cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts
"When Melanie and Sara went with me to look for our roots, I ended up telling them a story from about 1977. They had never heard it, and sure enough, as I do a few word searches, it appears I have never written it out in a Thoughtlet. I expect there are a lot of these. It was interesting to have the comment, Dad, this is a lot better thing to write about than what business lunch you had! I agree. And frankly unless we spend time together talking, I'm not sure how it is going to come up that I forgot a good story like this one. Actually I did reference it sideways in the Thoughtlet titled Tarzan (../9925.html) when I wrote:
But how did I get in that 30 foot long dugout canoe, with
a black man rowing in the front and another one in the back
with our suitcases sitting between us? It is all because
of seismic interpretation.
I went to work for Mobil on July 15th, 1974, and was in a one year hands-on training program learning about seismic interpretation, seismic acquisition (../0237.html), and then seismic processing. I liked seismic interpretation far the best, and was given my first assignment after the training program to work for the original MEPSI (Mobil Exploration and Producing Services International) under Jack Peffer. It was a fun job. My first project was a regional interpretation of the Andaman Sea, projecting Mobils' large reef gas discovery in North Sumatra into the area between Thailand and the Andaman Islands. It was a neat project, and there is a lot of deep water opportunity here, which has yet to be exploited. The rainbow map I generated was remembered by Stewart Moncrief 20 years later as a real innovation. However, when I presented the results, the boss fell asleep in my presentation and I really took it personally.
Then I was moved on the other side of Malaysia and worked with a team doing regional mapping of the South China Sea. There was some transition and I worked with an inactive member of the church, Clem Novosad, on an equity redetermination of the Statfjord Field in the Norwegian North Sea. My seismic interpretation contouring change was worth more money to Mobil than I care to try and figure out. There was a gravity interpretation and modeling project on the Gargano High in Southern Italy, interpretation of salt pillows on Superior Oil seismic data offshore Israel, looking for reefs on seismic data in the Puerto Rico, a six month assignment to work for Mobil New Orleans on a Gulf of Mexico lease sale, and other similar seismic interpretation projects.
MEPSI was dissolved and became SEP (Special Exploration Projects) in the new MEPSI (... Incorporated). I was assigned to the South American Team. I worked up maps of reflectors on regional seismic data in Peru, and then was assigned to do a big regional seismic interpretation offshore the Falkland Islands (../9814.html), all the way up Argentina to Uruguay. I encouraged Mobil to pursue the Falkland Islands, and about the same day I turned in my report, there was a gun ship battle between British and Argentina battleships. This was 10 years before the Falkland War, which England entered because of the North Sea like appearance of the geology. It is interesting there have been no major discoveries off of the Falkland Islands yet.
It was about this time that Mobil decided to bid on the first Brazil offshore lease sale. A female interpreter named Jeanie (?) and I interpreted the block by the mouth of the Amazon River. I was put in charge of consolidating the reports on all 10 of the lease blocks. It was interesting, and because my boss liked the work I did, he arranged for me to go to Mauritania. And this is where the story starts.
My traveling companion, as mentioned above was Rod Avenius (../9925.html). He was a geologist, and was almost ready to retire. He had been the Exploration Manager for Mobil in Nigeria when the Biafra War broke out. Before that he had worked for years in the jungles of Central and South America and had collected many artifacts and brought them to Nigeria with him. When the war broke out, there was not time to take out their stuff. They were allowed one suitcase, and were flown by helicopter to the platforms offshore to be evacuated to Europe. He described flying over the soldiers marching on Port Harcourt and seeing them point their guns at them. He was an experienced West Africa hand.
Our assignment was to evaluate the Shell Oil Casamance Farm-Out offshore Senegal. I was to do the seismic interpretation and Rod was to do the geologic interpretation. We spent about four days doing this work and writing up our recommendations. During this time we found ourselves:
After finishing with Shell, we got plane tickets to fly to Nouakchott, the "new" capital of the country of Mauritania. Western Mauritania is near where Timbuktu (Tombouctou) is located, which is suppose to be the most desolate place on the planet Earth (16.46N 3.01W). Rod made the plane reservations, and I thought nothing of it. Figured it would be like flying from Cedar City to Salt Lake. NOT! As we boarded the plane the French expat pilot hit a panel, which fell open, and all of these wires were hanging out connected by twisted pairs. He started to undo and redo them. Obviously there was a short. Then we noticed the seat covers. They were gunny sacks, and looked like they had been used to hold ground up byproducts from the Lower Plant. Then we saw the live animals in the back of the plane, and a fondue type of apparatus with a live sterno flame cooking something. I didn't fall asleep on the flight, and we were both very glad to get off the plane.
We didn't plan our trip very well, because it was the Thursday before Easter. Being half Moslem and half Christian and all West African, the Mauritanians took all Christian and all Moslem holidays off. We were to meet with the government ministers and obtain permission for The Mobil Search, Mobil's seismic acquisition ship, to collect seismic data offshore. We could not meet with them because their offices were closed. So our host, the local Mobil distributor had to put up with us for a long weekend. On good Friday we drove a couple of hundred kilometers to watch a basketball game which he was sponsoring to help elevate the kids from poverty. It was fun. They were big kids. It was sand dunes everywhere we went.
