| Industry | Oil exploration and production |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1923 |
| Founder | George F. Naphen and Joshua S. Cosden |
| Defunct | 1932 |
| Fate | acquired by Standard Oil |
| Headquarters | Venezuela |
Number of locations | Lake Maracaibo region |
| Products | Petroleum |
Lago Petroleum Corporation was an oil production company established by Americans in 1923 that exploited the oilfields in Lake Maracaibo. It was acquired by Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1932. Later it was nationalized.
Edward L. Doheny, who owned the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Co., controlled the Barco concession in Colombia through a subsidiary. He became interested in Venezuelan oil operations, including a pipeline from Colombia to Venezuela to reduce the cost of exporting the Colombian oil. After meetings between J.A. Coronil and Doheney's staff, the Lago Petroleum Co. was formed by Preston McGoodwin, Joshua S. Cosden and Payne Whitney Associates, and registered in Delaware on 12 April 1923. [1] British-Mexican Petroleum acquired about 25% of its stock. [2] In 1924 the company took over concessions that had been granted to the British Equatorial Oil Company in addition to properties it had purchased from twenty Venezuelans who had obtained them from General Juan Vicente Gómez, the military ruler of the country. [3]
C. Ledyard Blair's Blair & Co. and Chase Securities sold a controlling stake in Lago to Pan American Petroleum in a complex transaction at the end of 1925. [2] By the late 1920s a trio of foreign-controlled companies were operating in the eastern Lake Maracaibo region. Shell Oil had the Aranguren concession onshore. Gulf Oil had acquired the Creole Syndicate's leases in the strip of shallow water 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) wide along the lake shore. Standard of Indiana through Pan American owned Lago's operations in the lake bed. [4] In 1932 Pan American sold its foreign properties to Standard Oil of New Jersey for about $100 million. [5] The deal included Pan American's large oil concessions in Venezuela. [6] Lago Petroleum became a subsidiary of Creole Petroleum Corporation, now the Venezuelan subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Included in the sale were the Lago Oil and Transport Company and the Lago Shipping Company, and the finalized plans to build the Lago refinery, "the giant", on Aruba. [7] It later operated under the name Creole Petroleum Company, then under Standard Oil's name, Esso. [8] The company was nationalized [8] with the rest of the Venezuelan petroleum industry in 1976.
Lago [lower-alpha 1] owned about 8,000 square miles (21,000 km2) of land in Lake Maracaibo, and produced about 30,000 barrels of crude oil per day. [2] Oil wells in Lake Maracaibo require drilling platforms. Wooden pilings to support the platforms were vulnerable to teredo worms. Lago Petroleum pioneered use of concrete pilings pre-fitted with steel heads and tied together with steel ropes. [8] Lago's techniques, including use of barges to move heavy equipment around, made the cost of drilling on water lower than that of drilling on land, although taxes and royalties had been set lower by the government on the assumption that costs would be higher. The company did not spend money on exploration, but simply drilled wells into the La Rosa field. [9]
Lago discovered the valuable Tía Juana field in 1928. [10] Standard of Indiana obtained land on Aruba from the Dutch government, built a tanker terminal and refinery there, and started shipping Lago's crude to Aruba in 1925. In 1929 Lago had 129 active wells in the lake. In 1929 nineteen lake tankers carried 37 million barrels of crude to the huge refinery being built at the Aruba terminal. [11] Production was inefficient. Since the three competing companies were draining a common reservoir, each had an interest in extracting oil as quickly as possible, although a more deliberate pace would have given greater total output. At times, hastily built wells collapsed, oil gushed into the lake and caught fire, burning rigs and equipment. [12]
Lago employed Chinese and West Indians as well as Venezuelans, using competition between these groups to keep pay low. [13] The government saw these foreign workers as a source of labor unrest, and in 1929 prohibited further entry of Afro-Caribbean and Chinese workers and demanded that existing workers have a certificate of employment and good conduct. [14] Lago employed about 1,400 workers during the 1930s, mostly based in Lagunillas and La Salina. [15] In 1939 Lago said its employees included 268 foreigners and 3,119 Venezuelans. Most of the local people were simply day laborers. [16]
Lake Maracaibo is a large brackish tidal bay in Venezuela and an "inlet of the Caribbean Sea". It is sometimes considered a lake rather than a bay or lagoon. It is connected to the Gulf of Venezuela by Tablazo Strait, which is 5.5 kilometres (3.4 mi) wide at the northern end. It is fed by numerous rivers, the largest being the Catatumbo. At 13,210 square kilometres (5,100 sq mi) it was once the largest lake in South America; the geological record shows that it was a true lake in the past, and as such is one of the oldest lakes on Earth at 20–36 million years old.
Edward Laurence Doheny was an American oil tycoon who, in 1892, drilled the first successful oil well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field. His success set off a petroleum boom in Southern California, and made him a fortune when, in 1902, he sold his properties.
The Maracaibo Basin, also known as Lake Maracaibo natural region, Lake Maracaibo depression or Lake Maracaibo Lowlands, is a foreland basin and one of the eight natural regions of Venezuela, found in the northwestern corner of Venezuela in South America. Covering over 36,657 square km, it is a hydrocarbon-rich region that has produced over 30 billion bbl of oil with an estimated 44 billion bbl yet to be recovered. The basin is characterized by a large shallow tidal estuary, Lake Maracaibo, located near its center. The Maracaibo basin has a complex tectonic history that dates back to the Jurassic period with multiple evolution stages. Despite its complexity, these major tectonic stages are well preserved within its stratigraphy. This makes The Maracaibo basin one of the most valuable basins for reconstructing South America's early tectonic history.
