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Eastman, H. John (audio interview #1 of 1)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Eastman's short interview was conducted in his home in California Heights. The interviewer was introduced to him by other people who were involved in a project to study the impact of oil discovery on the development of Long Beach. 2/1/1985
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- 2020-12-17
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- SUBJECT BIO - H. John Eastman invented a survey instrument that allowed an oil well driller to determine if an oil well hole was going straight down or, if it weren't, to determine the direction it was going. He also invented a method of controlling the direction an oil well hole would go; this was called controlled directional drilling. These two inventions had important implications for the development of oil fields all over the world. In this short interview, Eastman talks about how he got started in the oil business. He grew up in Oklahoma City and decided to drop out of Oklahoma A & M to get into the oil business. A few years later, he came to California and was successful in coming up with solutions to problems that he found in the oil patch. During the Depression, oil operators on Signal Hill were happy to let him try out his new instruments on their wells in return for free use of his services. Eastman's interviewed was part of a project to study the impact of oil discovery on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - oil industry; family background; oil well surveys; whipstock; Huntington Beach, California; Eastman Single Shot ; controlled directional drilling; fires; Petrolane; and Alexander Anderson;oil industry; oil well surveys; and Alexander Anderson;
- *** File: pehjeastman1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-2:50)... Brief introduction Eastman was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He was the only person in his family who was in the oil business. When he was 7, his family moved to Oklahoma where his father worked as Post Master during the Taft Administration. After he graduated from high school, he went to Oklahoma A & M in Stillwater, but did not graduate. He enjoyed agriculture classes including livestock judging. At the time of the interview, he still considered horses a hobby. He worked as mail carrier after college in Oklahoma. (2:50-5:53)... He was hired by the Magnolia Oil Company as their first employee. He worked in the oil fields for a several years. Then he decided to come to California and arrived during the oil boom. By 1924, Eastman had his own business determining if oil wells were drilled straight down or at an angle. He started his own acid bottle service to determine if an oil well was drilled straight down or crooked. Others had used the same technique Eastman used, but he was the first to establish a business doing it for others (5:53-11:53)... He invented the Eastman Single Shot survey instrument. It was a photographic device that was lowered into a well and took a picture of a compass and a plum bob. This enabled actual surveying to be done because it used a compass to determine both the angle and the direction of an oil well. He modified the acid bottle device and patented his new oil tool. Once oil well drillers determined the direction a well was taking, they wanted to control the direction it was going. In oil fields back east, a wedge was beginning to be used, called a whipstock. Eastman got the idea putting a collar and a bit on top of the whipstock to make it easier to use. This new instrument could be used to change the direction of an oil well. The survey instrument and the whipstock. were both widely used on Signal Hill. Eastman directionally surveyed his first wells along Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach where the offshore work began. (11:53-16:22)... Controlled directional drilling was used in many oil fields. There was, for example, a well in Conroe,Texas that blew out of control as a result of gas pressure. The well's owner asked Eastman to come and look at the well. He realized that another well could be drilled a couple of hundred feet away; the bottom of the well could be directed to meet the blowing out well and it could serve to vent the gas pressure. Eastman used his controlled directional drilling system to accomplish this. Then the well owner used cement and a wooden plug control the wild well. (16:22-17:11)... Controlled directional drilling also aided in extinguishing fires at other well sites. At the time of this interview there was an oil well on fire in Mexico. Eastman says that the reason this fire hasn't been controlled is that the well sites were not surveyed. If they had been surveyed the fires could easily be put out. (17:11-19:37)... Helping to put out that fire in Conroe,Texas brought Eastman lots of publicity. Oil operators all over the country wanted to use his services. He expanded his business to the Gulf Cost and then around the world. The company was called Eastman Whipstock Company and when Eastman retired, the company was bought