THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING
PART TWELVE - GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH CORPORATION

Chapter 35  -  McDermott's Party Expants into a Gulf Quartet

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 ... and Venice in Plaquemines Parish. Knowing that there is an oilfield somewhere on a salt dome is one thing; finding the producing portion of that dome is quite another. If the salt dome is fairly shallow, if it is possessed of a cap-rock and if this cap-rock contains either oil or sulphur, then the problem of striking it rich is relatively simple. Many salt domes have either no cap-rock or no cap-rock production and may produce only on the flanks. To uncover flank production may take years and require the drilling of dry hole after dry hole after dry hole. The deep-seated salt domes have the advantage that they normally produce more or less directly over the salt plug; sometimes many thousands of feet above the salt. Many very deep domes had their petroleum too deep for the drilling methods in vogue in the 1920s and 1930s. With the deep drilling techniques introduced in the 1940s, these very deep salt domes began to go into production.

Because the Gulf Production Company suffered from a shortage of cash during the Depression and was forced to drastically curtail its wildcat drilling program, it lost out on a number of its salt dome discoveries. With few exceptions, Louisiana coastal domes have now been brought into production, even though it has in some instances required huge outlays of money and patience. One Louisiana dome did not produce until more than thirty years of drilling had been expended. Drilling on the Texas coastal domes has not been quite as successful in discovering commercial production as has been the case with Louisiana. Louisiana has roughly twice as many producing geophysical salt domes as has its westerly neighbor. Three of the earliest Texas geophysieal salt domes; Allen, Clemens and Long Point; all worked by both torsion balance and refractions by 1926; still are without commercial oil produetion forty years later in the year 1966. Clemens and Long Point do, however, have extensive sulphur deposits.

Dr. Charles Bazzoni, long time Chief Geophysicist of the Sun Oil Company, has this to say about Sun's refraction days: "We picked up a number of domes but the competition was intense and I do not remember that we were credited with any domes not discovered by others at or about the same time." Petty and McCollum were both using an electrical seismograph but in their first work they had not developed a time-break. The Sun Oil Company party used a mechanical seismograph until December, 1928, then switched to an electrical seismograph. The seismographs of Dr. Ludger Mintrop, Dr. Norman Ricker and of Henry Gordon Taylor were all mechanical. Humble switched from a mechanical seismograph to an electrical seismograph in 1928. Humble employed a time-break from the inception of its seismic program.

In June of 1928, GRC Party #2 finished its long stay in Louisiana and moved to the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. McDermott remained as party chief only until August when he opened his supervisor's office in Odessa, Texas. Sam Stewart was brought in as party chief. The technical personnel of Party #2 when it moved from New Orleans to Jal, New Mexico, was Jimmie Jett, chief observer, Claude Harrington and T. I. Harkins, junior observers, and Francis Campbell, computer. When Fischer Reynolds was graduated from Rice Institute in June of 1928, he was sent to Party #2 as an observertrainee. In July, Reynolds became a regular observer and Claude Harrington was sent to Oklahoma as a chief observer on an Amerada party. In the year 1966, Claude Harrington is the Gulf Coast supervisor for the GRC.

In September, 1928, instruments and equipment were assembled at Midland, Texas, for the use of a second refraction party for Gulf under Dr. Roland Beers as party chief. C. V. A. Pittman came to this second crew as computer in October. This Gulf party moved back to the Texas Gulf Coast in November of 1929, at which time Dr. Beers was transferred to a Pure party and Pittman became the GRC party chief for Gulf.

In December, 1928, a third Gulf Party was organized under Austin Stanton as party chief and with T. I. Harkins as chief observer. When Austin Stanton was transferred to Oklahoma in the spring of 1929, T. I. Harkins became the party chief of Gulf's GRC Party #3. Aylwin L. Smith took out the fourth Gulf party early in 1929. Party #4 started its refraction operations at Wickett in Ward County, Texas, with Fischer Reynolds as chief observer.

Eugene McDermott kept a close watch over the computations and interpretation of the Permian Basin work for Gulf. It was not unusual for him to work twenty hours at a stretch. In New Mexico he lined up the prospects; Hobbs, Eunice, Jal and Monument. McDermott played a major role in supplying Gulf with the information that enabled it to procure well-situated acreage in a string of New Mexico oilfields. When work expanded into West Texas, McDermott had to delegate much of the computing detail to his four party chiefs. McDermott moved his supervisory office from Odessa to Houston in the spring of 1929. Pure had a GRC crew working out of Seagraves in Gaines County, under Dr. J. H. Crawford with Ike Newton as chief observer in 1929.

For a number of years prior to the advent of refraction work in the Permian Basin, Ben Bolt had made a careful geological study of the region. He directed the assignment of the various areas to be worked by the four GRC seismic crews. Ben Bolt operated out of Gulf's Fort Worth office, where he enjoyed the able assistance of H. B. "Babe" Fuqua.

Gulf closed out its refraction program in the autumn of 1930, when the last GRC party was released. In January of 1931, the Geophysical Research Corporation organized the Theoretical Department with Dr. E. E. Blondeau as Director and the writer as his assistant. The first contract of the Theoretical Department was the reworking of all of Gulf's Permian Basin refraction data; the total output of the four GRC parties. The new maps of the Permian Basin were ready in May of 1931, after some three months of preparation.

Amerada then requested that the Theoretical Department rework all of its Permian Basin maps. This occupied the two of us for the entire summer of 1931. In the fall of 1931, the Theoretical Department was asked to develop a means for making a better determination of the edges of salt domes, since flank production was becoming more and more prevalent on salt domes. In September I was reworking the Vermilion Bay salt dome data. For the rest of the year other salt domes came in for scrutiny. My personal experience with salt dome discovery in 1928 had been limited to a minor role in the computations on Lake Salvador in March and with Caillou Island in April. In the spring of 1929 I had made the maps of both the reconnaissance and detail work of the Iowa salt dome in Calcasieu and Jefferson Davis Parishes, and of the Cameron Meadows salt dome in Cameron Parish, for the Vacuum Oil Company.