Last month I exhorted my exploration readers to get out there and get exploring because the pundits and prognosticators expect this to be a busy year for the discovery of new reserves.
I don't want to leave them empty-handed in their search.
Yes, we've all heard about the merits of 3-D seismic, basin analysis, gravity and magnetics, geochemistry, satellite imagery and all of the other high-tech toys that help us see underground. But people were finding oil and gas a long time before any of these techniques were invented. Maybe it's time to revisit the basics.
I have recently been loaned a book that is an absolute gold mine of interesting and sometimes hysterical history about geophysics. Called "The History of Geophysical Prospecting" (Volume 1), it was written by George Elliott Sweet and published in 1966 by Science Press. I've been tasked with finding interesting tidbits that might make good fodder for the "Oilfield History" feature that appears in this magazine every month. But some of the really juicy ones I have to keep for myself.
It seems people were luckier in the 1800s. Perhaps there was just more easy oil to find. But in a chapter called "Extra Sensory Perception," Sweet recounts some of the wilder things that enterprising oil men tried during this century to tap into Mother Nature's riches. One recounts a man named Kepler, who had a vivid dream. "In this dream he was wandering through the woods accompanied by a young townlady with a reputation as being an accomplished flirt" (this has absolutely no bearing on the rest of the story, which I find hilarious). "Kepler suddenly noticed the figure of an Indian some distance away, with a bow bent and ready to shoot him with an arrow." Sweet recounts how Kepler shot the Indian, who immediately vanished. In the spot where he had been standing gushed forth a river of oil.
Kepler later visited his brother, who had been made the manager of a large farm. While looking around the farm, he found the exact spot that had been in his dream. The brothers managed to acquire a lease, drilled a well which they named after the young lady in the dream, and it came in flowing 1,500 bo/d. "Kepler's dream netted him US $80,000 the first 6 months," Sweet notes.
Ah, but it gets better. Jonathan Watson, one of the funders of the Drake well in Pennsylvania, entered the oil business in earnest after the success of that well. Over the next 12 years he secured interests in more than 2,000 producing oil wells, most of which he drilled himself. Sweet said that his home in Titusville had a conservatory that cost $50,000 to build.
"Watson's oil well locations were made by every means known to man and a few sanctioned only by lunatics," Sweet wrote. "His wife was a spiritualistic medium, and he occasionally humored her by allowing her to use her contacts in the spirit world to decide on the proper well location. His wife's picks, or perhaps we should say the picks of his wife's friends, turned out to be excellent oil producers.
"That was good enough for Watson, and he hired other mediums to make locations."
Eventually Watson ditched his mediums for "experts" with divining rods, resulting in an end to his string of successes.
Abram James' otherworldly explorationists were not so subtle. Sweet wrote that during a carriage ride he was compelled to get out, climb a fence and walk across a field, at which point he was "thrown violently to the ground." The resulting well was a mild success.
I'm starting to think now that we've solved the people shortage once we hire all of the available psychics, mediums, tarot card readers, tea leaf readers, palm readers and astrologers.
Pleasant dreams.

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