Oil From Under Water

TOM ZOELLNER’S ARTICLE ON THE DE velopment of offshore drilling (“Oil and Water,” Fall 2000) brought back some exciting memories. In 1950 I was one of a small team of geologists working for Magnolia Petroleum out of Morgan City, Louisiana, and it was my good fortune to be present the day we discovered oil on our drill site 25 miles offshore. We ran a routine Schlumberger electric log, and it showed a thick sand unit that looked hydrocarbon-saturated. We then took a series of thumb-size sidewall cores of the sand, and when I ran them through the standard tests, they were all loaded with oil. I got on the two-way FM radio and called in the good news to Morgan City, and I could hear the cheering in the background. They relayed it on up the line, and I could imagine the joy in the boardroom. After several years of offshore work and many dry holes, the payback could begin.

John Brophy
Corvallis, Oreg.