Inside a tank farm

Описание: A tank farm is a group of large tanks where crude oil waits between one pipeline and the next. This is how oil came to be stored in them.

When Edwin Drake's well came in at Titusville in 1859 there was nowhere to put the oil, so it went into washtubs and barrels. Barrels ran short, and the fields built round wooden tanks hooped with iron. Iron gave way to riveted steel, and by 1892 one tank held 35,000 barrels. When the boom reached Texas in 1901, oilmen in the southeast of the state dug pits and ran the crude into the dirt, losing 8 to 10 percent of it in the first year. In 1922 an engineer in Oklahoma patented a deck that floated on the oil itself, and that roof is still on crude tanks today: it rises and falls with the oil, and a seal around its edge holds down evaporation. Because the oil at the bottom sits below the pumps, a tank's working capacity is always less than its size. At Cushing, Oklahoma, where a 1912 gusher once ran into pits, hundreds of tanks now stand, with a working capacity reported at about 78 million barrels in June 2026.

gulfcoastcrude.com

Figures and where they come from:
35,000-barrel riveted steel tank, 1892 supplier's catalogue - Engineering and Technology History Wiki
Earthen pit sizes and the 8 to 10 percent first-year loss, southeast Texas - Barrett, A History of Crude Oil Earthen Storage in Southeast Texas, GCAGS abstract, 2008
The floating deck - US Patent 1,574,012, John H. Wiggins, original application filed 19 May 1922
How a floating roof tank works - US EPA, AP-42 section 7.1
Tank bottoms and working capacity - US Energy Information Administration
Cushing working capacity of about 78.4 million barrels, June 2026 - EIA, as reported by Reuters
Cushing's 1912 discovery and its tank farms - Oklahoma Historical Society
Drake's well and the early scarcity of barrels - American Oil and Gas Historical Society

Not investment advice.

Footage and images
National Archives and Records Administra · Internet Archive · Public domain
Handy (Jam) Organization · Internet Archive · Public domain
Shell · Internet Archive · Public domain
Internet Archive · Public domain
Drake Well, Titusville, Pennsylvania, c.1890 reproduction · Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
The Lucas gusher, Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas, 10 January 1901, photograph by John Trost · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
The United States Well, Pithole, Pennsylvania, 1865, photograph by Frank Robbins · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
US Patent 1,574,012, John H. Wiggins, “Liquid-Storage Tank”, drawing sheet; original application filed 19 May 1922 · USPTO · Public domain
USGS National Map · Imagery · Public domain
USGS National Map · NAIP aerial imagery (USDA FSA) · Public domain