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- Was oil worth anything
before the automobile?
Ask Marco Polo.
He saw oil burning
stove six centuries ago
along the spice trail.
Phil Roberts explores
the history of oil next
on Wyoming Chronicle.
(upbeat music)
Phil Roberts might be
called Wyoming's historian.
All aspects of the
state's past and present
seem to interest him.
And you can find his
breadth of knowledge
in his Wyoming Almanac or in the
variety of courses
he's taught at the
University of Wyoming.
Now Roberts is taking
an historic look
at a commodity that has
fueled Wyoming's economy
for a long time, oil.
He's taking the long view
all the way back to
Mesopotamia 3,000 years ago.
But before we drill
deep into the past,
let's dance in the present.
The second program in Wyoming
PBS's Wind River Showcase
will air this month.
You can check details
on dates at our website
wyomingpbs.org.
We've got an excerpt
from that show
to wet your appetite.
It's Teca Brock from
Sheraton and it rocks.
(soft rock)
- What are some of your
earliest memories of music?
- My sister and I grew
up listening to the Judds
and Dolly Parton
and stuff like that
so her and I would sing together
and do little concerts for
mom in the living room.
And, so yeah, I would say the,
probably six, seven years
old, singin' to the Judds.
- Was it primarily country
music you listened to early on?
- Yup, all country.
(country music)
- The Wyoming music
showcase with Teca Brock
airs on December
30th on Wyoming PBS.
Now we're gonna have a
conversation with Phil Roberts,
our favorite historian
at Wyoming PBS.
He's the go-to guy when
we have a question about
Wyoming history for one
of our documentaries.
Now, like any good historian,
he knows how to
connect the dots.
Roberts has traveled and
studied in the Middle East
and he discovers that
some of the early dealings
between Westerners and
Middle Eastern Emirates
were modeled on
negotiations between
landmen in the American
West and Indian tribes.
- Well Phil, many people
in the U.S. don't think of
oil as having a history
because it's right here
in our lives all
the time, you know?
It's in our cars, it's in
the gulf, it's all around us.
But you're teaching a course
on the history of oil.
- That's right.
I'm teaching this course and I'm
starting about 3,000 years ago.
- I didn't it went
back that far.
- It did, it did.
In ancient Mesopotamia
there's record of
oil being utilized as
early as 3,000 years ago.
And of course, in
the American west,
the American Indians used
oil for medicinal purposes
and for liniments and they
would frequently find the oil
floating on the top
of water springs
and they would sane that oil off
and they would use it for
paint or for medicines
or for lineaments.
- That was true right
here in Fremont County.
- Oh absolutely.
In Fremont County, all
throughout Wyoming in fact.
But oil really got started,
at least many of the
early references to oil
in the area around the Caspian.
In as early as 1600, there
were reports of people digging
hand-dug wells.
And even before that,
when Marco Polo came through
that area about 1400,
he reported the fact that
people were using oil
for heating and for cooking.
And then of course in the
early part of the 19th century,
the first drilled oil well
that Americans often think
came about in
Titusville, Pennsylvania
actually is pre-dated
by about 12 years
with an oil well near
Baku in Azerbaijan.
And I had the good fortune of
going over there
and looking around.
I didn't see the
first one, but--
- And what would that
oil have been used for?
- The oil over in--
- We're talkin'
early 19th century.
- The oil in the 19th
century was almost,
well at least early on
was used for lubrication.
But then came the
development of Kerosene
and then it became
an illumination fuel.
And what's very
interesting about,
about the oil industry is
that everyone predicted
when Edison came out with
the light bulb, that's it.
Oil is no longer going
to be useful except for
Kerosene that you might be
able to take out to these
very isolated areas
that would never be
hooked up to electricity.
But as far as a
general commodity,
it was a, it was
something of the past.
And of course John
D. Rockefeller
was one of the many
people in the world
who took a look
at that and said,
"Well, there may be some money
to be made in the industry."
And he started, in
the 1870s started,
late 1870s and early 80s
started consolidating
and buying up a lot of
the smaller companies.
- Standard Oil, sure.
- That's right.
- And they called it,
they used to call it
rock oil didn't they?
- They did.
- Wasn't that the original,
well I say original term,
my history goes back to
1850 and you've gone
back to, you know,
6,000 years ago
or something, so.
