England oil production WWII

[BigGrey]

I know this is a little off topic but this effort enabled Allied aircraft to fight the war. I had never heard about this.


Quote
"The Oil Patch Warrior," a seven foot bronze statue of a roughneck holding a four foot pipe wrench stands near Nottingham England to honor the American oil men's assistance and sacrifice in the war. A replica was placed in Ardmore Oklahoma in 2001.
"THE OIL PATCH WARRIORS OF WORLD WAR II

Seventy-five years ago this month, a Band of Roughnecks went abroad on a top secret mission into Robin Hood's stomping grounds to punch oil wells to help fuel England's war machines.

It's a story that should make any oilman or woman proud.

The year was 1943 and England was mired in World War II. U-boats attacked supply vessels, choking off badly needed supplies to the island nation. But oil was the commodity they needed the most as they warred with Germany.

A book "The Secret of Sherwood Forest: Oil Production in England During World War II" written by Guy Woodward and Grace Steele Woodward was published in 1973, and tells the obscure story of the American oil men who went to England to bore wells in a top secret mission in March 1943.

England had but one oil field, in Sherwood Forest of all places. Its meager output of 300 barrels a day was literally a drop in the bucket of their requirement of 150,000 barrels a day to fuel their war machines.

Then a top secret plan was devised: to send some Americans and their expertise to assist in developing the field. Oklahoma based Noble Drilling Company, along with Fain-Porter signed a one year contract to drill 100 wells for England, merely for costs and expenses.

42 drillers and roughnecks from Texas and Oklahoma, most in their teens and early twenties volunteered for the mission to go abroad. The hands embarked for England in March 1943 aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth. Four National 50 drilling rigs were loaded onto ships but only three of them made landfall; the Nazi U-boats sank one of the rigs een route to the UK.

The Brits' jaws dropped as the Yanks began punching the wells in a week, compared to five to eight weeks for their British counterparts. They worked 12 hour tours, 7 days a week and within a year, the Americans had drilled 106 wells and England oil production shot up from 300 barrels a day to over 300,000

The contract fulfilled, the American oil men departed England in late March 1944. But only 41 hands were on board the return voyage. Herman Douthit, a Texan derrick-hand was killed during the operation. He was laid to rest with full military honors, and remains the only civilian to be buried at The American Military Cemetery in Cambridge."

[sandiego89]

Indeed interesting. Learn something new all the time....

[Firebird]

That should be RMS Queen Elizabeth, not HMS.

[M-62A]

BigGrey,
Thank you for posting this. I have a copy of "The Secret of Sherwood Forest" but was not aware of the statue tribute.
see.https://www.flickr.com/photos/30120216@N07/16072217217

Tony Broadhurst

[Randy Wilson]

I too have this book and here is a paragraph from page 245 summarizing the results:

"First, production from the oil fields of the English Midlands had risen during the year 1943 to a peak daily production of slightly more than 3,000 U.S. barrels of oil per day. By the end of 1943, Eakring-Duke's Wood and Formby had sent 2,289,207 U.S. barrels of the high grade paraffin base oil to refineries on the west coast and in the south of Scotland. Although Rosser could not know at the time, 1944-45 would add another 1,231,346 to the total U.S. barrels produced and moved to refineries, making a total of 3,520,553 U.S. barrels produced and moved to refineries from Great Britain's own oil fields by the end of 1945."

If you don't know, a U.S. barrel of crude is 42 U.S. gallons. While this production is a small fraction of the estimated 7 billion barrels of crude oil needed by the Allies to win World War II (6 billion barrels of which came from the U.S.) it did not have to be transported across the U-boat laden oceans and was thus not at risk. It is a very interesting story. I first saw this book more than two years ago when I started volunteering as a docent at the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum here in Midland, Tx. The book was in their library/archives. Another good book on oil in WWII is "Oil for Victory; The story of petroleum in war and peace" by the Editors of Look magazine, 1946. Just FYI.

Randy

[seagull61785]

Thank you for this post - I had no idea that this occurred.

Fascinating figures also regarding the amount of oil produced in England. The question begs to be asked - Did they cap them off when peace was declared, and if so what are the chances of them re-starting production as a way of relying less on Middle-Eastern imports?

This reminds me of another wartime innovation - that of the operation codenamed PLUTO.

In the planning for the invasion of Europe at Normandy in 1944 it was highlighted that petroleum was to be the lifeblood of the allied mechanized army, and supplying the beach-heads via traditional oil tanker ships was considered too vulnerable to attack and disruption.

So as an alternative they covertly laid a pipeline on the seabed of the English Channel from the Isle of Wight directly to a point off the Normandy coast. Once the attack started on D-Day they simply connected the pipe to a floating dock on the invasion beach and pumped the gas directly ashore, hence the name 'PLUTO' - Pipe Line Under The Ocean'.

[Randy Wilson]

Regarding the PLUTO pipelines, etc. I think you will find that they provided a rather small percentage of motor fuel to the Allies after D-Day. I don't have a reliable source in front of me but think it was something less than 10% and did not start for at least a couple of months after D-Day and built up to VE day. Even that fuel provided by the pipeline had to be transferred to tanker trucks or 5-gallon "Jerry" cans and transported inland to the front by trucks until "tactical" pipelines could be built to the Allies frontal positions. Sorry I don't have a good reference at this time.

Randy

[blurrkup]

You can still find a part of PLUTO at Shanklin Chine on the Isle of Wight.

https://www.shanklinchine.co.uk/pluto/

[lucky52]

So all the avgas needed for the allies came from English oil fields and English refineries?

[Dan K]

So all the avgas needed for the allies came from English oil fields and English refineries?

No.

I found this link a quick & helpful tutorial; perhaps others will as well:

https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/2 ... ritain-WW2

[lucky52]

Thanks.