole to more effectively breakup rock
`formations at the oil-producing depths of wells.
`
`Early “torpedoes” were set off by a weight
`dropped along a suspension wire.
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`Shooting Oil Wells
`
`The Titusville Morning Herald newspaper reported: Our attention has been called to a series
`of experiments that have been made in the wells of various localities by Col. Roberts, with
`his newly patented torpedo. The results have in many cases been astonishing.
`
`The torpedo, which is an iron case, containing an amount of powder varying from fifteen to
`twenty pounds, is lowered into the well, down to the spot, as near as can be ascertained,
`where it is necessary to explode it. It is then exploded by means of a cap on the torpedo,
`connected with the top of the shell by a wire.
`
`Filling the borehole with water provided Roberts his “fluid tamping” to concentrate
`concussion and more efficiently fracture surrounding oil strata.
`
`The downhole technique had an immediate impact — production from some wells increased
`1,200 percent within a week of being shot – and the Roberts Petroleum Torpedo Company
`flourished.
`
`Roberts charged $100 to $200 per torpedo and a royalty of one-fifteenth of the increased
`flow of oil. Attempting to avoid Roberts’ fees, some oilmen hired unlicensed practitioners who
`operated by “moonlight” with their own devices. The inventor was outraged.
`
`Roberts hired Pinkerton detectives and lawyers to protect his patent — and is said to have
`been responsible for more civil litigation in defense of a patent than anyone in U. S. history.
`He spent more than $250,000 to stop the unlawful “torpedoists” or “moonlighters.”
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`Pouring nitro into a canister to prepare a “shooting” of a well drilled using a
`cable-tool rig powered with a nearby steam boiler.
`
`Applied legally or illegally, by 1868 nitroglycerin was preferred to black powder, despite its
`frequently fatal tendency to detonate accidentally.
`
`“A flame or a spark would not explode Nitro-Glycerin readily, but the chap who struck it a
`hard rap might as well avoid trouble among his heirs by having had his will written and a
`cigar-box ordered to hold such fragments as his weeping relatives could pick from the
`surrounding district,” noted John J. McLauren in 1896 in his book Sketches in Crude Oil —
`Some Accidents and Incidents of the Petroleum Development in all parts of the Globe.
`
`Roberts died a wealthy man on March 25,
`1881, in Titusville. His heirs sold Roberts
`Petroleum Torpedo Company to its employees,
`who continued in business as the Independent
`Explosives Company. By then, the Civil War
`Union veteran’s revolutionary “fracking”
`technology was being applied by the petroleum
`industry worldwide.
`
`Pouring nitroglycerin was risky enough in late
`19th century oilfields. Doing it for an illegal well
`“shooting” led to the term “moonlighting.”
`
`Otto Cupler Torpedo Company
`
`Rick Tallini’s historic Otto Cupler Torpedo Company at one time produced its own
`nitroglycerin in plants near Titusville — until the last of the company’s plants exploded in
`1978. They continued using liquid nitroglycerin for more than a decade. Then the company’s
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`final nitroglycerine supplier’s plant exploded in Moosic, Pennsylvania, in 1990.
`
`A century earlier, farther east of the oilfields at Oil City and Titusville (and the notorious boom
`town of Pithole), the giant Bradford oilfield had its own nitroglycerine manufacturers and
`fracturing service companies. A notable well fracking operation was run by an astute
`business woman (see Mrs. Alford’s Nitro Factory).
`
`At the Drake Well Museum, this 1948 Dodge Power Wagon once hauled
`hundreds of pounds of liquid nitroglycerin in ten-quart copper cans. The
`Department of Transportation in 1990 ended the era of hauling liquid
`nitroglycerin over U.S. roadways. Photo by Bruce Wells.
`
`Tallini’s final well shooting on May 5, 1990, used up the last of his company’s liquid nitro
`reserves on nitroglycerine. His company would continue shooting wells, but with safer
`modern explosives and procedures.
