1991 bulletin houston geological society · advert~sing ..... bruce falkenstein. amoco production...

-

HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

olume 34

umber 4

December, 1991

BULLETIN

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! HOLIDAY IN THE PARK See Page 3

1992 WALL CALENDAR FEATURES EARLY OIL DAYS PHOTOGRAPHS See Page 52

IN THIS ISSUEooo - Spotlight on Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

- Through the Dolomites and Apennines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 19

- The Miner's Canary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 32

AND MORE! (For December Events, see Calendar and Geo-events section, page 29)

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Completion Enhancements rn Acid (Ha) solubfllty rn Sandhg potentid rn Formation grain size rn R a c o ~ n e n H grsval pack size

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rn 6as, oil, and water s m (% pore apace) rn 6as and oil saturations (% bulk velame) rn Pllobable podwtion

Log Calibration v ,

WaigM percent K-leldspar rn 6rak density - ., .,

0 Western Arlas In!ernaiional. 1 . l ~ C9 I - 123

HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 71 71 Harwin. Su i te 314 Houston. Texas 77036-21 90

(71 3) 785-6402

- EXECUTIVE BOARD . President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyrus (Cy) Strong. Consultant 464.541 3 President-Elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patr ick T . (Pat) Gordon. Arkla Exploration 623 -5008 Vice President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M . Biancardi. Vicksburg Production Co . 937 -8457 Secretary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A n n Ayers Martin. Tertiary Trend Exploration 661 -4294 Treasurer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sandi M . Barber. UNOCAL 287 -7233 Treasurer-Elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven H . Brachman. Wintershal l Energy 850 -2540 Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J o A n n Locklin. TexacoEPTD 954 -6262 Edltor-Elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Susan M . van Gelder. Consultant 466 -3348 Executive Commttteeman ( '92) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barbara P . Bentley. Amoco Production 556-4451 Executive Cornm~t teeman ( '92) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sam H . Peppiatt. Chambers Oi l & Gas. Inc . 655.01 5 5 Executive Comni i t teeman ( '93) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wi l l iam R . Dupre'. University of Houston 7 4 9 - 3 7 1 0 Executive Commi t teeman ( '93) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frank D . Lovett. Consultant 531 -8244

- COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN - Academlc Liaison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Chronic. Consultant 933 -0371 Adve r t~s ing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bruce Falkenstein. Amoco Production 556 -2038 Arrangements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Doug Selvius. BHP Petroleum 780 -5097 Awards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Adamick. TGS Offshore 951 -0853 Ballot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Steven H . Shirley. UNOCAL 287 -7487 Computer A p p l ~ c ; ~ t ~ o n s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mark Hodson. Marathon Oi l 629 -6600 Continuing Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .James R . (J im) Lantz. Amoco Production 5 5 6 - 4 4 5 4 D~rec to ry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nancy T . Benthien. Marathon Oi l 629 -6600 Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mar t i n J . Oldani. Apache Corp , 953 -5300 Environmental ; ~ n d Engineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert B . (Bob) Rieser . Groundwater Technology 463.61 51 Exhibits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gerald A . (Jerry) Cooley. PetCons & Assoc . 665 -8432 Explorer Scouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Li l l ian T . Roberts. ARC0 Oil & Gas 584-31 7 2 Field Trlps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul W . Britt . Elf Aqui ta ine Petroleum 739 -2189 Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David A . Fontaine. Consultant 524 -7040 Historical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David B . Shephard. Amoco Production 556-21 1 9 ln ternat~ona l Explorat ion~sts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pinar 0 . Yilmaz. Exxon Prod . Research Co . 973 -3070 Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Evelyn Wil ie Moody. Consultant 6 5 4 - 0 0 7 2 Membersh ip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael H . (Mike) Deming. Amoco Production 556 -4458 Nominations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ronald W . (Ron) Harlan. BHP Petroleum (Americas) Inc . 780 -5032 Off ice M a n a g e m e n t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gerald A . (Jerry) Cooley. PetCons & Assoc . 665 -8432 Permian Basin: Mid-Cont inent Explorat~onists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew C . (Andy) Lattu. Columbia Gas 871 -3400 Personnel Placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L . G . (Joe) Eubanks. Preston Oi l Co 367 -8697 Poster Sess~ons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Warren J . Winters. Exxon Co, U S A 775 -6262 Publicattons - N6.w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wi l l iam A . (Bil l) Hill. ARC0 Oi l & Gas 584 -6436 Publication Sales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Thomas T . (Tom) Mather. Co lumb~a Gas 871 -3326 Public Re la t~ons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deborah K . (Debra) Sacrey . Consultant 558-0581 Remembrances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles K . Overton . Consul t ing Palentologist 6 2 2 - 0 9 2 2 Researcli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mary M . Page. Texas A & M University 367 -4061 Technical Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M . Biancardi. Consultant 937 -8457 Transpor ta t~on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gaylon Freeman. BHP Petroleum 780 -5023

- SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVES - GCAGS Representative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyrus (Cy) Strong. Consultant 464.541 3 GCAGS Alternate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patr ick T . (Pat) Gordon. Arkla Exploration 623 -5008 Advlsor . M u s e u m of Natural Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morgan J . Davis. Jr.. Consultant 953 -1 137 AAPG Delegate Foreman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jerry M . Sides. Sidesmore Exploration Co . 4 6 5 - 0 3 9 4 AAPG-DPA Representat~ve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel L . (Dan) Smith. Texoil Co . 652 -5741 AAPG Group Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barbara & John D . Bremsteller 7 5 1 - 0 2 5 9 Engineer ing Councll of Houston Representative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Claudia P . Ludwig. Consultant 723 -1436 GSA-Sect ion M r ~ t i n g Representative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Wi l l iam K . (Bi l l ) Peebles. Tejas Gas Corp . 658 -0509

- SCHOLARSHIP - M e m o r ~ a l Scho l i ~ r s l i i p Board (Graduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel L . (Dan) Smith. Texoil Co . 652-5741 HGS Foundation (Undergraduate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hugh W . Hardy. Emeri tus 7 2 9 - 9 2 0 8

- HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL AUXILIARY - President . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs . J i m (Kathryn) Bennett 781 - 6 8 2 9 President-Elect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs . J i m (Gwinn) Lewis 468 -3768 First Vice President (Soc~a l ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M r s . J o n (Joyce) Champeny 465 -2905 Second Vice President (Membership) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs . K=ith (Hjordis) Hawkins 462 -2925 Third Vice President (HGS Rep.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs . Jack (Jan) Stevenson 392 -6252 Secretary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs . Orvil le (Marion) Lundstrom 664 -4397 Treasurer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs .Ron(Dorothy)Har lan 7 8 2 - 3 2 7 4 Histor ian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs . J . Byron (Jean) Moore 469 -2100 Par l iamentar ian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M r s . B i l l (Joree) H i l l 4 7 4 - 7 0 4 5

. T h i BULLETIN HOUSTON GEOLOGICALSOCIETY I S p u t > I ~ s I ~ ~ d monthly except . Ju ly dnd August b y t h e Houston Geo log~ca l Soclety 71 71 Harwln . S u t e 31 4 . Houston TVX. 1s 77036

S u t ~ s c r ~ p r ~ o n to t l l r BULLETIN HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 15 ~nc luded In rnPrnhership dues I518 00 annua l l y ) Suhsirtptton p r ~ c p iar nonmprntlers w~tt l ln t h e cont~guuus U S s 5 2 5 00 per yr'. l r .1 r1 . 1 546 00 ppr yr ; i r l o r t h o s ~ outside the contiguous U S Slnglr copy prlce IS 5 3 00 Appllcat~on to M m at S ~ r o n r l - C l a s s Rates is P rnd~ng at Houston Tpxas

POSTMASTER: Sknd address vhangrs la BULLETIN HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 71 71 Harwln Swt f 314 . Houston TX 77036~2190

BULLETIN HOUSTON GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Vol. 34, No. 4

BULLETIN COMMITTEE EDITOR: J o Ann Locklln. 954 6262

Texaco

EDITOR ELECT: Sue van Geider, 466 3348 Consult~ng Geologist

ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Computer

Editorial

Environmental

Events

Exploration Review

International

Planning

Technical Articles

Commentary

Mark W Hodson. 629~6600 Marathon

Mary Jo Klosterman, 973-3112 Exxon Intelnat~onal

Donna Davis. 961 0141 X374 P.I. Exploration Systems

Donna Fouch-Flores, 584-5700 Landmark Graphics Carp.

