Abstract The northern Appalachian sedimentary deposit consists of strata that are related to tectonic movements in two significant ways: (1) they are controlled by large-scale tectonic movements and (2) strata that were horizontal when deposited are no longer horizontal and can be used to delineate and measure the extent of structural deformation. Among the most influential alumni of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York, was James Hall (1811–1898), the “Father of the Geosyncline.” Hall (1859) was the originator of the geosynclinal concept ( Sharpe, 1998 ). The concept of a geosyncline was inspired by the geologic relationships that were worked out for the northern Appalachian Mountains. Hall observed that, where the Paleozoic marine strata in the interior of North America are thin (thicknesses of only a few hundreds or a few thousands of meters), they are flat lying. By contrast, in the Appalachians, thicknesses of equivalent strata amount to thousands of meters and the strata are not horizontal. Hall hypothesized that the substance of the strata within a trough, where they would be extra thick, provided the mechanism for folding them. Both Hall and James Dwight Dana emphasized an important inference about the Appalachian area that had subsided, throughout the thousands of meters of vertical sinking, the depth of the marine waters had remained shallow (Figure 1 ). In other words, subsidence had been more or less exactly matched by accumulation of sediment. The original idea that a part of the sea floor might subside and yet sediment could

Abstract Drake completed his successful oil well in August 1859. By the end of that first historic year, at least 4 additional oil fields had been discovered by other new drillers, and were producing oil in Pennsylvania. By the close of the nineteenth century, nearly 300 oil and gas fields were in production. A series of maps highlight annual field discoveries as we follow the trend of exploration, discovery, and development of petroleum in Pennsylvania’s oil and gas producing region. Our tour slices through history starting in 1859, and we will pause occasionally to consider some of the influences on the fledgling petroleum industry. Careers and character of some entrepreneurs nudged the known limits of the oil region outward, while new uses for oil and gas helped to assure new markets. Solving problems at the well site required inventions and innovations in hardware that forced machine shops to improvise. The young petroleum industry played a role in the Civil War and the reconstruction that followed. We will focus on some of the less well-known oil and gas fields and the visionaries whose inspiration and determination led to successes in regions of Pennsylvania sometimes far from the Oil Creek Valley.

Abstract President Emeritus and former Director of the Bureau of Economic Geology of The University of Texas at Austin, Peter T. Flawn, once observed that the “Bureau survived over the years because its leadership was able to anticipate change, adapt to it, and provide new directions when they were called for” ( Ferguson, 1981 , p. 150). Certainly such has been the case in the 100-year history of the Texas surveys and the petroleum industry. While the Bureau of Economic Geology and the petroleum industry have a long history, two periods stand out: First, the teens and the twenties under then Bureau Director J. A. Udden, when the oil industry was first emerging, and second, from the early seventies, when oil and gas production peaked and a new era of emphasis was placed on enlarged oil and gas recovery from existing fields, an era persisting today and one in which the Bureau has played and continues to play a major role.

ABSTRACT Oil from natural seeps was found and refined by California Indians, who used it for many purposes. In the middle 1800s, settlers arriving in California found the seeps and developed the oil on a much larger scale. Eventually asphal-tum deposits were mined, tunnels were dug uphill into oil reservoirs, and wells were drilled — first in onshore areas and then offshore in the Pacific Ocean. By the turn of the Twentieth Century, California was producing about one quarter of the oil in the United States. Today, 100 years later, California stands as the fourth largest oil producing state in the country.

