Word: jacobsen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...well. Enthusiastic businessmen predict that a prairie empire of chemicals and synthetics, rivaling the Gulf Coast's, will rise from these new sources of raw materials. So far, lack of transportation has held the flow of oil to a mere trickle, only 10,000 bbls. a day. But Jacobsen estimates that its productive capacity will reach 100,000 bbls. a day within five years. The full extent of the Williston Basin's reserves will not be known until thousands of square miles, as yet untouched, are drilled. Estimates of oil in the basin run from 500 million bbls...
...from Amerada's sole claim to fame, though it has proved so exciting to Wall Street that stocks only vaguely associated with Williston have spurted like a new gusher. Three months ago Amerada brought in a new discovery well in Alberta's Peace River area which Jacobsen says may have great possibilities. Cautiously, he says it is too early to estimate the size of the new find, and adds that the Peace River area "may prove to be a pain in the neck or something really big." And only two weeks ago, in Texas' Yoakum County, Amerada...
Easy Work. Wildcatting for oil, Jacobsen likes to say, is the easiest thing in the world: "You can make millions and millions. All you need is a checkbook-and money in the bank. You can get a competent drilling contractor to do all the work for you and you wouldn't even have to go near the place you were drilling. All you'd have to do is pick the place to drill...
...dome of rock. (The surface anticline, i.e., an upward fold of porous rock, often indicates a similar undergound dome under which oil frequently is imprisoned.) With the first batch of leases in its pocket, Amerada sent brokers all over the area, leasing more thousands of acres of land. Says Jacobsen: "When you make a big play, you have to be sure you'll have plenty of land to drill if you find oil. And you have to get your land first, if you want to get it at a reasonable price...
Shock Troops. Not until he had about 400,000 acres under lease did Jacobsen send in his teams of geologists and geophysicists to map the surface and underground strata. By such tricks as drilling shallow holes and setting off dynamite in them, the geophysicists could time the shock waves through the ground, thus guess at the type of rock, shale or sand strata through which the waves were passing. For four years the teams mapped the area. Then the results were studied for months by Amerada's Dr. Benjamin B. Weatherby, one of the top geophysicists of the industry...