Larry Levy, 432-0008 LSL Resources

J . Todd Stephenson. 556-2929 Amoco Production Co.

Janet B. Thornbug, 954~6098 Texaco

Lynne D. Feldkamp. 531~9944 Robert M. Sneider Explor

G!enn R Lowensrein, 224 2047 P S I

David C. C,rllaway, 589-7923 Consultant

6111 Eisenliiirdt. 774 6669 Consult~ng Geologist

H:qh Ha9 Roe, 58.5871 Consdltanl

John Hefner. 468~9495 Ci,n>ultlng Geo!og~st

William H Robertr, 465~2228 Hydrehco Company

Nelsov C. Steenland. 666~0266 Geophys~clst

George E Kronn~an, 556-4452 Amoco Product~on C o

Robert N . Erlich. 556-2273 Amoco Productiori Co.

Florence R. Arya, 496~0864 Flo Oil

Deet Schurnacher. 546-4028 Pennzoil Co.

Larry D. Bartell. 227-8355 Bdrteli Exploral~on

Manuscripts, Inquiries, o r suggestions should he directed to Ed~tor , c l o H G S Bulletin, 7171 Harwin, Suite 314, Houston, TX 77036. Deadline for copy is six weeks prior to publication. All copy must be typewritten a n d double~spaced on standard white paper. Line drawings and other illustrations must be pho to~ready . If prepared on a word processor,please s e n d a copy o f the computer disc, preferdbty in either Pagemaker o r Ventura format.

Photographssubm~tted lor publ~cat ionare welcome, but cannot be relurned

ADVERTISING COMMITTEE P l e a s e cal l

785-6402 f o r in fo rnx i t ion a b o u t adver t i s ing .

December, 1991

CONTENTS DEPARTMENTS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . President's Comments 5

Editor's Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Letters to the Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Treasurer's Report .13

Society Meetings

"Lithologic Prediction from the Stratal Architecture of Plio-Pleistocene Gulf of Mexico: Are the Eustatic Depositional Systems Tract Models Adequate?" and "Precision Sequence Stratigraphy of the Plio-Pleistocene, Gulf of Mexico: Digital Integration of Seismic, Log, Paleontologic, and

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oxygen Isotope Data", Mark L. Butler. .14

International Explorationists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

International Brief - "Spotlight on Poland", George Tappan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Geotales from Far Away - "Through the Dolomites and Apennines, September, 19907', Dana M. Picard. . . . . .19

Environmental/Engineering Geologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

Short Course - "Utilization of Borehole Geophysical Techniques in Ground-Water and Hazardous Waste Investigations" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

PRICE SCHEDULE- RESERVATIONS POLICY DECEMBER MEETINGS Reserva t~ons a re made by cal l~ny the HGS olhce

( ~ ~ ~ - ~ ~ ~ b ~ ~ ~ : add $2.00 to the meal ,,,.ice) (785-6402). At the meeting, names a re checked against the reservalion hst. Those with reservations w11l b~ sold - ~- ~

HGS D i n n e r M e e t i n g , D e c . 9 tickets ~mmediately Those without reservations will

post o a k ~ ~ ~ b l ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , , , , , , , , , . be asked t o wait for available seats , and a $2 surcharge will beadded t o the price of the ticket. All

Soc ia l P e r i o d , 5:30 p.m., who d o not honor their reservations will be billed D i n n e r a n d M e e t ~ n g , 6:30 p.m. for the price of the meal. I f a reservation cannot be

Bullet~n Houston Geolog~cal Society. December 1991

kept, please cancel o r send someone In your place

localed at 7171 Harwin, Suite 314. Houston. Texas 77036. The telephone numher IS (713) 785-6402; FAX (713) 785-0553

Contents Continued

Committee News

Field Trips ............................................................................... -28

Remembrances - Help Wanted ............................................................ .30

Feature - "The Miner's Canary: Unraveling the Mystery of Extinction", Niles Eldredge .............................................................. .32

On the Move. ................................................... : ............................ .33

Houston Geological Auxiliary ................................................................ .34

New Members ............................................................................... .36

Exploration Activity Review, Bill Eisenhardt. .................................................... .48

COVER PHOTO: Havasu Creek, Grand Canyon. Photo submitted by J. D. Lazor.