- Yeah, and actually
there's some examples
where rock oil is actually
advertised as part of a
label for medicine
and they would say
doctor so and so's rock oil
and there's a thing called
Maverick Lineament
that I've seen ads for
that was made almost
entirely of oil.
So it was, it used in
many of those ways.
The interesting thing about the
Rockefeller Standard Oil
Company is it was the
Rockefeller Standard
Oil Company that
helped push a lot of the
early oil pioneers
out to Wyoming.
Because Rockefeller was
starting to dominate
the Pennsylvania
and Ohio oilfields
and a lot of individuals
who had been interested
in drilling there
got pushed out.
And so they came out to where
Rockefeller hadn't yet been
and that's to Wyoming.
And of course, Mike Murphy,
who is probably known to
people in Fremont County anyway,
was the first person in Fremont,
or first person in Wyoming
to drill an oil well and that
was out here by Dallas Dome.
- Yup, and we should
probably date that
because I think for most people,
when you look back at the
history of oil in Wyoming,
they just go to Teapot
Dome and that's about it.
- Yeah, and, and this
is about 1882, '83
that Murphy came out and that
oil came in at Dallas Dome
and of course there's a
sign out there now that says
Wyoming's Oldest Oilfield.
And I understand
that they're still
producing some oil out there.
So, remarkable that
130 years later,
that oilfield is still
producing something, anyway.
- And really that kinda
spans what you might call the
oil era in America, you know?
From the early
development of oil wells
to the point where
the combustion,
the internal combustion
engine came on
up to today when
we are very much,
our lives our entwined with oil.
- Mm-hmm, and that's what
really revolutionized oil
was the, was the adoption of
the internal combustion engine.
And of course
Wyoming was a pioneer
in that area too, as you know.
With a bicycle
mechanic by the name of
Elmer Lovejoy from Laramie,
who assembled an automobile
out of bicycle parts
and an engine he had ordered
from the East in May of 1898.
And it became the first care
in the Rocky Mountain Region.
And drove around Laramie.
There's a really
funny comment that the
Laramie Boomerang made
about, about Lovejoy's car.
They said, "Well, this thing
might be useful as a toy
"but we don't see any other
possible purpose for it.
"It just bothers
horses and causes noise
"and it's never going
to amount to much."
- Right.
Great, great
prognosticators there.
Well let's talk about some of
the other things you've done.
I think, you know, you began
telling these stories from
Wyoming history, that's what
everybody knows you for.
But you are spending a lot of
time overseas in recent years,
really goes back awhile.
And a lot of that time
in the Middle East,
which is another
place, obviously, that
we all think about
when we think of oil.
So what actually got a
history professor from Wyoming
traveling in Dubai and
some these far away places?
- Well the curious thing about
it is that my wife took a job
teaching journalism, in, first
in the United Arab Emirates
in Dubai back in the 1990s
and I at first went along
for the sun during
the Christmas breaks.
But while I was over there,
I became very interested in
the rather scant history of
oil in that part of the world.
And I started visiting
various museums
and national collections
and I started seeing
interesting parallels
between the way
oil developed in Wyoming
and other parts of the
Rocky Mountain West with
the way it developed in the,
in the Middle East.
And I thought, well maybe
we can tease this out
into a comparative study and
we can see how some of these
same kinds of trends, even
though it's across cultures
and across time, there are some
similarities that we might
learn some lessons from.
- Is it the colonial model?
I mean what is it that
you, where did you start
seeing those parallels?
- Some of it is
the colonial model
but I even go a
little further back
because there's actually a
very interesting situation
in the Emirates that developed
in the, roughly 1920s
where a oil explorer
who was doing some
work for a couple of
companies went to the,
to one of the sheiks over there
and told the sheik that he
would like to explore for oil.
And the sheik didn't
really have any
boundaries for his territory
nor was he in very
good economic shape
because the pearling industry
had gone down after the
development of cultured pearls.
- And we're talking about the
pearl diving industry where--
- Yes, he was a pearl diver.
They were pearl divers.
His tribe dived for pearls.
So he's anxious for the income.
And so this particular
oil landman,
I guess you could say perhaps,
he said, he said, "Well,
I want a deal with,
"with one person.
"I wanna deal with
one person on this.
"And I understand that
you have allowed for a
"very rudimentary parliament,
a magilus sort of system
to "develop here,"
I don't wanna have
to deal with that
because I've had to
deal with tribes,
Indian tribes in
the American West
and if I deal with the tribe,
he was not telling
the Sheik this,
but he knew that if he
was dealing with the tribe
he probably wouldn't be
able to get as good a deal
as if he were dealing
with just one person.