`
`The Otto Cupler Company would established a small museum in East Titusville to preserve
`documents from its earliest “fracking” of wells. The company’s 1948 Dodge truck in 2008 was
`put on display at the Drake Well Museum and Park in Titusville. Thanks to Rick Tallini, the
`museum’s park hosts realistic-looking “Nitro Shows” for visitors and school groups.
`
`At the end of the 19th century in Indian Territory, a crowd gathered in Bartlesville to watch a
`real nitro fracturing of a discovery well. The driller’s young stepdaughter, a Delaware Indian,
`dropped a “go devil” — the weighted detonating device — down the wire line in well bore to
`set off the canister of nitroglycerin.
`
`The downhole explosion of April 15, 1897, caused the Nellie Johnstone No.1 well to erupt a
`geyser of “black gold” that impressed onlookers and launched the Oklahoma petroleum
`industry (see First Oklahoma Oil Well).
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`Related to petroleum formation fracturing, development of well perforation was another
`important downhole oilfield technology.
`
`In 1939, Ira McCullough of Los Angeles received a U.S. patent for his design of a multiple
`bullet-shot casing perforator, “in which projectiles or perforating elements are shot through
`the casing and into the formation.”
`
`The innovation of firing at several levels through a borehole’s casing enhanced the flow of oil
`from geologic formations. Learn more in Downhole Bazooka.
`
`Hydraulic “Fracking”
`
`On March 17, 1949, a team of petroleum production experts converges on an oil well about
`12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma — to perform the first commercial application of
`hydraulic fracturing. Later that day, Halliburton and Stanolind company personnel
`successfully fractured another oil well near Holliday, Texas.
`
`The first commercial hydraulic fracturing of an oil well took place in 1949
`about 12 miles east of Duncan, Oklahoma.
`
`A fracking well experiment two years earlier in Hugoton, Kansas — home of a massive
`natural gas field — had proven the possibility of hydraulic fracturing for increased gas well
`productivity. Erle Halliburton (1892-1957) had patented an improved method for cementing
`oil wells in 1921, two years after founding his well service company in Ardmore, Oklahoma.
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`By 1988, the technology will have been applied nearly one million times. The technique had
`been developed and patented by Stanolind (later known as Pan American Oil Company) and
`an exclusive license issued to Halliburton to perform the process. In 1953, the license was
`extended to all qualified service companies.
`
`To complete a new well, explosive charges are lowered by a wire line to
`perforate the steel casing, cement and producing formation. After the charges
`are electronically fired, hydraulic fracturing greatly enhances oil and natural
`gas production.
`
`According to a spokesman from Pinnacle, a Halliburton service company:
`
`Since that fateful day in 1949, hydraulic fracturing has done more to increase recoverable
`reserves than any other technique, and Halliburton has led the industry in developing and
`applying fracturing technology.
`
`The company representative also noted, “In the more than 60 years following those first
`treatments, more than two million fracturing treatments have been pumped with no
`documented case of any treatment polluting an aquifer — not one.”
`
`Issues concerning water withdrawals for hydraulic
`fracturing in areas of low availability, spills during the
`handling of fracturing fluids, and injection of the fluids
`with inadequate mechanical integrity were among
`issues raised by the Environmental Protection Agency
`in its 2016 report, Hydraulic Fracturing For Oil And
`Gas.
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`An Erle Halliburton statue was
`dedicated in 1993 in Duncan,
`Oklahoma.
`
`Shale Fracturing Technology
`
`In the 1980s, a sudden technological advance in fracturing shale formations led to the U.S.
`vastly increasing its oil and especially natural gas production that continues to this day.
`
`Although credit should be shared with others, America’s first “shale boom” began with the
`innovative thinking from independent producers, especially from Galveston, Texas, George
`P. Mitchell, (1919 – 2013). Shale fracturing advancements began with steering a well
`horizontally into producing geological formations.
