There aren’t too many here in Ohio but I notice an occasional one when driving the back roads. Not many of them are running, though. They are officially known as pump jacks it seems.Most use an electric motor if they are near to power lines. They can also be powered by internal combustion engines. I bought an old Onan engine to use on a project years ago. It had an attached clutch just like an automotive clutch with a lever to engage the output shaft. Instead of a typical 1 or 2 quart oil capacity this engine had a 9 quart capacity! The folks on the Onan forum were impressed as they are quite hard to find. They are used on the pump jacks and will run by themselves for months at a time with an occasional inspection.
Anyway I was just reminiscing about some pump jacks I used to see in western PA in the early 1970s. Probably one of the last batch of the original way they worked. There was a small central building with the motor inside which turned a large horizontal eccentric flywheel. Around the edge of the flywheel were numerous couplings. Each coupling was attached to a long rod about an inch in diameter. Each rod ran to a separate pump jack and the entire mechanism ran at once with the jacks politely nodding in turn. The rods had support frames every so often.
The one I remember had rods up to maybe 100 yards longs. It was never running when I saw they. They were on the south side of the PA Turnpike not too far from Ohio. Close to that little church that had a freaking cross walk across the turnpike lanes with small ladders to get over the center barrier.
Here is one running, what a majestic contraption!!
I grew up close to a number of oil fields and have never seen anything like that. I’m guessing that those wells were not terribly deep.
Most of the pump jacks around here that are still in operation are now powered by electric motors. But when I was a kid growing up in the country, virtually all of the numerous jacks in the vicinity were powered by one-cylinder engines, powered by natural gas from nearby wells. Some of those engines were over 500 cubic inches. Most, however, were in the 200 or 300 cubic inch range. On a calm night, we could hear several of those engines pop-pop-popping from several miles away.
There used to be a decorated collection of these pumpjacks* (called “The Iron Zoo” in the central California oil fields. I picked up a series of postcards of them from the excellent R.C. Baker Museum in Coalinga.
*also known as nodding donkeys, pumping units, horsehead pumps, beam pumps, sucker rod pumps, grasshopper pumps, thirsty birds
Southern Arkansas has that style oil pump. El Dorado (and surrounding area) was an oil boom town in the 1920’s. My maternal grandad worked in the oil fields for over forty years. His last job was as a Pumper. They did repairs keeping the nodding pumps working. My grandad had a home in the oil fields and would go out at night to fix them. The silence from a stopped well would wake him at night. His house was owned and provided by the oil company.They got raw natural gas off the wells for heating and cooking.
The oil company offered some of the wells for sale in the 1950’s. Their production had dropped significantly. Unfortunately my grandad decided against buying the mineral rights to one.
Now that area is being mined for Lithium. It’s revitalizing a lot of those old towns and creating new jobs.
The videos magically recommended for me by Google included one with a hit-and-miss engine. Those were neat little devices that could run at pretty low RPMs eliminating the need for a lot of reduction gearing.
I remember my grandads gas appliances would get fouled by the raw natural gas. At that time it was simple gas space heaters and gas stoves with a manually lit pilot. Easy to service.
I doubt modern gas appliances would tolerate that supply without being ruined.
Natural gas is a by product from oil wells. You’ll see pipes with flames burning off the natural gas when you drive through the oil fields.
There were some families in the oil fields that died when the gas supply momentarily cut off and then back on. The gas space heaters lost their flame and poured gas into the house.
Safety regs were much different then.
It required a big tragedy like the Tyler area school to get the public’s attention.
Interesting machine, but where is the oil supposed to go? I don’t see any pipe to carry it away; looks like it just pools on the ground around the well.
I guess it varies from different oil fields. I’m only familiar with the one my grandfather worked. He could have made more money by traveling to other oil camps in Oklahoma and Texas. But he never wanted to disrupt his family.
I was too young to fully appreciate his work. My cousins were teenagers and he took them with him when he made rounds. They learned more about what he did.