HOLIDAY IN THE PARK Astroworld coupons for Holiday in the Park, November 29 through December 31, available at the HGS office. Call

Margaret Blake at 785-6402.

1

HAVE YOU EVER MADE A RESERVATION AND NOT SHOWN?

Several years ago the HGS Board adopted a policy of billing those who made reservations for an HGS dinner or luncheon event but did not show. Since the reservation list is used to guarantee the number of attendees to an event, the HGS must pay for that minimum number even if fewer people are served. Those who make reservations and do not cancel by the published cancellation time will be billed. For Monday and Tuesday events, cancellation time is usually noon on the prior Friday; for Wednesday events, it is usually noon on the prior Monday. Cancelling after that time yet before the event does not assure that you will not be billed.

For those who are billed and do not pay, please be aware that the next time you attend an HGS lunch or dinner event, the treasurer (or representative) will ask to discuss the reasons prohibiting payment.

Bul le t~n Houston Geological Soclety. December 1991

"Support those who support our Society."

Bul le t~n Houston Geological Soc~ety. December 1991 4

7

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(71 3) 681 -6666 (903) 581 -5800 (31 8) 234-3400 (504) 523-721 1 I

=-an II I . I

One of the nation's largest independent operators, Arkla Exploration Company is also one of the industry's most active drillers, having participated in an average of nearly 100 new wells in the six-state Gulf Coast and Mid Continent region in each of the past five years.

Arkla Exploration Company 51 00 Westheimer, Suite 400 Houston, Texas 77056-5507

N YSE Stock Symbol: ARK (71 3) 623-5000

Ron Symecko - Gulf Coast Regional Manager Ernie Knirk - Northern Regional Manager

Jessie Puckett - Gulf Coast Land Manager

Dave Barrett - Texas Gulf Coast Exploration Manager Robert Garrison - S.La Exploration Manager

PRESIDENT'S COMMENTS

"Great!!", "The best ever!!", "I got my money's worth in the firsthour!!". These were just a few of the many, many enthusiastic commentspeople made to me at the GCAGS Convention here last October. So on behalfof all those who attended: "Thank you Chuck Noll, thank you Dan Smith,and thank all of you lOO-plus wonderful volunteers who worked so hardover the last two years to put on such a magnificent convention!!

According to Chuck, the meeting was attended by 2000 geoscientists andtheir spouses (total attendance 2654), making it the largest meeting since 1984.

I attended two short courses, the DPA lunch, technical talks, postersessions, and the social events. I came away recharged, enthused, and onceagain in awe of the bonds that tie geologists together more closely than anyother professional organization I know of!! I hope it was the same for you!!

LONG-RANGE PLANSDuring the past year the Houston Geological Society has continued to

grow and expand its programs and member services. Our annual budget nowexceeds $450,000 and our current cash position stands at $205,000. This ismore than many small businesses, and requires much attention on the part ofboth of our Treasurers. Because one of our highest priorities is to keep thecosts of courses, events and meetings as low as possible, we have little marginfor forecasting errors, and for the last two years we have been experiencingsmall annual losses, which your Board intends to turn around this year.

Because of the growth associated with the enormous scope of ouractivities, the size of our budget, the rapid expansion of technology, thecontinuing contraction in the petroleum industry and expansion in theenvironmental industry, I have appointed an "ad hoc" Long-Range AdvisoryCommittee to develop a business plan to guide us into the future. This plan willincorporate appropriate parts of the AAPG's 21st Century Committee Report.Sandi Barber, Dave Fontaine, Ann Martin and Jeff Morris are the initialmembers of this committee. It is very important that you contact them withyour comments and ideas. Remember this is your society and we need andvalue your input and interest. Without it, we cannot make HGS the kind oforganization which willserve us all in the years ahead.