ABSTRACT Literature on the history of petroleum exploration often notes without attribution that Summerland, California, was the location of the world’s first offshore oil wells. 1 Seldom mentioned is the fact that in the late 1800s at the identical moment in time another group of petroleum explorers were pursuing oil reservoirs past the shoreline and into the sea. In California, exploration was led by H. L Williams, a land developer who had purchased 1050 acres of land in Summerland, south of Santa Barbara, California. Williams originally intended to profit by selling small lots to fellow members of a small sect named Spiritualists. Sales proved difficult and few, buyers too demanding. Under pressure from his mortgage holder and in fear of losing his investment due to dwindling sales and increasing costs, Williams actively pursued discovery of oil wherever it could be found, using the potential for oil discovery to sell lots at higher prices to oil speculators. In contrast to Williams and his ambitious plans for personal gain and the loose coalition who followed him, was the highly evolved bureaucracy of the government of Czar Nicholai II, Emperor of Russia. It intended to exploit oil in the Caspian Sea, offshore of the Baku field in Azerbaijan. To accomplish its goal, it turned to its principal contractor, The Nobel Brothers. In 1898, Williams and his fellow leading citizens approved an application by J. B. Treadwell, a railroad engineer, to build the Treadwell wharf at Summerland and to construct on it a series of wells extending out into the Pacific Ocean. There were no governmental regulations of any kind, local, state or federal, to prevent drilling into the sea or to charge the driller a tariff on the oil that was extracted, beyond a single $101 payment to Santa Barbara County for the right to construct the pier. Treadwell relied upon the Darling Brothers’ local machine shop to engineer conduit to prevent these sea wells from flooding. Treadwell was quickly joined by a rush of individuals and small firms, many of them antecedents to today’s well known oil companies. In total 412 sea wells were constructed in four years at Summerland, California. Due to the limited nature of the reservoir, production quickly peaked, tiien declined steadily. During its years of operation, the Summerland field produced an estimated 1.3 million barrels of oil. By contrast, the Caspian field holds an estimated 2 billion barrel reservoir. This paper reports the history of the Czarist government’s project to explore the Caspian sea at Baku, then reports the unique factors that motivated and made possible the petroleum exploration of the sea at Summerland and the operation, ownership, and history of its sea wells (Figure 1 ). Figure 1. Treadwell wharf, circa 1900. Published March 23, 1901, p. 304 Harper’s Weekly.

Probably the greatest event in the exploration history of the American petroleum industry was the discovery of oil at Spindletop, near Beaumont. Texas, on January 10, 1901. That historical find revolutionized industry and spawned the industrial development that the world enjoys today. It also focused the petroleum industry’s exploratory efforts on the search for other domes and anticlines. This search sustained the growth of our profession of petroleum geologists. The second great event that had significant implications for our profession and the industry we serve was the discovery of the East Texas field on October 5, 1930. On that day the discovery well (“Dad" Joiner’s Daisy Bradford 3), located in Rusk County, was completed as a 300 bbl/day producer. The East Texas field has two outstanding features: Its tremendous size and the simplicity of its geologic trap. It has produced 5,311,152,697 bbls through the year 2001, and probably will produce many more millions of barrels. Figure 1 shows that the trap is stratigraphic and occurs where the eroded edge of the Woodbine sand crosses regional nosing on the west flank of the Sabine uplift and is truncated between the overlapping Austin Chalk and the Wichita limestone below.

The 2002 AAPG convention in Houston presented papers on the two largest oil fields within the United States: The East Texas field and Prudhoe Bay. Although these two fields were discovered almost 40 years apart and in vastly different parts of the United States, I was closely associated with both in a very unique manner. In 1928, my father, the late L. T. Barrow, who was then the District Geologist in San Antonio for the Humble Oil & Refining Company, was assigned to make a surface geologic map of Rusk County because of Wallace Pratt’s recognition that a Woodbine pinch-out occurred on the west flank of the Sabine uplift. In early 1929, he was promoted to Chief Geologist of the Humble Oil & Refining Company in charge of the Geologic, Land, and Scouting Department under the supervision of Wallace Pratt. As such, he actively supervised Humble’s land acquisitions in East Texas both prior to and subsequent to the Joiner well and its discovery of the East Texas field.

The East Texas field was a unique occurrence — discovered and developed during troubled times; destined to play an important part in world history. It created a watershed for the oil and gas industry. Much has been written about the people involved, their actions, and the events that occurred. Special recognition and thanks goes to James A. Clark and Michel T. Halbouty, coauthors of The Last Boom , and H. J. Gruy, author of Thirty Years of Production in the East Texas Field. Information from these works has been freely used for this study. Major oil companies had condemned and written off the area. Petroleum geology and especially geophysics were still young sciences. Migration through porous strata was accepted and structural traps such as anticlines, faults, salt domes, and even noses were thought to be required to have hydrocarbon accumulations. There had been Woodbine production from the Mexia, Wortham, and Powell fields and other fault line traps across northeast Texas extending into Arkansas and Louisiana.