And so he, he used some
experiences that he
apparently had utilized
in the American West
to make these deals with
the, with the sheik.
And I'm not saying that
corruption wasn't a part of it
but these deals turned
out to be very similar,
in terms of the legal
language and all of that,
that oil companies had made with
Indian tribes in
the American West.
- And if you follow the
course of oil development
and the countries involved
in the Middle East
and compare that to the
affect that oil has had,
and oil development
has had here,
do you see parallels as well?
- Yes, and there are
remarkable booms and busts.
- [Interviewer] Yeah?
- And, and what, what
Dubai particularly has done
is try to modulate those some
and to lessen the boom impact
and eliminate the bust part
by diversifying
very dramatically.
- We always talk
about that here.
I mean, do you think
successfully, can you tell
from what you've seen?
- I think they have.
Of course that would be
a little hard to assert
with the same kind of
authority after the
financial collapse
of the end of 2008.
- But we all hear about
Dubai and we see pictures
of the city with the huge,
monstrous buildings in it
and that sort of
thing, is that, yeah.
- And I think the fact that
the economy of Dubai is
essentially 7% dependent on oil.
- Oh really?
Not that much.
- And because it's
such a small amount,
they have pretty
successfully diversified,
at least from the booms and
busts of the oil industry.
Now, of course a worldwide
financial collapse
is not something that the
sheik would have thought about
nor would any of us have ever
thought about
something like that.
But ever since 1894, Wyoming
has been talking about
how we need to
diversify our economy.
We have to get away from
minerals and agriculture
and we have to diversify.
- I almost start to fall
asleep when I hear it
because I've heard it so
often, and here we are.
- Yeah, and in fact I,
a number of years ago I
looked through the
campaign literature
for people who ran for governor
and I found that just
about every candidate from
1894 forward included somewhere
in their campaign literature
the fact that they were gonna
diversify the Wyoming economy
'cause we can't continue
like this in these
tremendous boom and busts cycles
and expect to ever have anything
economically in Wyoming.
Any kind of economic stability.
- And that brings us to talk
a little bit about the future
and what a historian
sees who's watched these
developments over
many, many years.
We can talk about oil,
we can talk about
fossil fuels generally
in Wyoming's future.
What does your
crystal ball show?
- Well I think it's going
to be difficult because,
because we're not like
a top-down situation
like is in Dubai.
We don't have the sheik
that's determining that
eventually we're going
to be, 93% of our economy
is not going to be based on
these natural resource minerals.
But I think it's an
incentive for us to look at.
- You mean our politicians
don't get along
and agreee on things and
just make decicisions?
Geez, I'm shocked.
- Well, I think that's
an incentive though
for politicians to say,
"Here is an opportunity
"in the boom times."
And I think we've seen
a little of that lately
with, with the
construction of projects
that aren't necessarily
connected in any way
to natural resources
at the university
and the community
colleges and elsewhere.
Where it is going a long way
toward at least trying to,
to spend the money while we
have it for things that are
not necessarily from
natural resources
or not furthering natural
resources as much as
trying to diversify
into other areas.
So I think it's a
very important thing
that we're doing right now.
- And one of the notions
that you hear out there,
but you've been hearing
it probably for,
well maybe as long as time,
but at least in the last
40 or 50 years we've
been hearing it.
That's the end of oil.
Really meaning the
end of fossil fuels,
that we're coming to
the end of that cycle
or that period in history.
But as we've heard others say,
the notion of peak oil,
that moment when you
hit the maximum use
of that resource
and it begins to decline,
that keeps getting
pushed further out.
So is it wrong , I mean,
the books you see that say
the end of oil, is
that just not true?
- Well let me use history
again as an example.
And back at the time when
the United States was
switching the U.S.
naval fleet from
coal-burning ships
to oil-burning ships,
at that time there were
oil experts who said,
"You better not do that
"because by 1920 or by 1925
"the world is gonna
be out of oil."
So the U.S. Navy said,
"Well, we need to do that,
"but here's what we'll do.
"We'll put out, we'll
establish some reserves."
And that's when the
Teapot Dome or the
Naval Petroleum Reserve Number
Two came into existence.
- You're brilliant at tying
this into Wyoming history,
I've gotta say, but yes.
