Selected Anecdotes: Field Geologist, Company Executive, AAPG President

By

J.E. Wilson¹

Search and Discovery Article #12004 (2004)

¹Denver, Colorado; retired Shell Vice President, former AAPG President, Chairman Emeritus AAPG Foundation Trustees

Field Geologist 

During my early days with Shell, I did quite a bit of plane table work, primarly for elevation control. One day, in the Gonzales, Texas, area east of San Antonio, I was “shooting” across a deep ravine to a location where the rodman had to drive about 20 minutes to get to it. When I looked through the alidade, I saw that the rodman had the blank side of the rod facing me. It was too far for him to hear me. Consequently, I went through all sorts of antics, trying to get him to adjust the rod so I could make the necessary reading. Because all efforts failed, I finally waved to him, signaling him to leave that station. He put the rod in the pickup and came back to my location. I told him we would have to repeat the exercise and he should take extra care that the rod with calibrations was facing me. I would have thrown him in the ravine, but I needed a rodman. 

 *****  

On another occasion I was running elevations along a winding road through a wooded area. At the entrance of minor side roads, I was to drive a wooden stake with the elevation written on it and tie a sample sack on a limb of a tree above it. Andy Elliott was to use these temporary benchmarks (TBM) for his elevation control for outcrops along the side roads. I had gone several miles along this winding road when Andy drove-up and, mad as a wet hen, asked why I hadn’t been putting down the TBM’s and flagging them. I told him that I had, and while we were in our stand-off, a young fellow came along the road riding bareback. I saw sticking out of his overall pocket one of my sample sacks, and I asked him where he got it. He said, “Oh, I have several of these that I found hanging on the trees back down the road.” He continued, “My Mom cuts these open, washes them, and they make wonderful handkerchiefs.” I went back along the road finding the TBM’s and flagging them again for Andy.   

Farther down the road, the map showed a U.S.G.S. permanent benchmark. When I arrived at the location where the map showed the benchmark, I couldn’t find it anywhere. A farmer came out of a nearby house and asked if I had lost something. I told him what I was looking for; he said he knew where it was and went over to a tree with the benchmark hanging from it on a wire. He said that one day a road grader “tore it up,” but he saw the U.S. “something or other” on it and decided it must be important. He showed me about where it had been, and I was able to tie my traverse to that elevation. 

 *****  

After a few weeks in the Gonzales area, I was sent to Seguin, also east of, but closer to, San Antonio. In Sequin, at Tony Allan’s Machine Shop, we built a motor-driven contra-flush machine powered by an old Ford engine. The pump and other mechanisms were mounted on a four-wheel trailer to be towed by the geologist’s pickup. This vehicle was named “Baby Jeep,” after the Army’s four-wheel drive, small, open vehicle. It did some critical work for us, but it met its demise while working for another geologist in the Nixon area southeast of San Antonio. While drilling a corehole, a shallow gas sand was encountered unexpectedly; it blew out and caught fire. The blowout caused cratering around the hole and the Baby Jeep fell into the crater, caught fire, and was completely destroyed. It took the professional oil well fire fighters with Red Adair to come out and cap this blowout. When the auditors were tallying up the cost of this loss, they could find no trace of any such equipment. R.E. (Mac) McAdams, my boss, was called into the head office, where he admitted that the Baby Jeep had been paid-for out of charges on our expense accounts. Neither Mac nor any of the other geologists was fired, but we received strong letters saying that we’d better not do such a thing again! 

 *****  

Even before the above incidents, our surveying (by plane table) in the San Antonio area was interrupted by a “Texas monsoon.” The office was urging me to complete the survey to obtain some critical information. So, I bought a 79-cent umbrella and 23 cents worth of oil cloth, and an extra rodman was assigned to go with me. We slipped and slid over the roads but finally arrived in the survey area. The extra rodman held the umbrella over my instrument, and I covered the plane table with the oil cloth. I got the critical information and sent it to the office. On my expense account, I listed those two items I had purchased. R.E. (Mac) McAdams applauded my effort and approved my expense account. When it hit the picky administrative assistant in Houston, he called Mac and wanted to know “why the hell Wilson was charging the company for an umbrella and oil cloth?” Mac called me and said, “For God’s sake, you can have as many flat tires as you want and they will never say anything, but don’t put something like that on your expense account again.” Incidentally, that over-zealous administrative assistant, D.B. Kendall-Cooke, an Englishman, later went to South America and made quite a name for himself. He returned to the States and was the Shell Executive Vice-President who nominated me to be a Vice-President.

AAPG President 

Unfortunately, my administration as AAPG President came during the energy crisis of the early 1970’s. While I was President-Elect, several of us went to Washington under the auspices of Senator Cliff Hansen of Wyoming. Our purpose was to inform various departments of the government that AAPG had a good database and our members represented lots of geological talent and that we could call upon these assets to render assistance at no cost and with no axe to grind, if and when such might be needed. We were given a White House briefing, visited several staff members of various committees, and had a “news-maker” interview at the Press Club. During the informal interview, Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin came in another door. He was the “darling” of the press corps because he always had something to say, and they were curious to see how his newly implanted hair was growing. Our group of reporters simply melted away, leaving only two fellows who seemed interested in what we had to say. We invited them over to the bar to continue with our “bobtailed” interview. 