Lago Colony was a community located on the east end of the island of Aruba, in the area presently known as Seroe Colorado.
Lake tankers were small specially designed shallow-draft tanker ships that carried the crude oil, pumped from beneath Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, to the three off-shore refineries located on the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao.
Lago Oil & Transport Co. Ltd. had its beginning in 1924 as a shipping company carrying crude oil from Lake Maracaibo to its transshipment facility on the island of Aruba.
El Teatro Baralt is a theatre in downtown Maracaibo, Venezuela, at the northwestern corner of the historic Plaza Bolívar. The first theatre at the site was built in the mid 19th century as a small performance hall, with subsequent theatre buildings there having seen many different reconstructions.
Hollis Dow Hedberg was an American geologist specializing in petroleum exploration. His contribution to stratigraphic classification of rocks and procedures is a monumental work which received universal acceptance. The firm he worked for, the Gulf Oil Corporation in Venezuela, trusted his findings and explored what had until then been uncharted territory. As a result, they reaped huge benefits from their petroleum findings. Hedberg taught at Princeton University from 1959 until his retirement in 1971. He was awarded the Mary Clark Thompson Medal by the National Academy of Sciences in 1973. In 1975 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the Geological Society of London. Hedberg won the Sidney Powers Memorial Award in 1963.
Venezuela is one of the world's largest exporters of oil and has the world's largest proven oil reserves at an estimated 296.5 billion barrels as of 2012.
Ciudad Ojeda is a city located in the northeastern shore of Lake Maracaibo in Zulia State in northwestern Venezuela. Its population as of the 2005 census was listed as 128,941.
The Creole Petroleum Corporation was an American oil company. It was formed in 1920 to produce fields on Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. The company was acquired by Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1928. Until 1951 Creole Petroleum was the world's number one oil producer.
The Drake Well is a 69.5-foot-deep (21.2 m) oil well in Cherrytree Township, Venango County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the success of which sparked the first oil boom in the United States. The well is the centerpiece of the Drake Well Museum located 3 miles (5 km) south of Titusville.
Black City is the general name for the southeastern neighbourhoods of Baku, which once formed its suburbs. In the late 19th and early 20th century it became the main location for Azerbaijan's oil industry.
The Barco oil concession was one of the main concessions in Colombia during the early development of its petroleum industry, the other being the De Mares concession. Oil was first found in the Norte de Santander department near the border with Venezuela in 1905, but development did not start until 1936. A joint venture between the Texas Corporation and Socony-Vacuum sank the wells and built a 263-mile (423 km) pipeline across the mountains and through swampy jungle to the Caribbean coast at Coveñas. Workers were harassed by Motilone Indians defending their territory, and several died. The concession began operation in 1939 and continued into the 1960s, when it began to be depleted. Other fields in the region are still productive.
The Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company (PAT) was an oil company founded in 1916 by the American oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny after he had made a huge oil strike in Mexico. Pan American profited from fuel demand during World War I, and from the subsequent growth in use of automobiles. For several years Pan American was the largest American oil company, with holdings in the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. In 1924 Pan American was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal over irregularities in the award of a U.S. government oil concession. Standard Oil of Indiana obtained a majority stake in 1925. The company sold its foreign properties to Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1932. What was left of Pan American was merged with Standard Oil of Indiana in 1954 to form Amoco.
Torkild Rieber was a Norwegian immigrant to the United States who became chairman of the Texas Company (Texaco).
Nora Bustamante Luciani was a Venezuelan physician, historian, writer and intellectual, who served as the president of the Venezuelan Association of the History of Medicine, the first woman to hold the post. For 16 years she was Director of the Historical Archive of Miraflores, a dependency of the Presidential Palace that preserves the history of the presidents of Venezuela.
The Bolivar Coastal Fields (BCF), also known as the Bolivar Coastal Complex, is located on the eastern margin of Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. Bolivar Coastal Field is the largest oil field in South America with its 6,000-7,000 wells and forest of related derricks, stretches thirty-five miles along the north-east coast of Lake Maracaibo. They form the largest oil field outside of the Middle East and contain mostly heavy oil with a gravity less than 22 degrees API. Also known as the Eastern Coast Fields, Bolivar Coastal Oil Field consists of Tía Juana, Lagunillas, Bachaquero, Ceuta, Motatán, Barua and Ambrosio. The Bolivar Coast field lies in the Maracaibo dry forests ecoregion, which has been severely damaged by farming and ranching as well as oil exploitation. The oil field still plays an important role in production from the nation with approximately 2.6 million barrels of oil a day. It is important to note that the oil and gas industry refers to the Bolivar Coastal Complex as a single oilfield, in spite of the fact that the oilfield consists of many sub-fields as stated above.
Kerui Petroleum is a Chinese oil services and equipment company. It provides equipment and EPC services for oil drilling and production and natural gas plants.
Esso Maracaibo was a tanker of the Creole Petroleum Corporation. She was the second ship of that enterprise to bear that name, the first one having been USS Narraguagas. Its purpose was to transport crude oil between Lake Maracaibo and Aruba. It made international headlines on 6 April 1964, when it rammed the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, causing two spans of it to collapse.
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