Geophysics, the determination of various properties of the earth via the application of physical theories and measurements techniques, was an infant science in 1859 when the Drake discovery was made. The subdiscipline of applied geophysics, or attempting to use this knowledge to discover natural resources of great economic value, was not even imagined. Indeed, it took the better part of a century for geophysics to assume a major role in the oil industry. However, its growth has been steady, and occasionally spectacular, since the 1920s. And, even though recent technological advances have been astounding, even more incredible breakthroughs seem possible in the early years of the new century. The term “applied geophysics” covers a broad spectrum, ranging from earthquake prediction through engineering and environmental analyses and even such incredibly important national security issues as detection of nuclear tests. However, the dominant role for applied geophysics throughout the past 70 years has been exploration and development of natural resources, primarily petroleum. All major branches of classical physics have been adapted to geophysical exploration. The Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) publishes many books and sponsors many professional meetings, workshop, symposia, etc. on various exploration methods using ingenious adaptations of, for example, seismology, gravity and electromagnetics, magnetotellurics, and ground-penetrating radar in the search for natural resources. There is no doubt, though, that seismology is the overwhelmingly dominant choice of the explo-rationist. Accurate statistics about the actual breakdown regarding the use of each discipline are hard to obtain, but most think that seismology accounts for at least 90% of this work around the world and probably more than that in the United States.

ABSTRACT During June 1967, the author observed a strong seismic reflection, with attenuation below the event, at a depth of 3000 ft (910 m) on the crest of a low-relief structure in Main Pass area, offshore Louisiana. The most likely interpretation was that a calcareous zone, a “hard streak,” caused the strong reflection. Later, two exploration wells penetrated the shallow reflection and found a 25-ft (9 m) gas pay with very low sonic log velocity; a “soft” reflection. Also, an amplitude anomaly in the south Timbalier area with about 2500 ft (760 m) of relief at a depth of 12,000 ft (3660 m) was observed to be associated with a thick oil sand. During 1968 and early 1969, strong seismic reflections were observed on exploration prospects in the offshore Texas and Louisiana Pleistocene trend. Digital acquisition and processing preserved the relative amplitudes of seismic data in contrast to automatic gain control. The term “bright spot” was coined during informal discussions. Seismic was primarily used to map structure at that time, and most geoscientists doubted the relationship of “bright spots” to gas/oil pays. During mid-1969, six oil and gas fields were studied in the offshore Louisiana Pliocene trend, and observed “bright spots” were correlated with gas sands that had a very low sonic log velocity. Shell management formed an operations/research team to study seismic amplitude changes related to gas and oil pays. The first significant application of “bright spot” technology was in 1970 when Shell technical staff predicted the thickness of a gas sand and mapped other pays on Eugene Island Block 331 (150 million bbl of oil equivalent). During 1972, Shell predicted oil pays in the discovery of South Marsh Island 130 Field (250 million bbl of oil equivalent). Many other discoveries followed, especially Cognac in deep water.

ABSTRACT Significant hydrocarbon accumulations are “hidden” in low resistivity, low contrast (LRLC) sands in many of the world’s basins. LRLC reservoirs are found in several clastic basins in Argentina, Australia, Gulf of Mexico, India. Indonesia. Italy, Malaysia, Nigeria, North Sea, Philippines, and Venezuela. The Gulf of Mexico (GOM) basin is the world’s leading oil and gas producer from LRLC clastic intervals. Many GOM fields have produced for more than 20 years; some for more than 45 years. Causes of LRLC pay include clean sands interbedded with shales, silts or shaly sands; day-coated sands; glauconitic sands; sands with interstitial dispersed clay; sands with disseminated pyrite or other conducive minerals; sands with clay-lined burrows, clay clasts; altered volcanic-feldspatic framework grains; and very finegrained sand with very saline water. LRLC depo-sitional systems include: Deepwater fans, with levee-channel complexes; delta front and toe deposits; shingle turbidites; and alluvial and deltaic channel fills. Useful geological and petrophysical models for evaluation of LRLC pay include the Archie clean sand model with appropriate “m” and “n” values or Waxman-Smits shaly sand model. LRLC typically have very high irreducible water saturation. The Archie lithology exponent (m) and saturation exponent (n) for many LRLC reservoirs range from 1.4 to 1.85, and 1.2 to 1.8 respectively. Some shaly sand models are not suited for LRLC evaluation because the low resistivity is caused by nonclay. conductive minerals.

