Shooting It Out

California's Lane-Wells Co. has the combination to a safe packed with black gold. It specializes in getting oil from wells that have run dry. By literally shooting out the oil with a gadget called a gun perforator, Lane-Wells has increased the yield of U.S. wells by an estimated $200 million. Last week, with demand for oil at a peak, the company was booming as never before. For five consecutive months, it has grossed more than $1,000,000 a month. With a second-quarter net of $1,143,200, Lane-Wells was earning around $6 a share, about four times its prewar rate.

Electric Trigger. The problem of getting oil out of its protective sand-and-stone armor is as old as the first well. For years oilmen used dynamite, and topped the charge with water. No better method was found until two Los Angeles oil-machinery salesmen, Wilfred G. Lane and Walter T. Wells, tackled the problem in 1932. In a few months they developed their perforator gun, which can fire as many as 128 bullets in any desired direction. Its force is great enough to pierce five layers of steel casing and concrete, make enough fissures in the surrounding strata to start oil flowing. By means of an electrical trigger, the discharges, deep in a well, can be controlled at the surface.

On Union Oil Co.'s La Merced No. 17, which had been abandoned for three years, Lane-Wells's first test resulted in a greater daily flow than the well had ever produced. This summer, on the same site, the company made its 100,000th perforation, rejuvenated the old well all over again. Over 5,000 oil-producing companies in the U.S. are now Lane-Wells customers, at $200 and up per well.

Gas Jet. Though the company's basic patent ran out in 1943, Lane-Wells's 150 mobile truck units still handle more than half of all the well-perforating business in the U.S., and provide many another service on the side. The latest, which Lane-Wells performs under license from the patent-owning Welex Jet Services, is to free oil by means of a bazooka-like gun that fires jets of high-speed, fast-burning gases.

Though it is costlier, the jet system penetrates as much as 300% deeper than the bullet system. Lane-Wells expects it to bring in a lot of new business. Rejuvenation prospects are so good, in fact, that the company this week begins doubling the size of its overworked machine shop near Los Angeles.

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