The Leading Edge; 2005; v. 24; no. Supplement;
p. S4-S5; DOI: 10.1190/1.2112384
© 2005 Society of Exploration Geophysicists
Foreword
Craig Beasley, 2004–2005 SEG president
Houston, USA
A little more than 75 years ago, one of the very early seismic crews worked its way through a part of northeast Texas and came up empty-handed as far as providing a viable drilling prospect. That crew missed finding the largest oil field ever found in the lower 48—the seven-billion-barrel East Texas Field. Or so the lore goes. I don't know exactly when or where I heard this story, but I believe it was when I was growing up in the 1950s in east Texas. I probably overheard it at one of the company barbecues as the men stood around tin washtubs chock full of ice and longneck beer bottles, bantering back and forth about such things. No asset team, this group—they were firmly in their company silos—geologists, geophysicists, drillers, etc., and proud of that fact. It seems likely that some sort of seismic crew operated in the area prior to Dad Joiner's Daisy Bradford #3 coming in on 3 October 1930 (Figure 1)—particularly in light of Michael T. Halbouty's statement in the keynote address at the Second Wallace E. Pratt Memorial Conference, January, 2000, when he said "...prior to its discovery, every major company and many independent companies, with their expertise and seismic black boxes ran their equipment repeatedly over the area and agreed that it did not have the parameters for the accumulation of oil."
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Figure 1. Wildcatter Dad Joiner (third from the left) shakes hands with his geologist A.D. Lloyd in front of the Daisy Bradford #3. Joiner had substantially oversold shares in the well based on a bogus prospectus written by Lloyd. Lloyd, whose real name was J.I. Durham, had no training as a geologist and had, among other things, sold patent medicine made from oil in "Dr. Alonzo Durham's Great Medicine Show." No wonder suspicion abounded in the oil business.
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Undoubtedly, discovery of this field was a turning point in the oil industry and can you imagine how different our industry might be today if that seismic crew had found this field? Seismic technology might have developed much more rapidly and the world might have been different as well. Oil fields might have been developed differently and places like my hometown of Kilgore, Texas, which is the center of the East Texas Field, might have looked very different from what you see in Figure 2. (I grew up thinking it was perfectly natural that one awakes to the sound of pump jacks and finds an oil derrick at every turn.) Alas, they didn't find it and the seismic method, along with other geophysical methods remained, in the eyes of many, within the realm of black boxes and snake oil.
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Figure 2. Kilgore, Texas, in the center of the East Texas Field in the 1940s. Although boom times had long since passed, street scenes such as this, common in the area, bear witness to the drilling frenzy of the boom. One city block in Kilgore had 44 wells drilled on it.
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These are our beginnings but, to be fair, the oil industry in those days was suspicious of most people and things, and rightly so. At that time, the perception was that geophysical methods were just one of many "black boxes" that promised to find oil—but not for long. As geophysics evolved, improvements in drilling successes with the use of geophysics could be documented. Even so, it was an uphill battle in many respects for some time. The founders of SEG must have been keenly aware of the challenges they had to overcome in explaining their emerging sciences and in establishing credibility. Our code of ethics, membership requirements, our publications, and even the existence of the SEG itself speak to their efforts to firmly establish geophysical methods as the valuable tools they are today. This dedication to professionalism, coupled with steadily improving technology and a proven ability to provide valuable information for exploration and production, have brought us to where we are today. Today, geophysics universally is recognized for the value it brings.
This 75th anniversary special publication traces the people, technology and ideas that have played important roles during our first 75 years. It came about through the untiring efforts of many, but among those, I should mention the 75th Anniversary Committee, the TLE board, the SEG staff and last, but certainly not least, the authors. They have done a remarkable job in documenting our past, but anniversaries are not just about the past. When we pause to look back at our accomplishments, we do so in the hope of gaining insights for the future and so you will also find glimpses of where we are going in this volume. I think you will find it exciting.
Going back to the beginning, today's 3D seismic technology could undoubtedly map this famous field and, using 4D seismic, could probably direct the water-injection program as well. Even so, it would not be drilled without the concept of the play, which was also missing at the time. This clearly illustrates that our future is not just about the accuracy and sophistication of our methods—it is about the value we bring to solving the problems of exploration and production. If we can take a lesson from the past, it is that our value is inextricably linked to other sciences. In his previous quote, Halbouty points out that everyone failed—geology, geophysics, and management—to find the East Texas Field. Sure, our future lies in doing better geophysics, but it also depends on new concepts and innovations from other sciences, but, most important, our future depends on our ability to learn from each other and integrate that knowledge. From this perspective, I see a bright future foretold in these pages.
Copyright © 2008 by Society of Exploration Geophysicists