 *****  

We were later taken to lunch by Senator Hansen at the Senate dining room We noted that Senator Hubert  Humphrey, and former Vice  President, was dining alone across the room and was frequently looking our way. Cliff said, “He’s curious about who you guys are; he’ll circle by our table when he leaves.” That he did. He said, with a chuckle, “Oh, you’re all oil-finding guys; well I’d like you to find some oil in my state of Minnesota.” I replied, “Well, Senator, don’t be too sure that it won’t happen. Your neighboring state of Wisconsin is noted for its extensive dairy farms. I understand that there is experimentation with producing gas from the manure. Minnesota also has many dairy farms.” This drew an even greater chuckle from the jolly Viking. 

 *****  

During that visit to Washington, I also attended a Senator Humphrey sponsored conference on Oceanography, as related to environmental protection in deep-ocean drilling. As usual this meeting was more for governmental show than to establish any meaningful direction or policy.  

Senator Hansen told us that he had just been in a meeting about what to do about the coyotes in sheep-raising states. He said one bright young aid from some scientific association mentioned that the pestilence of the tsetse fly was controlled by neutralizing the male fly. He said a rancher who was in the group unwound his long, booted legs, leaned over, and said, “Son, them coyotes is killing the sheep, not copulating with them.” 

 *****  

Possibly growing out of this visit to Washington was an invitation for AAPG to make a presentation to Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s energy policy hearing. The AAPG Executive Committee thought I should be the one to make the presentation. I had some excellent booklets from Shell as well as AAPG studies on future oil and gas potential. I had a draftsman prepare a series of fine charts on 3 x 5-foot poster boards and a carrying case for them. Shell booked me in at their Watergate suite, and my daughter, Elizabeth, came from Charlottesville to be with me for the occasion. We went early to the hearing room to get ready, and a television crew came in and set up. I thought, “My, this is going to be an important occasion.” They arranged a chair in front of the television camera, and in a few minutes, Senator John Tower of Texas came in, made a few perfunctory remarks and departed. Then Senator Jackson came in and did the same, but he did nod to members of the committee that were seated in the hearing room. At that time, the television crew packed their cameras and departed. They only gave a curious look toward me, along with my set-up. It became clear to me that this is the way many “hearings” go in Washington.  

As I went through my presentation, I saw Republican Senator James Buckley of New York move from his side over to the left. I interrupted my remarks to ask, “Senator Buckley, are you moving to the left?” He laughingly replied, “No, Mr. Wilson, I’m moving to my right where I can better see your charts.” 

Earlier in the day, I had gone by Shell’s Washington office and gave them a copy of my presentation and said that I would like to leave one at Colorado Senator Gordon Allott’s office. The reply came back that the Senator was too busy to receive me. Although he was not a member of Jackson’s committee, I had only wanted to show him the courtesy of giving him a copy of what I would be presenting. I told the Shell people this snub by Allot would be told in Denver. When I reached home that evening, my wife said that Allott’s office had called to apologize for him being unavailable to see me. 

 *****  

The early 70’s was the period of the Middle East oil crisis. OPEC lowered the oil production as a penalty for the U.S. support of Israel. There was near energy panic in this country with long lines waiting at gasoline stations. The energy crisis was the number one national topic, and I was invited to make numerous speeches on the subject from the Lions Club in Longmont to a civic club in Houston, to three universities in Virginia, Maryland, and Illinois. The subject matter was essentially the same, but the titles were changed for each presentation; e.g., Can You Sell an Empty Barrel; Yes, Virginia, There Is an Energy Crisis, etc. This energy shortage brought my first consulting client after I retired (Owens Corning Fiberglass). Following the production cut-back, OPEC raised the price of oil to an historical high of $40/barrel; this brought more clients to me seeking opportunities to invest in oil programs.

Oil Scouts 

In the days before Reinhardts and reports by the Goodin brothers (and Petroleum Information), oil scouts were important to competitive intelligence in the exploration field. Four incidents are representative of the odd world of oil scouts:

In Tyler, Texas, after World War II, Mib Shaw, Shell’s scout, was in the battleground of East Texas chicanery to get around state-regulated proration—left-handed valves that were screwed wide open when the Railroad Commission thought they were being turned off and locked, underground “thief” lines tapping collecting lines; misnumbering tank measuring lines; and even the beginning of the infamous slant-hole drilling. I said, “Mib, you ought to write a book about this.” He replied, “I wouldn’t live to see the first proof copy.” 

 *****  

I had just been assigned to the staff of Shell’s exploration manager in Houston, and Red Selby, Shell’s chief scout, called wanting to come meet this new guy. I was in an office with a strawberry-colored carpet—my first carpeted office. Red was noted for his tobacco chewing and inaccurate marksmanship. I rushed around to find a spittoon without success but was relieved when Red arrived without a jaw full. He’d only been seated a few minutes when he popped a wad of Granger in his mouth. I hoped he would leave quickly, but he kept talking and unceremoniously expectorated behind the radiator near the wall. 

 *****  

Shell’s scout in Amarillo along with a friend passed their time and much of Shell’s going to the country clubs, proposing at each that they play the club’s two best players using only putters while the club members would be using their bags full of clubs. He materially supplemented his Shell check, which he thought was too low anyway. 

 *****  

A young business trainee from Holland was studying Shell’s exploration budget in Houston, and asked why scouts needed automobiles. Why didn’t they use bicycles? He had not yet traveled out of Harris County.