Nathan Appleman Owner of Central Petroleum Company The Competitive Edge is a reprint from the Territorial Magazine, Volume 4, Number 5, 1984. By Barbara Oringderff Besides being the discovery well of Fairport Field, the field that made many men rich and opened up to Western half of Kansas as oil and gas territory. Carrie Oswald No. 1, in Russell County, was to have another important claim to fame. In January of 1933, this oil well became the first in the nation to be revitalized by acidization. Acidization, the process of pouring acid down a hole under pressure to increase oil flow, was a significant development in the oil industry that was first used by a young man named Nathan Appleman. Historical records say that in 1932, Appleman, a graduate of the Wharten School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, came to Kansas from his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was in the oil business with his father. He came to study the Fair- T E R R I T O R I A L M A G A Z I N E 31
port and other Kansas oil fields and, as a result of this trip, he took an option to buy some of the original producing oil wells (including the Carrie Oswald No. 1) in the Fairport Field northwest of Gorham, Kansas. Undoubtedly, the utmost caution was taken to keep the option a secret, but it must have seemed a strange move to the few men who did know about it because, by this time, the production of Carrie Oswald No. 1 had declined from 200 barrels a day to about 2 barrels a day, and no one had much interest in the once acclaimed Fairport Field anymore. To add to the improbability of the situation, oil, in 1932, was selling for only 35cents a barrel! Appleman, however, had an idea about how to revitalize the field that was to make him rich-and to make history. History is often scanty at best on very specialized subjects, and I found that there were many unanswered questions about how acidization actually began. As I researched the background of oil in Kansas for Kansas Territorial Vol. IV, No. III, I became more and more fascinated with this little know Kansas first. One afternoon friends Marvin and Marie French of Ness City (they own an oil field supply business and have worked in the industry from many years), were helping me get together some facts I needed. When I read them the paragraph I had written about Appleman and the acidization process, they were intrigued. Marvin and Marie, as well as several other industry people I had talked with, were very familiar with the acidization process and the fact that it had been used on Carrie Oswald No. 1. No one, however, seemed to be certain just how the process had been discovered or where it was actually used first. Marvin French shifted thoughtfully in his chair. Why don t you ask Appleman about acidization, he said, matter of factly. I was totally startled, since any references to Nathan Appleman I had come up with in the history books make him sound like a legendary entrepreneur long dead. All of us around the table began to count. Sure enough, we all concluded, he was a young man when he acidized the Car- We sell Harbison-Fischer pumps, Norris sucker rods, CERAM-KOTE coating, Gates V-Belts, Apollo ball valves, PVC pipe and fittings, steel fittings, packer, plug, and tool service. Come in and see us at any of our four locations: PLAINVILLE HAYS 604 NW 3rd St 1023 East 40 Bypass Plainville, KS 67663 Hays, KS 67601 Phone: 785-434-4631 Phone: 785-625-6611 MCCOOK 1709 West O Street McCook, NE 69001 Phone: 308-345-6100 HILL CITY 15 Industrial Park Dr Hill City, KS 67642 Phone: 785-421-3443 32 T E R R I T O R I A L M A G A Z I N E
rie. He could still be alive, but how on earth would I ever be able to locate him! This might take some real detective work. Why don t you look in the blue book, Marvin said casually, referring to the book containing the names, addresses and telephone numbers of just about everyone in the oil business. I walked over and picked up the one by Marie s desk. The pamphlet, Six Decades of Derricks, put out by the Russell county Historical Society in 1983, noted that the Appleman family company was named Central Petroleum Co., so I looked under A and there it was: Appleman, N. Co., 685 Madison Avenue, New York, New York! From that point on it got more complicated, but I can report that Mr. Appleman is indeed alive and well and I have had a delightful telephone conversation with him at his home in Florida. The history books had indicated the Nathan Appleman knew about the revitalizing of salt water wells through the use of acid, and he had a hunch that the same technique might work with oil wells, so he tried it on Carrie Oswald No. 1. Simple but not so simple according to people in the industry. The first question I asked Nathan Appleman when I got him on the phone was, Were you really the first to gain secondary recovery from an oil well Time was not kind to the West Kansas Refining Company plant located south of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Russell. The company chartered in 1925 by Clinton Mongomery of Wichita only operated at capacity for about 6 months. It was sold at a foreclosure sale and was eventually moved, piece by piece to Oklahoma. T E R R I T O R I A L M A G A Z I N E 33
