Henry Fessler being duly sworn deposes and says:

I reside in Ventura. I commenced working in the oil regions of Pennsylvania in 1862 and have been engaged almost constantly in the oil business ever since. I came to California in the fall of 1876 and commenced working and drilling an oil well in Ventura County. I went East in February 1877 and remained until January 1878, when I returned to California. Nearly all the time I have been in California, I have been engaged in drilling oil wells. I have had a large experience in Pennsylvania in drilling and operating oil wells and the taking care of oil and consider myself an expert in the business.

A large proportion of the oil wells in Pennsylvania are pumped by heads at intervals and in the same districts this plan is adapted almost universally. I was in the Bradford District, Pennsylvania, in December 1877, which is nearly the largest producing oil district in the East, and I do not think there is a single well there which is pumped continually, all of these being pumped by heads or agitated so as to make them flow. I know from experience that there are many wells which will produce more when pumped by heads or at intervals than when pumped continually.

I have made the tests a number of times among these. I tried it with great care in some wells which I was operating in Pennsylvania for J.A. Scott and others (said Scott being now a resident of Ventura) and found that in fact the wells would produce several barrels per day more when pumped from two to three times in twenty four hours, than if pumped continuously. It is generally understood and conceded now that pumping wells upon a vacuum is injurious and that less oil is produced than if the oil in the well is permitted to accumulate, and these pumped off by heads. The theory as to the injury being that when a vacuum is formed, air goes down and a hard substance is formed which impedes the flow of the oil. In the early days of the oil region in Pennsylvania, it was supposed that continuous pumping was the best method, but the theory has since been exploded and its practice abandoned. The intervals between the “heads” is to be determined by the quantity of oil produced in the well, and the size of the reservoir or cavities in the rock feeding the same, in which the oil is contained. This can only be ascertained by actual experience and working from day to day on the well and the man who only visits the well occasionally or has nothing to do with the handling of the same, can form no intelligent opinion as to the proper mode of working.

I have observed very carefully the deterioration by evaporation of the California oils and have had opportunities of testing it. California oils both by reason of their properties and the dryness of the climate deteriorates much more rapidly in California than in Pennsylvania oils in Pennsylvania and I do not believe that after California oil has been tanked in California for three or four months it could be profitably refined for illuminating purposes or that the quantity which I understand is produced at the Pico wells could after being tanked, say four months, be handled profitably in any way in the present stat of the market, in fact, I do not think that if the Pico oil was tanked for six months, it would be worth the cost of constructing the tankage. In other words, if they were my wells and I was compelled to furnish tanks and keep it in tanks for six months, I would not pump the wells or furnish tankage for the flowing wells.

I am not interested in said suit and not in the employment of any parties thereto.

Henry Fessler

July 15, 1878