The First Drilling Campaign

Abstract

The first systematic search for onshore oil in Britain can be said to have begun in earnest on 15 October 1918, when with drilling crews and equipment imported from the United States, contractors spudded in their first well at Hardstoft, near Chesterfield, on the Chatsworth Estates of the Duke of Devonshire. Over the next four years a total of 11 exploration wells, ranging from 1810 ft to 4000 ft were drilled. Seven were in Derbyshire, two in Staffordshire and two in the Midland Valley of Scotland, south of Edinburgh. In each case the objective was a possible accumulation in Carboniferous rock to which oil seepages had drawn attention, and in each case drilling was on an anticline visible at outcrop. The campaign of drilling was born out of the widespread concern during the 1914–18 war over the disruption to oil supplies caused by submarine attacks. As early as 1880 Lord Fisher, the First Sea Lord, had foretold the replacement of coal by oil in the ships of the Royal Navy and by 1917 this process was so far advanced that the Admiralty feared that the fleet could be put out of action by lack of oil. By the spring of 1918, oil supply had become ‘a serious national problem’, imports having risen from 1.86 million tons to 5.12 million tons over the previous five years. Of this total only a seventh came from British possessions.¹