A typical steel derrick with walking beam used for cable tool drilling. This was often left on site for pumping production, as was the steel rig. For this reason, there was a demand for rig builders up until the 1940s. this photo was taken about 1936 in Russell County. Note the 16 or 18 casing pipe in the foreground. This was used at the top end of the hole. Size was reduced as the hole was drilled deeper. Average depth in Russell County, 3,200 ft. (Photograph courtesy of the Russell County Historical Society.) through acidizing? Since I had felt it necessary to warn him in advance that I was just learning about the oil industry, Appleman chuckled at my academic sounding question and, in his friendly but intense manner of speaking said: Yes, I know I ve been credited with being the first. When I cleaned out my New York office last April I found my original contract with the Dow Chemical Company in Michigan. I sent a copy of the contract to the president of Dow and he wrote and thanked me for starting a process (acidization) that now brings Dow about a million dollars a year! Acidization costs considerably more today that when Appleman started his process. He said he remembered that is cost him one hundred fifty to two hundred dollars to acidize two wells, Carrie Oswald No. 1 and another well. Today acidization costs an average of $1,000 a well, depending upon the well and many other factors. I thought my next question might not be so easy since it couldn t be answered with a yes or no, but, happily, I was wrong. What, I asked, gave you the idea that this could be done? Still without hesitation, Appleman answered, I read in a magazine article where Dow was applying inhibited acid, acid that couldn t corrode the pipe, in brine wells in Michigan. I remembered that some of the Fairport Field I looked at in Kansas had the same limestone formation as that in Michigan, and I just had a hunch that the same technique might work with oil wells. So, I took my limestone samples to Dow, in Michigan, and asked them to build me an acid wagon. I had seen an early acid wagon on display at the 1983 Russell (Kansas) oil show, and I wondered if by some fluke it could have been his. 34 T E R R I T O R I A L M A G A Z I N E
What did your acid wagon look like, I asked with excitement. There was a pause. I don t know, he said, I never saw it. What do you mean you never saw it! I said, I thought you were there! Mr. Appleman chuckled, and remained calm in spite of my obvious disappointment. My superintendent, Charles Gilpert, did the actual acidizing that January, while I waited in a hotel room in Wichita with a cashier s check in my hand! The check was for money loaned to my father on a character loan by the First National Bank of Tulsa. Gilpert and I had it all worked up so that he could tell me through code how things were going. It took 2 or 3 days for the acidization process to work, and I stayed in my hotel room by the telephone until I got the final word to go ahead and exercise that option. Of course, Gilpert finally did call to say that the bold experiment had worked, and Nathan Appleman rushed out and took up his option to buy the Fairport Field. Production on the historic Carrie Oswald No. 1 (and other wells in the Field) soon soared, with the Carrie alone reaching over 108 barrels a day. And so the first attempt in the nation to gain secondary recovery from an oil well through acidizing was a success, and it all started in a isolated cow pasture in Kansas. Today, acidization is considered to be one of the more significant developments in the oil industry over the past 50 years, but, of course it has been only one of many spectacular developments in a dynamic industry where people and companies are always looking for new technology that will give them a strong competitive edge in the oil business, and Nathan Appleman is still active and successful in that business today. When I asked him what developments he considered important over the past years, Appleman put, More sophisticated techniques such as fracking, (a method of fracturing the oil bearing strata) at the top of the list. Also, he continued, in certain areas oil and gas reserves can now be pinpointed by seismograph. These techniques were not available in the early days. Appleman also thinks that, unlike the old days when the discovery of Carrie Oswald No. 1 opened up the extensive Fairport Field in Russell County, Kansas, most of the easy oil has been found. Most reserves today, he feels. are at greater depths off shore thus requiring more sophisticated and more expensive techniques. My conversation with Nathan Appleman pointed out to me how very much the oil industry has changed, but I think some things don t really change. Consider that, because of today s higher cost of exploration and recovery, it s definitely drilling smarter that gives ambitious companies -- and people -- that competitive edge... just as it did Nathan Appleman 50 years ago when he made history by acidizing the Carrie Oswald No. 1.] T E R R I T O R I A L M A G A Z I N E 35
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