DECEMBER TECHNICAL PROGRAMSince December is a very busy time, we have scheduled only one meeting

this month. It willbe held on Monday evening, December 9th at theDoubletree Hotel, Post Oak. Mark Butler of Amoco Research will presenthis views on the usefulness of predicting lithology from Plio-Pleistocene stratalarchitecture. He willbe addressing the question "Are the Eustatic DepositionalSystems Tract Models Adequate?" Please make your reservations as early aspossible. Thanks!REMINDER

The 1992 GCS/SEPM Research Conference will be held in Houstonat the Adam's Mark Hotel on December 8-11. The title of this conference is"Coastal Depositional Systems in the Gulf of Mexico" and it willfocus on theQuaternary framework, depositional systems, and current environmentalissues. There willalso be a three-day pre-conference field trip starting in NewOrleans, crossing South Louisiana, and ending in Houston in time for the startof the conference. For more information call Denise Butler (552-3867) orMichael Nault (552-6405).

SOCIAL ACTIVITIESCongratulations and a big vote of thanks are due to Chris Bechtel and

his hard-working committee who produced a flawless Golf Tournament in

5 Bulletin Houston Geological Society, December 1991

AmericanAssociationofPetroleumGeologistsSchoolsandShortCourses rbJ

OperationalSeismicStratigraphy:AnAppliedMethodof InterpretingStratigraphyfrom Surface,SubsurfaceandSeismic DataIDates:January27-February4;IMarch9-17;December1-9,1992location: TheThunderbirdLodge,SouthRim,GrandCanyonTuition:$1,350includesfieldtransportation,field notes,guidebook,andexer-cisemaferial

Content: 6.3 CEU.limit: 20 .Instructor:WardO.AbbottWhoShouldAttend

Geoscientists,explorationanddevelopmentgeologymanagersthatwanta"hands-on"schoolonthepracticalapplicationofseismicstratigraphy.ObjectivesandContent.This course combines outcrop, well and seismicdeveloping seismic/stratigraphic plays and prosp~9t~;i.The unique setting of the south rim of th~G@6dCimyon give~pantaviewofapproximately15,000feetof$ "',' htarysection(e1.5to 2.0secondsof dataontheseis ..Schoolconsistsof:

-15% lectures , -10% field tripi- 25%hands-onexercises "",' - 50%oper~ti.On completion of this c9!H~~; participants should' "" '

- predictsedimentary~~~Ionfor structuraltra "

- developstratigraphiQp!~ysandprospects- apply seismic stratjiJr#phic mapping tec'studies. /.

.Payversusnonpaycriteria.Evaluation of very low resistivity pay zones.Criteriafor identifyingandestimatingthe sealingcapacityof faultsandshales/siltstones.Sealdetectionfrom logsandseismic.

GeologicalAsp~GJsof HorjDate: Feb. 27-28, 19~?(~ ~,Q~ation:~"

" , , ""

Date:Oct.24-25,1a92 .~qtatlon; 'jl~~hs,Louisiana (inconjunctionwithSEGAnnualM~eting) i ' "",

Tuition:$400,MPSme" " ilOn-memQ~rs;includesMPGCourseNote#33,Geol ' izontalDrill1i;/y

Content:1.5CE "" D.Fritz;M.~;Horn,S.D.JoshiWhoShouldMU! '>

Explorationj!fidd, ,,' ,,' wtQ '~\Qi~~~i,IP?~n.~!¥!engineers,an(j#xplora '" developmenini ~rswfidareli1\i6Iievaluatingp!~Ysorprosp~~!!Fascandidatesforhorizontaldrilling.Objectiv~$~ndC()!JJent.Thi~£~~(:$eliasadualroleofintegratingthegeologicalandengineeringaspectsofhorizontaldrilling.Uponcompletionof thecoursetheparticipantswill beableto:

- identifycandidatesfor horizontaldrilling in sourcerocks,karstenvi-ronment,chalk,stratigraphictraps,tight sands.

- calculatereserveestimations,compareperformanceof fracturedverti-calandhorizontalwells,estimatethetimeandadditionalcostto drill a hori-zontalhole,interprethorizontalwell tests,determineproperspacingof hori-zontalholes,anddevelopa completionprogram.