`
`In the 1980s, Mitchell Energy & Development began experimenting with hydraulic fracturing
`in horizontal wells in the Barnett Shale near Fort Worth. The company was among the few
`that began finding ways to extract large amounts of natural gas from shale formations.
`
`More innovations would follow as geologists recognized the potential of natural gas rich
`shales in Arkansas and Pennsylvania — and oil shale North Dakota (learn more in First
`North Dakota Oil well).
`
`America’s modern shale boom began in the 1980s when independent
`producers like George Mitchell experimented with ways to produce natural
`gas from the Barnett shale in Texas. May 2011 map courtesy Energy
`Information Administration.
`
`In the historic Williston Basin of North Dakota, producing oil since 1951, billions of barrels of
`new production came from the Bakken shale. Read more in First North Dakota Oil Well.
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`Earthquakes
`
`The largest earthquake in Oklahoma known to be induced by hydraulic fracturing came in
`2019, according to the United States Geological Survey, adding that the majority of the
`state’s earthquakes since 2009 have resulted from injected wastewater, not fracturing fluids.
`
`“Wastewater disposal is a separate process in which fluid waste from oil and gas production
`is injected deep underground far below ground water or drinking water aquifers,” USGS
`explained. “In Oklahoma over 90 percent of the wastewater that is injected is a byproduct of
`oil extraction process and not waste frack fluid.”
`
`In the Permian Basin of West Texas, a major U.S. location of production from shale fields,
`the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) in September 2021 reported six earthquakes since
`February 2020 registered at least a 3.5 magnitude on the Richter scale. The RRC identified
`the disposal of the large amounts of water used to break apart rock formations as a likely
`contributor to seismic activity.
`
`The commission, “asked drillers to cut back on the amount of wastewater they’re pumping
`underground,” according to World Oil. “It’s a fairly unusual move by the regulator, which
`hasn’t been as active as its counterpart in Oklahoma in trying to prevent earthquakes linked
`to fracking.”
`
`Industry Perspective
`
`Petroleum industry trade groups have established websites to educate a skeptical public
`about geologic fracturing technologies — “fracking” wells. According to one, “There is no
`shortage of questions about domestic energy production — what technologies are used?
`What does it mean for our environment? How does it create jobs? What is hydraulic
`fracturing, anyway?”
`
`Hydraulic fracturing has been used to increase production on millions of oil
`and natural gas wells since 1949.
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` Energy in Depth — offers links to the industry’s research and has long maintained: “While
`the first commercial fracturing job was conducted in the 1940s, the technique has been
`applied to the vast majority of U.S. oil and natural gas wells to enhance well performance,
`minimize drilling, and recover otherwise inaccessible resources.”
`
`The website, a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), reports
`that about 90 percent of operating U.S/ wells have been fractured — “and the process
`continues to be applied to boost production in unconventional formations — such as tight gas
`sands and shale deposits.”
`
`For another perspective about down-hole explosives to increase production, see Project
`Gasbuggy tests Nuclear “Fracking.”
`
`Col. Roberts at Battle of Fredericksburg
`
`Some Civil War historians might know of Col. Edward A. L. Roberts leading one of the many
`ill-fated Union charges up Marye’s Heights. Below are American Oil & Gas Historical Society
`research documenting little-known details from his service records at the National Archives,
`Washington, D.C.
`
`Oil well “shooting” or “fracking” torpedo inventor Col. Edward A.L. Roberts (1829-1881) was
`buried in Woodlawn Cemetery at Titusville, Pennsylvania. A simple headstone includes only
`by his name and the military rank he held at the Battle of Fredericksburg 19 years earlier.
`
`“We went into action under a most galling and deadly fire of shot and
`shell,” reported Col. Edward Roberts. An 1888 lithograph depicts the Army
`of the Potomac crossing the Rappahannock at the Battle of Fredericksburg
`in December 1862. Image courtesy Library of Congess.
