32THE OIL AGE ARRIVEScrude oil from a drilled well anywhere in the kingdom. Well No. 1 began
coughing out crude oil, but at the paltry rate of 50 barrels per day (b/d).
By September, the flow remained under 100 b/d. These sorts of flows
would have delighted an oilman in Texas but looked dire to prospectors
who had invested so much so far from home. In early 1936, crews brought
in a speedier rotary rig from Bahrain and pushed ahead with Dammam
No. 2. Within six months, they again struck oil. Dammam No. 2 was
flowing— at a very profitable rate of nearly 4,000 b/d. But soon the flow
tailed off to a few hundred.
Evidence of oil was encouraging, but Socal lacked the capital to exploit
the Saudi concession fully. In 1936, Socal sold half its interest to Texaco,
a larger US oil company that arose from the East Texas oil patch. The
two formed a joint venture called Caltex. More men came to the oilfields
of al- Hasa and built a permanent camp on a 70,000- acre plot handed
over by Ibn Saud.
On December 7, 1936, Caltex spudded in Dammam No. 7, a test well
meant to probe new depths.^5 Through 1937, drilling surpassed the lowest
points of previous wells, reaching 3,300 feet by October but still releas-
ing no oil. Socal executives in San Francisco began reassessing the via-
bility of the Saudi concession, which was starting to look like a white
elephant. Socal’s chief geologist, Max Steinecke, told his men to drill
No. 7 a little deeper. It was a command that would change the world.
The men drove the bit down to 4,727 feet, nearly a mile below the sur-
face. At these depths, the Cretaceous zones that were so fruitful in
Bahrain gave way to an earlier geological stratum, the late Upper Jurassic.^6
On March 4, 1938, Dammam No. 7 began to flow. A heavy crude oil
emerged at the cautiously optimistic rate of 1,585 b/d. A few days later
the flow improved to a respectable 4,000 b/d. This time the oil poured
forth without letup.
Caltex drilled its other wells deeper into the Upper Jurassic pay
zone, and they, too, began to produce prodigious amounts of crude
oil.^7 By the measures of the day, flows of 3,000 to 4,000 barrels per day
were immensely profitable, sufficient to please executives in San Francisco
and Houston. But later discoveries in the kingdom would be much
larger, with flow rates that beggared belief.