PetroleumGeologyfor Non-GeologistsDate:February4-6, 1992 .location: DoubletreeHotelat the Campbell

Ce " "" !~,~,Texas

Oat 1992 .location: Denver,Colorado(includesfield trip)Dal992 .location: Calgary,Alberta,Canada

" i 1992 . location: Houston,Texas(includesfieldtrip)'field trip);$575(withfieldtrip)

.._EU(nofieldtrip); 2.7CEU(withfield trip)I SusanLandonuldAttend ,licaltechniciansandothersupportpersonnel(landmen,attorneys,) with minimalbackgroundin geologywho wouldbenefitfrom an1J9the principlesof petroleumgeology.Supportstaffarean inte-Qgfpqrateteams,andbetterunderstandingof industrygoalsand

petroleumgeolqQX~,i!lallowthese,,!n9iYigH~!~,JRm~~~~llloresignificantcontribution to tlie6tgf!'ni~i!Y9P, ",,', '. ,',,'.""" '",'.,,',","'.. ,,'" '"," , " ,,',','"

ObjectivesandContiHit """"'" '" ""< "", ".,,(', ,",,",

Theprimaryobjectiveis to prolj19,~geologicalsuppo~,~m~\Viththe basicsof petroleumgeologyto improvethiHr~ffectivenesson eXIJiqrj!tjqnor devel-opmentteams.Thisunderstandingof~pnceptsandtermi?gIQQX~illfacilitatecommunicationwithinthe organizatioQi$pecificallythecOYJ~M"jllcover:.Geologic time ' , '., i, ' '".PlatetectonicsandbasinformatiOit.Environments of deposition' ,,'.Structuralstyles.Petroleumgeology .'.Geological and geophysical tech9!g~es

, ,, ,, ", "

Interpretationof194,Q,:ilhd1'950's Vtl~UIlogs

,', ~~,~,~I!il[M\i!~~\~~~~itbiri!..H,qt~I;~ouston, Texas ."'...,."...'.."'.,,.'Tuition:$j75;AAPG members;$4~9h?n~Tym~yr§dn9hid~~coursenotesandcopyof OldElectricalLog Int?mr#,~~#qP!J¥~Jlplj!~i'.',".'.'

Content: 1.5 CEU .Instructor: D6tigW;Hilchi~>WhoShouldAttend

Geologists,geophysicists,engineers,especiallyproductiongeologistsandreservoirengineerswhoaredealingwitholdwelllogsincompletions,explo-ration,andreservoirstudies.ObjectivesandContent

Bytheendofthecoursetheparticipantswillbeableto interpret:.ResistivityandSPLogs.TheLateralCurve.TheNormalCurve.TheElectricalLog (ES).ElectricalDepartureCurves.TheMicrolog.Porosityfrom the ShortNormal.TheLimestoneDevice.SaltMudSurveys(LaterologsandMicrolaterologs).The Old Gamma Ray and Neutron Logs.The Electrical Log and Pulsed Neutron Capture Logs

Forfurther information,pleasecontacttheMPG EducationDepartmentP.O.Box979 Telephone:(918)584-2555Tulsa,OK74101-0979 Fax:(918)584-0469

Evaluationof ReservoirsandSealsDate:February20-21,1992location: DoubletreeHotelat theCampbellCentre,Dallas,TexasTuition:$375,AAPGmembers;$450,non-members. Content: 1.5CEUInstructor: RobertSneiderWho Should Attend

ExplorationanddevelopmentgeologistsandgeophysicistsObjectives and Course Content.Identificationandevaluationof reservoirqualityandpayfrom logs,samples,cores,DSTandproductiontests

Bulletin Houston Geological Society, December 1991 6

~

September on four (4) courses at Kingwood for 576 golfers. The weather cooperated and we had a beautiful day under clear skies. This was the first golf tournament I had ever played in, and I was amazed at the precision and attention to detail that Chris and his team exhibited in putting on an event of this magnitude. Good Job!!

Not to be outdone, in October, John Gorman and his faithful band of "Cajuns", assisted by the HGS Auxiliary, followed by cooking and serving over 800 pounds of delicious gulf shrimp served with potatoes, corn, and lots of liquids at our Annual Shrimp Peel. Eleven hundred geologists and geophysicists with their friends and relatives " ~ a s s e d a sood time" on a beautiful - evening accompanied by bouncy music and dancing.

