I’ve been going through hundreds of old drilling documents, well records and plugging affidavits for oil and gas wells, and I stumbled upon some records with neat handwriting. These are on Lincoln county, West Virginia, well records from the early 1940s, though the writing strikes me as older, say around 1910. Actually there are some 1909 and later records in the same handwriting but I think these are copies made in the 1940s. The script on the earlier records is fancier. By the 1940s many records were typewritten and are actually harder to read, at least the copies of copies that I’m seeing.

What I’m am doing with selected records is attempting to determine if wells drilled in the early part of the 20th century are a hazard to drinking water in certain situations. In West Virginia the legislature didn’t require fully cemented surface casing to protect fresh water until the late 1960s. Operators did this as a matter of course earlier, but the practice didn’t become usual until the 1960s. I’ve seen a completion report for a well drilled in Kanawha county the 1940s where there is no cement at all behind any casing to protect the producing formation, the original purpose of cement, or groundwater.

Drillers didn’t begin to use cement until the early twentieth century. A well drilled in West Virginia around 1910 most likely has no cement. West Virginia was one of the first states to required plugging of wells, but this was to conserve mineral resources, not to protect groundwater. In the early twentieth century drillers here were using just a wood plug, or plugs, in casing and red clay. Cement plugs, usually on top of wood plugs, start to appear affidavits in the 1930s, again with lots of red clay to fill the hole. The open annulus behind uncemented casing remains a pathway for contaminants to groundwater. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that plugging started to begin to meet modern standards with removal of uncemented casing and thicker cement plugs separated by gel.

When these early wells were drilled a final step in the completion process was setting off an explosion deep underground. These are variously called nitro or glycerin(e) treatments where quarts of the explosive, plus a little dynamite, were used. In the 1960s several wells were fractured using atom bombs, not in this state, thank goodness. This maybe gives an idea of the forces unleashed underground today with hydraulic fracturing. The well report from which the bit of handwriting is shown here has 90 quarts used.