The stereotypical oil derricks that we’ve all seen in cartoons: Did the oil really gush out from the top? And if so, how was the oil recovered? And before modern technology, how did they know where to drill?
Untapped oil is often under enormous pressure, so when a drill hits it, yes, it often does spurt out of the well exactly like you’ve seen in movies. Gushers can last for quite a while, too, before the pressure slacks off. The oil that came out that way was wasted, so they capped the pipe as soon as they could.
Oil will sometimes seep to the surface, that’s the most obvious sign that it’s there. As far as I know, in the olden days that was the way people found it. A lot of wells were drilled in likely looking areas, and only a minority of them paid off big.
The movie, “There Will Be Blood,” per my oil and gas law professor, was a pretty fair representation of the technology used in o&g exploration and development circa 1920 and before.
Gushers were a very bad thing, and killed lots of workers.
One of the first gushers was Spindletop in Beaumont TX. That wiki page has a picture of it.
I understand it involved straws and milkshakes.
Looking at the picture of the Lucas Gusher on the Wiki page, it looks like the derrick is built out of timbers. Unused drill pipe is standing inside the tower, leaning at an angle. It looks like the drill string has come out of the bore and lays twisted on the ground to the left, and while the oil is shooting out the top of the tower it’s coming out of the hole at ground level.