Abstract In the 1930s, Alfred Bentz, August Moos and Karl Krejci-Graf were among the most noteworthy petroleum geologists in Germany. Being scientific modernists, they systematized the search for oil, introducing modern exploration methods. All three, at some stage, worked for the German state on providing the petroleum needed by the German military during World War II. The three colleagues seem to have had an amicable relationship. They were, however, very different. Bentz was not a member of the National Socialist party but obviously lent his expertise to the regime; as did Krejci-Graf, who, although also was not a party member, was a member of the SS, whereas Moos, due to his Jewish background, was murdered in January 1945 in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. This paper endeavours to sketch the lives of the three colleagues, highlighting their relationship and the interconnectedness of contemporary moral issues with professional and scientific demands.

Abstract The Northwest German sedimentary basin has a complex geological history. Its deeper underground has amazingly complicated lines of structure, with high blocks separated by deep sedimentary troughs. It can now be proved that the 68 oil and gas fields discovered in the Northwest German basin are closely related genetically to the distribution of such subsurface troughs within the basin. These subsurface troughs were developed from the Liassic onward, but the first framework had probably already originated in the Zechstein (Upper Permian). Their characteristic feature is the variation in thickness of sediments, which in the basin deeps may increase two- and threefold above the more normal thicknesses. The Liassic, for instance, which has a normal thickness of 200–300 meters, may increase in parts of the troughs up to 1,200 meters. A further characteristic is the principal part played by bituminous rocks. Oil shales are known from the Rhaetic (Upper Triassic) to the Barremian (Lower Cretaceous), but primary bituminous remains can also be found widely spread in marls, dolomites, and limestones. These bituminous series are not only restricted to the purely marine facies of the basin sediments but they are also fairly well developed in the saliferous facies of the Portland (Upper Jurassic) and in the brackish-limnic Wealden. About 200 salt domes have been proved within the limits of the Northwest German basin. The time of their origin varies; it was proved, however, that the first uprising of salt must have already taken place in the upper Dogger. The migration of oil and gas from the source rocks in the deepest parts of the troughs into higher reservoir rocks had already occurred at the time of formation of the pronounced upper Dogger traps. It must further be expected that from the beginning of sedimentation, especially at the boundaries of the troughs, stratigraphic traps were also already existent and that, therefore, formation of oil fields had already started during the Jurassic. There is evidencc for such pre-Neocomian oil deposits, which were later completely or partly destroyed. The formation of the present oil deposits is, however, much younger; it took place, in most cases, in the Upper Cretaceous or in the early Tertiary, and in some places even later. A repetition of processes leading to the formation of the Northwest German oil fields must be assumed; that is, we see a multiple origin for the oil series from the Permian to the Lower Cretaceous. We are concerned with multiple migration from the troughs and multiple accumulation in the different types of oil traps—salt domes, anticlines, and stratigraphic traps.

Abstract The history of the European oil and gas industry reflects local and global political events, economic constraints, and the personal endeavours of individual petroleum geoscientists, as much as it does the development of technologies and the underlying geology of the region. Europe and Europeans played a disproportionately large role in the development of the modern global oil and gas industry. From at least the Iron Age until the 1850s, the use of oil in Europe was limited, and the oil was obtained almost exclusively from surface seeps and mine workings. The use of oil increased in the 1860s with the introduction of new technologies in both production and refining. Shale oil was distilled on a commercial scale in various parts of Europe in the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century but, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the mineral oils and gas produced primarily from shale and coal could no longer satisfy demand, and oil produced directly from conventional oil fields began to dominate the European market. The first commercial oil wells in Europe were manually dug in Poland in 1853, Romania in 1857, Germany in 1859 and Italy in 1860, before the gradual introduction of mechanical cable drilling rigs started in the early 1860s. In the late nineteenth century, the northern part of the Carpathian Mountains in what is now Poland and Ukraine was one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world. The Bóbrka Field in the Carpathian foothills of Poland, discovered in 1853, is still producing and is now the oldest industrial oil field in the world. The 1914–18 and 1939–45 world wars were both major drivers in exploration for and exploitation of Europe’s oil resources and in the development of technologies to produce synthetic fuels from the liquefaction of bituminous coal and the combination of carbon monoxide and hydrogen as the Allied and Axis governments struggled to maintain adequate supplies of fuel for their war efforts. In Britain, the first ‘accidental’ discovery of gas was made in 1875 in the Weald Basin, but it was not until 1919 that Britain’s first oil field was discovered at Hardstoft, in Derbyshire, as a result of a government-funded exploration drilling campaign, triggered by the need to find indigenous supplies of oil during World War I. The period of reconstruction after World War II was also critical for the European oil and gas industry with further successful exploration for oil and gas in the East Midlands of England resulting in Britain’s first ‘oil boom’, and the discovery and development of deep gas fields in the Po Valley in northern Italy fuelling the Italian economy for the next 50 years. Drilling technologies developed during Britain’s first oil boom, together with the extrapolation of the onshore geology of the East Midlands oil fields and of the Dutch gas fields, led to the discovery of the huge oil and gas resources beneath the North Sea in the 1960s and 1970s, which enabled Britain, Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands to be largely self-sufficient in oil and gas from the late 1970s until production began to decline rapidly in the early 2000s. Today, oil and gas production in most European countries is at an historical low. Exploration for new sources of oil and gas in Europe continues, although increasingly hampered by the maturity of many of the conventional oil and gas plays, but European companies and European citizens continue to play a major role in the global oil and gas industry.

Abstract In this brief review, the authors discuss the origin and evolutionary pattern of the Mediterranean Sea and its environs. The concept of seafloor spreading, as woven into the earlier proposal of continental drift, provides a scientific basis for the theory of plate tectonics. This theory explains the physiography and geological characteristics of the Mediterranean Basin, which is viewed as a “hollow” caught between the colliding African Plate to the south, the Eurasian Plate to the north, and the Arabian Subplate to the east. Within the basin and around it, interactions of numerous microplates control the shape of the landmasses and their destinies. The perspective from space provides an effective tool with which we can study not only the landmasses that surround the Mediterranean but also its water currents and their sediment dispersal patterns. Use of space data will help in the continuing research to further unravel the plate movements of the past and help us formulate models of future changes. Such predictions are vital to economic development because, although the Mediterranean region has already provided much oil and gas for human needs, the area’s petroleum potential remains vast. Many features such as river-delta deposits, continental-shelf regions, subtle traps (stratigraphic, unconformity, and paleogeomorphic), and buried salt domes have not been adequately explored. We believe that the application of the modern concepts of geology and geophysics will result in the location of additional oil and gas resources in the Mediterranean region.