HIGGINS LOST A FORTUNE BUT NOT HIS FAITH

IN BARBERS HILL FIELD

By James A. Clark, Houston Post October 7, 1958

 

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                           MILLS BENNETT PRODUCTION COMPANY – HAMMANS NO. ONE

           F. A. (SLIM) HENSCEY, DRILLER – PICTURE SUBMITTED BY HIS SON WAYNE HENSCEY

 

Spindletop was beginning to peter out the day that Pattillo Higgins, its prophet, returned to Beaumont in August of 1902 and announced that he had found an even larger field.

 

Higgins was referring to Barbers Hill (Mont Belvieu) in Northeast Chambers County. He took samples of oil and rocks with him to prove it. Needless to say this man who had for 10 years faced ridicule and criticism to keep alive the interest in Spindletop, was heard this time. His words created newspaper headlines all over the world.

 

Higgins said his well was down 861 feet and that within a matter of days, maybe hours; a new field would be us­hered in with a gusher that would spout oil twice as high as the great Lucas

gus­her.

 

Pattillo Higgins was a rich and re­spected oilman now. He was living with his mother and sister In a mansion on LaBranch Street near McGowan Avenue in Houston. He was regarded by most of the industry as a great petroleum geo­logist.

 

‘The field” he announced to the press,  “will prove the argument about whether or not I was a lucky guesser at Spindletop.”

 

But Higgins was doomed at Barbers Hill. His well did not come in. First it ran out of fuel (wood) and he went to great expense to have logs brought in over tortuous paths. Then he ran into gas pressures, which could not be controlled. Finally, somewhere below 900 feet the pipe twisted off for the six­teenth and last time. The well was abandoned.

 

Higgins started two more wells im­mediately. The first one struck oil, but Higgins would have nothing to do with it, because it was not a gusher.  It was a small flowing well, but he abandoned it.   Then he contracted to drill a total of eight wells. He said he knew the oil was there and he would develop the field properly.  He didn’t want a “pepper box” field like Spindletop. He said so many wells ruin the field.

 

Finally, he was joined by Guffy Oil Company, and between 1902 and 1906 –they drilled a total of 14 failures.  Almost everyone abandoned Barbers Hill. Higgins had spent a great deal of his vast fortune. He built a small family house at Barbers Hill where he was con­vinced there was oil.

 

Between 1906 and 1916 a total of 18 more dry holes were drilled on the cap rock. Then Gulf  (Chevron) and Humble (now Exxon) brought in a 40-barrel well in 1916 from a depth of 1,571 feet. That didn’t spark any new boom, but it did keep the Hill alive as a prospect, although the well was soon abandoned. On Sept 18, 1918, the United States Petroleum Company hit a 70-barrel well at 2,142 feet but it soon sanded up and was reworked to become a small pumper.

 

In the meantime small wells were being bought in. From 1918 to 1920, 14 out of 43 wells drilled produced some oil. The record was worse between 1921 and 1924, when only 11 producers resulted from an additional 48 wells drilled. This certainly was no Spindletop.  No field ever worried Pattillo Higgins more than did Barbers Hill. He was unable to understand it.

 

Barbers Hill was a plodding field that kept getting a little better with the years. Between 1924 and 1926 there were 36 wells drilled by the Mills Bennett Company and the Humphrey Corpora­tion and most of them were good producers. But it was not until Mills Bennett’s Smith 1 well opened deep flank production in 1928 that the field got its first big well, a 3,500-barrel producer.

 

In the meantime, Republic Produc­tion Company and Yount-Lee Oil Compa­ny moved in and bought in deeper sands in the Frio. Shortly after this, to more or less quiet the persistent pleading of Higgins (a man who wasn’t easy to shut off) Sidney Judson of Texas Gulf Produc­ing Company decided to drill into the salt

 

Higgins believed the salt mush­roomed out and that under the mush­room there would be the gushers he had long dreamed of. He was right Judson drilled through the salt and for the first time in history proved the salt dome overhand theory. It was a new geological horizon, provided by the same persis­tence that had given the world the salt dome oil production itself. And the over­hand wells (had regulations prevented it) could have been exactly the kind of gushers Pattillo Higgins always dreamed of. He had said wells at Barbers Hill would shoot 250 feet over the crown block. So great were these overhanging wells (the best wells in the field), that Barbers Hill was the second largest producing field in the Texas Gulf Coast by 1930.

 

Between 1930 and 1935 the field produced an average of 7 million barrels of oil a year. Since then it has never averaged less than 2 million barrels a year and today it is still being explored. Mike Halbouty, Superior Oil and others are looking forward to greet new flank discoveries there.

 

W. C. (Bill) Smith, assistant field superintendent for the Mills Bennett estate at Barbers Hill, was born there in the 1890. He was 5 years old when Higgins first showed up in the little community. There were nine families who farmed, raised cattle, cut wood and worked in brickyard to make a living.

 

In 1889, E.W. Barber, drilled 65 ft. and found gas. Mr. Smith recalls the great excitement when Higgins showed up.  The people had been following the Spindletop news and the name of Higgins was a living legend.  Smith’s father hauled wood for the Higgins well from Cedar Bayou. In later days, he said Higgins floated oil in by barge on Cedar Bayou and used it for fuel for his boilers.

 

Higgins left the field in 1915 as an operator and that was when Gulf and Humble Oil Company moved in. The field greatest setback, he says, was when Goose Creek (now Baytown, Harris Co. came in and drew the oil people out of Barbers Hill like a giant suction.

 

It was the Smith 1 well that Bennett and Humphrey drilled that revived the oil interest.  The town boomed but, as usual, the new oil play broke a drought and Barbers Hill became a sea of mud where automobiles and trucks were impractical and the horse and mull teams came back for a while.

 

In 1951 Pettillo Higgins leased his remaining land to Sun Oil and since then that company has brought in several wells. The old prophet died a year ago but his salt dome will never die as long as there are men to inherit his imagination and enthusiasm.