This month, for the first time, Astroworld is offering a special rate to HGS members and their families to attend their Holiday in the Park November 29 through December 31. See the notice on page 3 for more details.

MEMBERSHIP REPORT In October 1991 our membership stood at 4830,

which was an increase of 3% over last year when we had 4700 members. In September we dropped 800 members from the roster who had not paid their dues (last year 500). Our Membership Committee is now in the process of contacting each person who did not renew to determine what happened, and what we may not be providing for them. Meanwhile, the good news is that new memberships continue to come in at the rate of about 50 per month.

By way of comparison, the total membership of the ten active societies of the Gulf Coast Association of Geologic Societies now stands at 9250, which is also a 3% gain from a year ago.

Also, according to Fred Dix, AAPG's Executive Director, the AAPG membership has stabilized in the 33- 34,000 range. Approximately 6000 of AAPG's members are overseas residents.

OTHER SOCIETIES At the GCAGS Convention I attended a meeting

where each of the Gulf Coast Societies reported on the highlights of their activities. Some of the more interesting and innovative things that they are doing are:

Financial grants to middle schools to purchase earth science classroom/lab equipment (E. Tex.); Mock geological digs where children dig for minerals, fossils and rocks (Corpus Christi); Sending teachers to summer field camp at New Mexico School of Mines (S. Tex.); Ski/Geology trip to Park City, Utah (E. Tex.); Fun/Educational trip to Grand Canyon (E. Tex.).

HELP WANTED Like to talk to your geological buddies on the phone?

Well, Jerry Cooley has a deal for you!! If you are retired and can spend a few hours a week on a regular basis working with the Office Committee, call him today at 665-8432. You will have a great time and really help out the Society!!

THANKS A special thank you from the HGS Board is extended

to Ernie LaFleur and Shell Western Exploration and

Production for providing a conference room and refreshments for the HGS to hold its monthly board meetings. We appreciate it!!

meetings. We appreciate it!!

HELPING OTHERS December is a traditional time for giving. And since it

is a time for contribution, it brings to mind a saying I heard once: "You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give ..." Please consider sending a contribution to the HGS Undergraduate Scholarship Fund and/or the HGS Memorial Fund (for graduate students). These are worthy causes much in need of your support, and in addition to being tax-deductible, may be matched by your employer. You should send your check to the HGS office.

Best Wishes to all of you and your families for the Holiday Season - And a Happy New Year too!!

See you at the meetings!!

Cy Strong

THE OIL & GAS DIRECTORY

Regional and Worldwide Exploration - Drilling 8 Producing

Twenty-Second Edition 1992

P.O. BOX 130508

HOUSTON, TEXAS 77219

TELEPHONE 71315298789

FAX: 71 315293646

PUBLISHED A N ~ u A L L Y IN NOVEMBER

Books shipped inside USA (Surface Mail) Postpaid $60.00 (Plus 8%% Sales Tax in Texas)

Books shipped outside USA Ma Air) Postpaid $75.00 (U.S. Funds)

7 Bulletin Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety. December 1991

EDITOR'S COMMENTS

by Nelson C. Steenland, Bulletin Committee, Technical Articles

To propound upon the comments of my colleague, Bill Roberts, in the October issue, there's a dearth, if not a vacuum, of practical papers in our professional bulletins - papers of immediate significance to the working explorationist. Selecting the May '91 number of the AAPG Bulletin randomly, all six articles quite likely provide information of some long-standing value, but only the Ekofisk review provided some facts of immediate per- tinence. (The article on hydrates, really a seismic piece, might have hit home a little bit if it had credited Worzel and Ewing for discovering hydrates in our very own Gulf of Mexico instead of bringing up the Atlantic and Pacific.) Speaking of geophysics (I happen io use geophysics to "do" geology), the August '91 issue of Geophysics received my 100% rejection because it provided zero input to my daily regimen of geophysical activities.

Moreover, the five articles in the AAPG Bulletin and the 18 articles in Geophysics required an average of 18 months to publish an article from the time of receiving the manuscript.

