A wildcatter is someone who drills for oil in a location that is not an oil field.
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The first time I saw a Dixie cup full of rocks, I knew I was hooked on the oil industry. Back then, I was in Kansas with an oil and gas geologist, and we went out to a rig to check out what was going on. Once he was handed that cup, he poured the contents out and put them under a microscope. Watching these tiny oil dots gush out of the rocks was captivating and fascinating, and it was that moment that I went all in on the industry.
I’m not the first one to have this experience, though. In fact, that happened back in 1859, and it changed the world forever. Without them, we wouldn’t have an oil and gas industry and all the things those mediums have helped us change. But more importantly to me, they’ve served as an inspiration for blazing new trails and embodying the entrepreneurial spirit.
It all begins in Pennsylvania.
Titusville Starts a Movement
Titusville is in the Northwestern part of the state and has a pretty rich history of its own. It was a fairly rural community for years, but come 1857, things changed a bit. That’s when Edwin L. Drake moved to town. He worked for the Seneca Oil Company of Connecticut, and he wanted to find crude oil.
Back then, people had discovered crude oil and knew about its uses. But getting it was difficult and seemed random at times, so it wasn’t a commercially viable project. Drake wanted to find a way to change that, and Titusville became his starting point.
The idea was to adapt salt well drilling technology to work with oil, and for that, he went to William (Uncle Billy) Smith, who was not only a salt well driller but also a blacksmith. They put a plan into action, but just a few years into the project, Seneca Oil dropped its ties with him and his ideas. Then, on August 27, 1859, everything changed. Drake and Smith struck oil at 69½ feet, and from then on, we had an oil industry.
None of this was easy, mind you. They had to create a new technology to make this happen. At the time, nobody could drill very far into the Earth, and Drake wanted to go down to 1,000 feet. He created what he called a “Drive Pipe” or “Conductor” that essentially slammed the pipe deep into the ground until it hit rock, then it would drill. That turned out to be the winning formula, and the basis of the technology we use today.
Wildcatters Enter the Fray
Drake’s discovery sparked the Pennsylvania Oil Rush, which drew thousands of people to the area in hopes of earning their own fortunes. They ended up being called Wildcatters, a term for someone who drills for oil in a location that is not an oil field. This type of person was nimble and could move quickly if a well came up dry, but was also an inherent gambler, not knowing whether their gamble would pay off. But when it did, they performed very well.
While they wouldn’t be called this back then, someone with that same kind of risk-it-all spirit would be dubbed an entrepreneur. After all, they were taking a chance on something that was very much not a sure thing, and if they failed, they moved on to the next project. If they won, they took home the glory and built upon it. Some did just that, while many others did not. But boy was it a fun ride.
Today’s Titusville
My work is similar to the jobs these wildcatters did in Pennsylvania over 150 years ago. I do mammoth amounts of research to determine whether an area has oil. Then, without any concrete proof, I go there and start drilling. All evidence says we’re good, but are we?
This is what being an entrepreneur is all about. It’s that moment when you put all your money on red and spin the roulette wheel. Is it scary? Sure. But on the other side of the gamble are the results, and that makes it all worthwhile.
I didn’t grow up in the 1800s, but I feel like the spirit of the Titusville Wildcatters is still in me today. And I never have that emotion more than the moment when someone hands me a Dixie cup full of little tiny rocks that, when viewed under magnification, are erupting oil.