Spindletop

They sit next to the oil on all of the oil fields.

And the Texas oil age started on top of one at Spindletop in 1901.

I think 1901.

That's where the strategic petroleum reserve is stored in caverns inside of those salt domes, thousands of feet down.

We talked to literally the big data expert on this episode of

In 1901, at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, the future of Texas changed dramatically as, like a fountain of fortune, thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky.

Soon, Detroit would be cranking out Model Ts by the millions, and America was on the move, thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas.

Now, more than a century later, the vehicles are different, but nothing else has truly changed.

But local investors had formed a Jennings Oil Company and hired Scott Haywood.

I mean, if you don't know Scott Haywood, I previously mentioned the Spindletop Hill in Texas.

So he was known for his successful drilling there.

But anyway, he recognized that the natural gas seeps found nearby Jenny's Oil Company were similar to the conditions at Spindletop.

So we're storing gas there in a reservoir that had previously produced natural gas, been retired, and then it was bought and put back in service in the early 2010s.

About that same time, and this was all under predecessors of Southern Company, the Southern Company developed this asset here at Golden Triangle Storage on Spindletop.

drilled two wells those two wells are certificated for a little more than 14 bcf of natural gas storage those are salt cavern wells and so when you create those you're actually drilling into a great big block of salt you make a completion you push water down there you dissolve the salt and it starts making void space it gets bigger and bigger and bigger these are engineered You develop those to about the size of the Empire State Building or the Williams Tower.

We're in Houston, so Williams

We were backed by a private equity fund, a private debt fund called OIC, and one of their co-investors, Grosvenor.

The two of them together funded the acquisition, and we built the team out.

It was some of the former... caliche team but then we've built the team out now we're 65 people across the two assets in the houston corporate office we also have a california small california corporate office um and we after we bought those assets we added another helium well so interestingly you know there are three big companies in helium we built one for air products the first time we built this one for lindy um And that was just something that you mentioned the location of Spindletop and Beaumont, the Golden Triangle area, you know, between the ports that are here and all the plants and all the pipes, it's just a great place for developing industrial assets.

Can I ask you, did I see correctly that that first helium storage unit you built for air products, I think it was the first in the Western Hemisphere? Yes.