Bertha Rogers
The Lone Star Producing Company’s oil exploratory hole, Bertha Rogers, was 9.583 metres deep, and the worlds deepest hole between 1974 and 1979, where the Soviet Union broke the record with the Kola Superdeep Hole.
The drilling was done with the largest land based drilling rig in the world. The Loffland Bros. Rig 32.
It took the bore cuttings 8 hours to reach to surface, while drilling.
Total cost of the well was between 6.000.000 and 7.000.000 US$ depending on the source.
The drilling stopped April 13th 1974, after 504 days of drilling, when they hit a pocket of molten sulfur that melted the drill bit.
During drilling they encountered temperatures up to 246 degrees Celcius, and 24.850 psi of pressure.
Gas was discovered at 4.000 metres, and the well produced natural gas until July 1997. The Bertha Rogers well was plugged and abandoned.
Unfortunately we haven’t got the precise location (please post a comment if you do), but according to the United States Geological Survey its very close to Clinton Sherman Airport and Burns Flat in Washita County, Oklahoma.
EDIT: Thanks Hallvor for supplying coordinates for the well. Much appreciated!
6 Comments
Hallvor Engen
I was looking for the coordinates to add it to the Wikipedia article, and I found them 3 places. Sadly they only mostly agree with each other:
35.31N 99.19W: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1990/0305/report.pdf
35.309543N, 99.192503W: https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/imap/50dde12fe4b0e31bb02858d0
35.29007N, 99.168485W: https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/49/042/49042347.pdf
The 2 first agree, so I will go with them.
Abandoned
Thank you for your input, Hallvor.
There is a road on OpenStreetMaps, that’s semi erased on satellite images. And the grass has clearly another color in the surrounding area, so I believe its very plausible that there used to be an oilfield.
Darrell Trout
My father name Buster Trout. He was the man who pushed the blowout preventer. He was the driller for Laughlin Drilling Rig 32. This was the Rig that drilled the Bertha Rogers location.
Abandoned
Thanks for sharing Darrell.
Lovely to hear from people who want to share information about these historic places.
It’s good to know, that even though the Bertha Rogers site is long gone, that the memories and knowledge still is preserved!
Do you know if your father drilled on Bertha Rogers?
Jared
My dad was a welder for loffland brothers drilling his name was Jerry Naylor and was on rig 32 that day they melted the bit. He said that everything started shaking and everyone took off running. Rig 32 was able to hold 50,000ft of pipe in the derrick it was a huge rig. Anyone that was on location that day got a certificate that reads “To Hell and Back” and says that you were there. I know I’ve seen my dads certificate.
Peter
Thanks for sharing Jared 😀