In a recent conversation with the Minister of Energy, Senator Kevin Ramnarine (himself an accomplished historian), we came to the realisation that little is known about our oil pioneers, to whom we owe so much.
In 1867 Capt Walter Darwent drilled Trinidad's first oil well at Aripero, but he died near his abortive find a year later. Almost four decades were to pass before another attempt at exploiting the vast reserves of Trinidad oil was made.
Randolph Rust was like dozens of fortune-seekers in the West Indies who lacked prospects back home in England. He had come out to Trinidad in 1882 as a clerk in the firm of Campell Hannays and Co.
In 1888 Rust started his own agency, dealing in beer, arms and ammunition, salted provisions and the sale of local produce. In 1893 he took a partner in the form of Henry Trowbridge and the firm became known as Rust, Trowbridge and Co. Henry died in 1894, but the firm prospered.
Rust joined the Trinidad Field Artillery Volunteer Brigade where he received a major's commission.
In the 1880s, a surveyor mapping the southeastern coast noticed seepages of oil in the Guayaguayare forest. He sent a sample to England and it was returned with a terse note which said that the sample had to be fake, since it was too pure.
By 1893, Rust, who had been bitten by the oil bug, was in the same forest looking at the trickling stuff.
The land was owned by a Chinese merchant named John Lee Lum. Born in Guangdong, China in 1847, Lee Lum worked with thousands of other Chinese coolies to lay the track for the Trans Pacific Railroad across the United States. In 1885, he came to Trinidad and set up a chain of shops.
Rust was sufficiently convinced of the commercial possibilities of oil, and unlike Trinidad's first driller, undertook to provide financing for his enterprise before drilling. Backed by Lee Lum, Rust entered into a partnership with the Walkerville Whisky Company of Canada to form the "Canadian Oil Exploration Syndicate" in 1901.
By 1902, Rust was ready to begin drilling. Since there was no road access to the area, manpower and equipment were sent to Guayaguayare by steamer and then ferried four miles up the Pilot River on rafts and canoes to where a site had been cleared and levelled by hand. Erecting a rickety wooden and iron drilling rig, powered by a steam engine, Rust and his men struck a rich oils and at just 850 feet.
The recovery process was even cruder than the drilling apparatus. A large well was dug and a pulley system installed on which drill pipe dippers were dipped in the pooling oil and then dumped into wooden barrels which were then loaded on canoes and taken to the mouth of the river. Some of the oil was drained off to a metal holding tank while still more was poured into an earthen sump or pit.
Next week we will look at the operations and the eventual fate of Trinidad's first commercially productive oil well.
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