On Saturday he showed us around the city. The Presidential House had been built by the Chinese. The military headquarters had been built by the Russians. The paved highways were courtesy of the British. The hospital came from the U.S. The whole city had been built in the previous few years to make it a real capital city. He took us to the sea shore where they had racks for cleaning and drying fish. It smelled just like the lower plant. I was OK, and Rod almost lost it. The took us to new housing developments being sponsored by U.S. groups. They were cinder block apartments. Sort of looked like storage sheds do in Houston, except there was nothing around except sand and dust. Then they took us to an agricultural experiment. There were rows and rows of lettuce and other vegetables. I was impressed. I asked, `Where do you get the water?' He pointed and I watched a lady come out of a long trench in the ground with a large container of water on her head. After probing, we learned the water was raw sewage from the city. They took us to a fancy restaurant that evening, and when they brought out the salad, they were bragging that it came from the agricultural project we visited. Neither Rob nor I choose to eat any salad. I did sneak a piece of bread and some bottled water, and the next day, which was Easter Sunday, had my own private sacrament meeting. It was a very special experience, and one I will always cherish. I'm sorry I haven't told you about it before.
We had our meetings with the government officials on Monday. They were largely Arab, it was a desert country, and these facts implied to them that there had to be significant oil reserves in the country. So they wanted more than we were authorized to offer to collect seismic offshore. The meetings were a failure. It is interesting that last year, 26 years after my visit, there was a large discovery in the deep water offshore Mauritania. Of course, we and Mobil's management did not know that a long time ago. So Rod called to make our return plane reservations. They wanted a bribe, and Rob said, `No thanks! We'll just take a cab.
So we took a series of cabs the 400-450 km from Nouakchott, Mauritania to St. Louis (where we crossed the Senegal River in the canoe) to Dakar, Senegal. It was one long trip, and I have a wonderful set of slides someplace showing the change from mud huts to brick huts to grass huts to stick huts to larger stick huts to the houses in the suburbs of Senegal. We stopped at several `towns' and visited with the people and took photos of the houses and the people. There were little children with stomachs sticking out because of malnutrition. It was a real eye-opening experience, and came about because of seismic interpretation.
It is interesting that I spent a year and a half after this working for Mobil Producing Nigeria, doing seismic interpretation for them on the Niger Delta. This work actually started on this trip, because I flew from Dakar to Lagos, where I got my initial Nigerian seismic interpretation instructions. And that is another story, for another time.
On Tuesday the 2nd of September, I showed up at II&T at 8:00 AM to host 6 Nigerians. The key man was Otumba Ayo Oduntan. They finally arrived at 11:30. There was no one from VRMT or Emerald to support the presentation. I spent until about 5:00 giving the Emerald presentation and going into detail on the various opportunities. It was nice to be trusted by Jude, and I got the distinct impression, these guys are basically taking the block away from Emerald. Oh well!
I spent Wednesday and Thursday doing a seismic interpretation of the conglomerates in the Casey Ranch Project. It was an interesting challenge, and I think I solved a long standing problem using instantaneous phase seismic sections. It is interesting how easy it is for me to take seismic data and find a way to pull geologic information out of it.
However, I got an e-mail from Aunt Sara about how important it is for women to have girl friends. I don't do such a good job of interpreting this type of data. Here is the article for you to purview:
I associated more with the e-mail from Audrey, which I
really enjoyed:
Friday Dick Shanley, should I say Bishop Dick Shanley,
came over to II&T to visit and took Gary Jones and I
out to Lunch. Bishop Shanley is in the Memorial Ward,
and is my new Landmark salesman. I showed him several
of the innovations I routinely use in doing seismic
interpretation, and he was very impressed. He does
not see Landmark taking advantage of any of this work,
and when I told him I had just done a seismic
interpretation project on some Indonesian data was
quick to point out he lived and worked in Indonesia
for 9 years for Phillips Petroleum and would love to
have an opportunity to go back. It was a nice
afternoon discussion, and hopefully we can find ways
for both sides to find some upside.
That evening I tried to find the High School where Matt was taking video of the Taylor football game as the Team Manager. I got lost, and ended up just going to the bookstore. I bought two books on MySQL, the database Marc Roulston is going to install on my Sun server, and `A New Kind of Science,' by Stephen Wolfram. I'm very excited about this last book, and expect you will read a lot about it over the next few months and years. I learned about it in Science Digest, talked to Uncle Des about it, and realized how close it is to Bill Bavinger's work. Time will tell if it was worth $150 for these three books.
I spent all day Saturday building the basic framework for Sara's Benin web pages (see www.walden3d.com/benin). I am building a way she can download data, and upload messages, have access to e-mail, and be able to keep track of how safe she is, while she is in the Peace Corps. Sara, you seem to like what I showed you. Hopefully we will be able to spend some time before you leave and build some functionality into what has been started. I will be in Washington D.C. Tuesday through Thursday this next week, and so it will need to be after September 18th.
Saturday evening we went to the Taylor High School football game. Both Andrea and I took books. Guess that shows our interest. We sat next to the Hagens and the McPherson's. The game was OK. And Taylor nicely beat the game. Matt was pretty excited when he got home. Sort of reminded me of how I feel while doing an interesting seismic interpretation."