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`For four months during the Civil War, the man who would someday revolutionize oil and
`natural gas production technology served as Lt. Colonel with the 28th New Jersey Volunteer
`Infantry Regiment. He fought at Fredericksburg in December 1862 – while awaiting results
`from his court martial, which had convened just weeks earlier.
`
`As the military court deliberated specifications of “intoxication on dress parade,” Roberts’
`regiment marched into the bloody fields and town Fredericksburg, Virginia. On December 13,
`the 28th New Jersey was the center of Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s first doomed assault on the
`fiercely defended Marye’s Heights. Fourteen more failed assaults would follow.
`
`The 28th charged into carefully positioned
`cannons. Confederate Col. Edward Porter
`Alexander had declared: “A chicken could not
`live on that field when we open on it.”
`
`Alexander was right. No Union soldiers would
`reach Marye’s Heights that cold December day.
`Crossing a canal and open ground, brigade after
`brigade could not dislodge the Confederates
`from their defenses behind a sunken road and
`stone wall. Union casualties exceeded 12,000.
`
`When his commander was shot in the face
`during the 28th’s charge, Roberts assumed
`command. In his after action report, Roberts
`wrote, “We went into action under a most galling
`and deadly fire of shot and shell, and continued
`in action until near dark. Officers and men
`conducted themselves well.”
`
`A month later, Roberts’ court martial verdict was
`published under General Order No. 2. Despite
`his heroic actions during the battle, among the
`Civil War’s bloodiest, he was found guilty and
`ordered to be cashiered, effective January 12,
`1863. Prior to the court’s verdict, Roberts had
`attempted to resign, but a superior officer
`characterized this as “tendering resignation in
`face of enemy.”
`
`Col. Edward A. L. Roberts is buried in
`Titusville, Pennsylvania — where the U.S. oil
`industry began in 1859.
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`Roberts’ service as a Union officer ended in 1863. He soon would be transforming the
`Pennsylvania oilfields — and the young U.S. petroleum industry.
`
`Moonlighters shoot Wells
`
`Andrew Dalrymple secretly shot his last well on February 5, 1873, when he and his wife were
`killed in a nitroglycerin explosion at Dennis Run, Pennsylvania. He allegedly had been
`“moonlighting” — illegal oil well shooting — in the Tidioute oilfield.
`
`Nitroglycerine was a powerful but dangerous
`means of fracturing oil-producing rock
`formations. The technology had been
`patented, its use rigorously protected. Pouring
`nitroglycerin was risky enough in the late 19th
`century. Doing it illegally at night made it more
`so.
`
`“The Dalrymple torpedo accident at Tidioute
`brings to light the fact that nitroglycerine, or
`other dangerous explosives, are used, stored
`and manipulated secretly in places little
`suspected by the general public,” reported the
`Titusville Morning Herald.
`
`“A large amount of this dangerous material has
`lately been stolen from the various magazines
`throughout the country, ” the newspaper
`added. “This species of theft is winked at by
`some parties, who are opposed to the Roberts
`torpedo patent.”
`
`_______________________
`
`A Pennsylvania historical marker notes the 1865
`demonstration of the invention Union Col. E.A.L.
`Roberts.
`
`Recommended Reading: The Green and the Black: The Complete Story of the Shale
`Revolution, the Fight over Fracking, and the Future of Energy (2016); The Boom: How
`Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World (2015); The
`Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters (2014); The
`Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021). Your Amazon purchase
`benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns
`a commission from qualifying purchases.
`
`_______________________
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`The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history.
`Become an AOGHS annual supporting member and help maintain this energy education
`website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org.
`© 2023 Bruce A. Wells.
`
`Citation Information – Article Title: “Shooters – A “Fracking” History.” Authors: B.A. Wells and
`K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL:
`https://aoghs.org/technology/hydraulic-fracturing. Last Updated: April 24, 2023. Original
`Published Date: September 1, 2007.
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