He was an innovator. Developed “Slant Well Drilling” by drilling on your own property and then directing the drill to your neighbors property to pull the oil up from there.
I thought slant drilling was a method of removing your neighbor’s oil (draining his field) by pulling it up on your property. A lot of people suspect Cuba ((with China’s help) is doing that to us in the Gulf right now.
BTW, Michigan is using slant drilling methods right now to recover oil from under Lake Michigan (pulling it up on shore) while Wisconsin on the opposite shore prohibits any kind of oil drilling, either on the Lake, or on shore.
Anybody with any sense suspects that there are huge deposits under Lake Michigan that should be recoverable to Wisconsin, except that our state law prohibits it.