The prevailing ideas of the geology of our planet when our generation was in school was that the position of the continents and ocean basins were fixed in time and place. Continental drift was not accepted. Vertical movement on land produced mountain ranges and the elevator tectonics of the ocean produced submarine canyons which could be subaerially eroded down the continental slope. The floors of the Pacific were assumed to be basalt and the floors of the Atlantic Ocean were of granite. Ocean basins were saucers of great thicknesses of sediment in a motionless abyss. These sediments had been deposited continually throughout all geologic time.

This brief account of how coalbed methane evolved as an important source of pipeline gas must include references to non-technical factors such as bureaucratic impediments — both governmental and corporate, cultural differences between the conservative coal industry and the free-wheeling oil and gas industry, and the palpable reluctance of the general public to accept at face value the free, published reports of federal agencies. It is necessary to understand that the methane program started as mine safety research and that the first attempts to capture and sell the gas were to help offset the costs of methane drainage and an effort to conserve a natural resource. In 1964, there were no large concerns about methane as a greenhouse effect gas so there was no urgency to capture it. By the time that it was becoming evident that coalbed methane was indeed a commercial pipeline gas, all the BuMines’ work relative to gas production was transferred to the newly formed Department of Energy.

ABSTRACT The history of gas exploration of Saudi Aramco goes back to the early exploration years in Saudi Arabia. In 1957, the first commercial non-associated gas field was discovered in the Permian Khuff Formation at the Dammam Dome structure. In 1971, the first of 5 giant Khuff gas fields comprising the overall greater Ghawar (Khuff) Gas field was discovered and became the foundation for significant non-associated gas reserves and production by Saudi Aramco. With the Khuff Formation becoming the dominant gas reservoir in Saudi Arabia, other exploration plays were also aggressively pursued. In 1994, a non-associated gas program was started to explore for non-associated gas, focusing on several plays including the Khuff, Permo-Carboniferous ‘Unayzah, and Devonian Jauf Formations. This program was initiated to fuel expansion in gas-based power generation, seawater desalination. and petrochemical industries. This non-associated gas program has been remarkably successful, having drilled a total of 28 exploration wells with an overall exploration success rate of 54%, resulting in 15 new gas fields, and having discovered in excess of 44 tcf of additional non-associated gas reserves at year-end 2001.

ABSTRACT In 1994, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) discovered natural gas in Paleocene through Jurassic formations below a Miocene oil field called Wiriagar in the Bintuni basin of eastern Indonesia. The exploratory drilling of the pre-Miocene stratigraphy was justified largely by geochemistry, which showed that the oil in the field was Jurassic despite flowing from a Miocene limestone reservoir. Analysis of pressures in the discovery well indicated that the height of the gas column exceeded 2000 ft (610 m), making the gas accumulation potentially large enough to justify construction of a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant. From 1994 to 1998, ARCO farmed into adjacent acreage containing the majority of the discovery’s hydrocarbons. improved commercial terms through negotiations with the Indonesian government, appraised the initial well, identified and discovered 2 nearby gas fields, and worked with an engineering firm to certify 24 tcf of natural gas as reserves (14.4 certified as proved; the rest as probable and possible). These reserves are the basis for what the Indonesian government designated in 1997 as the Tangguh LNG Project. Tangguh is the third largest discovery in the history of ARCO, exceeded only by the Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk River Fields found in the 1960s on the North Slope of Alaska. Tangguh is also the first major pre-Tertiary hydrocarbon discovery in the history of oil and gas exploration in Indonesia.