- I've always said that
Wyoming has a connection to
everything in the world.
So, I think we can make that.
But what they tried
to do at least,
was to realize that
there had to be,
at least for the short
term or medium term,
there had to be an
emergency supply.
- [Interviewer] Yeah.
- But of course that
doesn't answer the question
because eventually what
happened in the '20s
was that oil was found in
places that they would have
never expected to find it.
And then by the '30s
in the Middle East
and Iran and Venezuela and
the next thing you know
they're finding deep-oil
deposits in Saudi Arabia
and it went on and on.
Now, obviously we all know that
there is going to be an end.
- You'd think, although
you keep wondering because
new technology, then
we're going into oil shale
or tar sand or
various other sources,
we just keep coming
up with new things.
- But I think each time
it gets more expensive.
And so because it makes
the oil more expensive,
of course the last barrel of oil
is going to be the
most expensive barrel.
- Sure, right.
- But if we can
keep that in mind
and think about
using oil for the,
for the future for plastics
and for high-value products
and switch as much as we
can to alternative energy
for heating and for locomotion
and for such things,
I think we're gonna
be on the right track.
- But you're not the Sheik and
you can't make that happen.
- That's right.
- And I guess,
one of the thing's I'd
ask you as a historian,
what about this attitude
that Americans have?
I mean, they've been
able to consume this way
and they're
importing a lot of it
but they don't seem to show
any inclination to stop.
- It's very difficult because
I know many people have
noticed this when
they've traveled in
Europe in particular,
the price of oil, or the
price of gasoline per liter
is eye-popping and people
have become accustomed to that
because it's been the price,
it's been a much higher
price for many, many years.
Here in the U.S. the price
goes up to not even that level
and people start to scream.
And I think that what's
going to eventually happen
is that we're going to be,
be equivalent to Europe
in prices and it's going
to have a huge impact
on, again, places like
Wyoming where we have
long distances to travel.
And we're going to
have to come up with,
with some cheaper way to,
to fuel our transport
in particular.
And if we're like Dubai, we
should maybe be looking now,
I'm not trying to put words
in your mouth, but you know.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
And we should be looking now
not only in respect to that
but also in respect to
maintaining some of the
spirit we have
about construction.
If the state continues to
do like they did with the
new business college at
the University of Wyoming
and some of those
buildings that are
heavily energy efficient
and if private industry
and individuals can take
on that same spirit,
maybe we don't have to
have any kind of direction.
Maybe we can do it by sort
of accidental consensus
that often happens in Wyoming.
And we get things done
by accidental consensus.
- Your ability to kind of draw
from all different periods of
Wyoming history is
kind of legendary
and I think this is gives
us a last minute opportunity
for you to talk about
the Wyoming Almanac
which you and your
brothers put together
and it contains a lot
of this information.
- It does and it, we're so,
it is such an interesting
project for us to do.
It's the sixth edition
and back in the 1980s
we did the first edition
when there wasn't even
computerized type setting.
And, but it's been a
hobby that we've done.
It started many years
ago when the three of us,
my brother Steve, my
brother David and I
sat around a Thanksgiving
table and we said,
we'd always quiz each other
about some obscure fact
in Wyoming history.
And finally brother Steve said,
"You know, we oughta do
something about that."
And brother Dave said, "Well,
let's put it into a book."
- And that's how it came.
- And that book just
keeps getting
thicker and thicker.
- It's 600, over 600 pages now.
- Sure.
- It started out about
a little less than 300.
So it's doubled in size and
we have great fun doing it.
- Well I was gonna
say, winter's coming,
it's something to curl
up by the fire with.
Phil, thanks very much
for being with us again.
- Thank you for having me.
- Okay.
- The end of oil
has been predicted
as long as there's
been a hub to grease
or a furnace to fire.
But it doesn't go away.
As Phil Roberts says, it
just gets more expensive.
And as history tells us,
expect the unexpected.
At Wyoming Chronicle though,
we want you to expect insight,
depth and entertainment.
If you wanna check the
shows you've missed
or sample a rerun, go to
the Wyoming Chronicle page
at our website wyomingpbs.org.
Thanks again for joining
us on Wyoming Chronicle.
There are a lot more
stories out there,
we'll back to tell them.
- [Man] This is a steel guitar.
(guitar music)
- [Man] Hey guys I'm good
to go if you're monitors are
reasonable and stuff.
I've got y'all at the front.
