BBC visits Ardmore for oil industry documentary
By Steve Biehn
Staff Writer
Web posted January 9, 2007
Forty-four Oklahoma oil workers are so historically significant that a BBC television crew is in America this week producing a program about their role in the British oil field during World War II. The American "oil patch warriors" helped England increase its petroleum output tenfold, which was crucial to that country's survival.
"It was called 'Churchill's Biggest Secret,'" said BBC producer Tracy Williams. "It was an incredible secret -- a secret that has survived even today."
In 1942, the United Kingdom imported the vast majority of its oil, and German U-boats were sinking Allied oil freighters with alarming regularity. Although a small oil field had been discovered earlier in England's famous Sherwood Forest, British petroleum technology lagged far behind that of the Americans.
"We couldn't produce it fast enough to get it out for the war effort," reporter Marie Ashby said.
With oil reserves shrinking to dangerous levels, British Petroleum representative Sir Phillip Southwell traveled to Ardmore to ask well-known oilman Lloyd Noble for help. Noble agreed, and his company, Noble Drilling, was designated as project manager. Noble and his partner in the project, Fain-Porter Drilling, accepted Southwell's offer on the condition they receive no payment from the British government.
Under cover of the dense forest and utilizing advanced drilling techniques and sheer willpower, the American oilmen drilled 94 producing wells for their English allies. The roughnecks worked 12-hour shifts seven days a week and lived under difficult conditions in a monastery on the edge of the forest. The project continued undetected for 12 months, and production levels in the Sherwood Forest oil field rose from 300 to 3,000 barrels of oil a day.
"It was hard work, but we were getting $29 a day and doing something for our country at the same time," Chris Watson recalled during a 2001 interview.
Scottish historian Hugo Manson credits the Americans with playing a pivotal role in the British war effort.
A 7-foot bronze statue was erected in 1991 in the Dukes Wood area of Sherwood Forest to pay tribute to the American oil field workers. A duplicate Oil Patch Warrior statue stands in Memorial Square in downtown Ardmore.
"It seems to be more well known here," Williams said Monday while working at the Noble Foundation. "It's a fabulous story."
Williams, Ashby and camerman Chris Sharman are scheduled to be in New Orleans today interviewing Lewis Dugger, who may be the last surviving member of the 1943 group. Dugger participated in a Profiles and Perspectives program at the Goddard Center in 2001.
Williams said the oil patch warrior segment will air on "Inside Out," a BBC current affairs program in about a month.