OT Is it really possible, anywhere, to shoot a shotgun and find oil deposits so close to the surface that the gunshot lets the oil out?
I ask because someone told me that the people on The Beverly Hillbillies were not real people. He claimed the show is fiction, and I say they must have gotten rich just the way the TV intro shows it.
In some places, petroleum bubbles to the surface of Earth. In parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq, for instance, porous rock allows oil to seep to the surface in small ponds. However, most oil is trapped in underground oil reservoirs.
In 1857 James Miller Williams of Hamilton began distilling some of the "tar" lying around Oil Springs (located a few kilometers south from Petrolia), after buying the property rights from Charles Nelson Tripp. In July or August 1858 he struck an oil deposit in Oil Springs while digging a shallow well, sparking the oil drilling industry.
In Pensylvania Edwin Drake drilled the world's first oil well, striking oil on August 27, 1859. Crude oil which seeps to the surface in this part of Pennsylvania was often collected and used medicinally to treat rheumatism and sprains.
Oil was first detected in Texas in July of 1543 when Spanish explorer Luis de Moscoso of the DeSoto expedition saw oil floating on the water in the Galveston Bay in an area between High Island and the Sabine Pass, near Port Arthur, Texas.
Very good to know.
And if it can happen in Iraq, it can happen in Kentucky too. Proves the hillbillies were real people.
I grew up not far from there, but we had no oil in our back yard afaict.
That's certainly close to the surface. I have to go find Ellie May. She's so sweet and innocent and beautiful.
When I was a kid 60 years ago, my folks use to take us to the beach (below Monterey California) a lot. The beach was covered with tar balls. I remember my folks getting annoyed when we stepped in them and got them all over our feet.
Since off shore drilling started, the beaches cleared up the off shore oozing a lot.
Yepper !
The Clampetts were originaly from SW Ontario - .. my wife has relatives there - who still speak HillBilly to this day ..
That's bullshit , we live not all that far from Eurekee Springs , and The Clampetts are a legendary family that dates their time in Arkansaw back to the time Davy Crockett (a distant cousin) was active in Kaintuck . Don't you go tryin' to culturally appropriate our local heroes !
Thanks, Jed .. or is it Jethro .. ? PS : dating the family back to the Disney movie .. vs the TV show .. doesn't count. John T.
The La Brea tar pits are another example.
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