wells produced economic quantities of oil; indeed it was not until 1908 that oil was found at all, and the Producers Oil Company drilled 20 separate times in a failed attempt to create a well that flowed sufficiently to turn a profit. The American Petroleum Company had better luck, and their -per-day gusher on August 23, 1916 brought in the field. The subsequent fast influx of workers and equipment engendered a pair of boomtowns – Pelly and Goose Creek – adjacent to the field. In 1917 Ross S. Sterling, president of Humble Oil Company, chose to build a refinery on vacant land just northwest of the oil field, reorganizing his firm as the Humble Oil and Refining Company in order to accomplish the task. Humble Oil would go on to become Exxon, and the Baytown Refinery would eventually become the largest refinery in the United States. In addition, in 1919 Sterling arranged for the construction of Baytown on land adjacent to his new refinery. High oil prices also fueled the field's fast development. The First World War had caused a run-up in the price, which reached $1.35 per barrel by 1917. During that year the average well was producing over , and the biggest gusher also occurred during 1917 – a well drilled by the Simms-Sinclair Company which spewed , remaining out of control for several days. The Goose Creek Oil Field was the location of the first offshore wells in Texas. They were drilled in shallow water from piers like the ones in on the Summerland field in Summerland, California twenty years before, which were the first in the world. Due to subsidence many of the wells which were originally on land are now wholly or partially submerged. Because of the sinking of the land containing the field, the State of Texas sued the Humble Oil Co. for rights to the field, as technically the field had ceased to be on land but had joined the state water bottomlands, which were not subject to private ownership. Along with title to the field and the various private parcels within it, the State sought to collect the revenues from oil and gas produced since the land went underwater. The State lost the suit, with the court ruling that the subsidence was caused by the extraction of oil, and was therefore an "act of Man" rather than a natural event. Humble Oil