by Petrolane. More than half of all the wells drilled in the world today use controlled directional drilling. New ways of producing oil all use directional drilling. (19:37-20:53)... Eastman came to Santa Fe Springs in 1924, when the oil fields were still developing. Most people believed that all oil wells just were drilled straight down but this was not true. In a deep well, sometimes the bottom can be 2,000 feet away from the top of a well; sometimes it can beyond the lease on which the well was drilled. Earlier, oil operators couldn't figure out why there could be good wells on 3 sides of a field while a 4th produces nothing but salt water. This situation led them to think that all of the well might not have been drilled straight down. (20:53-24:00)... Eastman got the idea of the acid bottle from his work, in his early twenties, as a production superintendent in the oil fields in Oklahoma. Although he was not an engineer, he saw the need for a method to determine where the bottom of an oil well was located. He got the idea to use photography for this purpose when he was at the Pike. There he went into a booth and had his picture taken. The pictures that came out were the same size as the ones he wanted to take down an oil well. So he adapted that technology to the Eastman Single Shot instrument. (24:00-28:44)... Although he was not an engineer, he had practical experience in the oil fields. Eastman explains how the process of using the acid bottle worked at the well site. The angles were computed by engineers, who read a photograph that was 7/8" that had been wrapped around the bottle and lowered into the hole and slightly exposed to light. Eastman and another man came up with the idea of a removable whipstock. They started using it during the Depression, and he traded for his service when drillers had no money. (28:44-29:30)... Signal Hill was the starting point for Eastman's business. (29:30-32:59)... John Eastman Limited was an early name of his company. The first office of his directional drilling company was on Long Beach Boulevard and Willow. He employed an engineer and a watchmaker to make the intricate parts of the survey instrument; they had to be made by hand. The Eastman Single Shot allowed drillers to tell what direction their hole is going when they were drilling a well. (32:59-38:12)... As the company developed surveying became more popular. But Eastman's single shot device had to be easy to use so that men drilling an oil well could use it and then develop a picture on the rig, each time the pipe came out of the hole. Other surveying businesses were started everywhere. Alexander Anderson started one in Fullerton about the same time Eastman started on Signal Hill. Anderson's device did not use a compass. Eastman later bought out Anderson. The multiple shot survey techniques, like Anderson's, took a complete picture of the well from top to bottom, while Eastman's took a single shot at only one point. The only surveys that could be used in court were Anderson's and Eastman's. (38:12-40:23)... The first well on which Eastman used controlled directional drilling was in Huntington Beach. It began north of Pacific Coast Highway and went under the street and the Pacific Electric tracks and ended under the ocean. Eastman and the drilling company he worked for were all sued by Standard Oil Company, the state highway department, the Pacific Electric trolley system and others. They knew he must have used controlled directional drilling because the well he drilled was "just thumping" while those around it were dead. (40:23-42:32)... A lot of information about oil drilling technology had been kept secret although the services his company provided were widely advertised. If the details of the technology were widely know, he would have been run out of business by imitators. Everyone on Signal Hill wanted to drill under Shell's lease, but Eastman knew if he worked with any of these other companies, his reputation would be ruined. Eastman went to far as to take out ads in some oil magazines stating he would never drill outside a property line. (42:32-43:36)... The Eastman's surveys were accepted by the courts as definitive evidence of the location of the bottom of oil wells. Eastman himself was sued often but employed the best lawyers in Long Beach. (43:36-44:54)... Whipstock were wedges used to make an oil well hole go in a specific direction and all kinds of devices were created to help in the process. Eastman saw the need to make a removable whipstock because the whipstock could get stuck in the cement as the well got deeper. *** File: pehjeastman2.mp3 (0:00-0:56)... Eastman was able to buy out some competitors. Before Eastman ran the first single shot survey, Alexander Anderson in Fullerton was surveying oil wells using a multiple shot technique. Eastman's first efforts in surveying began in 1924. Eventually he bought out Anderson's company. (0:56-1:54)... When he started his survey service with acid bottles, Eastman bought a Ford and put a device in the car to hold the acid bottles so they would not break. End of tape
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