The HGS Bulletin provides the best opportunity for restoring interest in our professional literature within the overall geological community. The Bulletin can publish vital articles after a processing of six weeks. As for interest, it will escalate when our 5000 members are avidly looking forward to pithy, even visceral, discussions of the subjects in which we're immersed every day.

As Bill said, we'd like to hear from you.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor:

I commend Stephanie Hrabar for taking a stand in the October Bulletin with regard to geoscientists and their role in the cause of environmentalism. I too believe that we must speak up to both our neighbors and our representatives for the cause of protecting our environment. However, in her article entitled "Toxic and Hazardous Waste Disposal Without Verification", she has misstated some of the facts about the EPA rules and regulations under which hazardous wastes are disposed by subsurface injection.

Federal regulations ban the subsurface disposal of hazardous toxic waste. Exemptions to this rule are per- mitted in those specific instances where it can be demonstrated that subsurface disposal is the most safe and practical solution within the realm of current technology. As published in the Federal Register on July 26, 1988, the EPA regulation for Class I wells states: "The hydrogeological and geochemical conditions at the sites and the physicochemical nature of the waste stream(s) are such that injected fluids

will not migrate within 10,000 years: (A) vertically upward out of the injection zone; or (B) laterally within the injection zone to a point of discharge or interface with an Under- ground Source of Drinking Water (USDW) ..."

These same regulations also require a determination of geologic site suitability based upon: 1) an analysis of the structural and stratigraphic geology, the hydrogeology, and the seismicity of the region; 2) an analysis of the local geology and hydrogeology of the well site, including at a minimum, detailed information regarding stratigraphy, structure and rock properties, aquifer hydrodynamics and mineral resources; and 3) a determination that the geology of the area can be described confidentlv and that the limits of the waste's fate and transport can be accurately predicted through the use of models.

These regulations do allow for some lateral and vertical movement of the waste as Ions as it does not reach the USDW. Reasonable verification systems are required to assure compliance with these rules. Vertical encasement is verified bv: 1) measuring the impermeability of the overlying and under-

lying strata; 2) identifying and mapping the lateral continuity of these

confining strata by means of e-logs of wells in the area; 3) ongoing testing of the mechanical integrity of the injection

well; 4) verifying the plugging of all previous penetrations of the

confining layer within the projected area of the injectate plume. n

Lateral isolation is demonstrated by detailed mapping of the structure, faulting and stratigraphy of the injection zone from subsurface control and where available, the use of seismic data.

Ms. Hrabar indicated that subsurface waste disposers do not conduct well site studies due to the expense. The Division I Technical Committee of the Underground Injection Practices Council (UIPC) estimates that the cost of research and documentation to assure compliance with the permit procedures of the EPA cost the average disposal company in excess of $400,000. This figure does not cover the ongoing maintenance and testing that is also required on these wells.

No disposal method for waste yet devised is a perfect solution. What is necessary is a concerted effort to limit the amount and types of waste we as a society generate. But as long as we choose to have all the modern conveniences we enjoy today, we will have to use the best methods available to dispose of that waste.

Sincerely, Kenneth J . Thies 10618 Lynbrook Houston, TX 77042

Bulletin Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety. December 1991 8

To the Editor: organizations as it would be detrimental to all involved, i.e.,

I am enclosing a copy of material I received from Robin the government, the employee, and the society/association

Dixon of SEPM, which if adopted would impose such severe with which the employee has membership.

restrictions on government employees that many of your members would be prohibited from serving as an officer or on a committee of your organization. Also enclosed is a copy of the letter that I sent to the Office of Government ~ t h i c s .

I think it would be prudent if the Bulletin would include an article on this serious problem.

Best regards.

Sincerely, Michel T. Halbouty

Office of Government Ethics 1201 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 500 Washington, D.C. 20005-2917

Attention: Leslie Wilcox

Gentlemen: It has come to my attention that the proposed new

regulations which are part of the new Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch drafted by the Office Government Ethics would virtually preclude any federal employee from holding office or accepting certain types of committee appointments in a scientific society.

Such regulations, if adopted, would adversely impact on their career growth and knowledge by preventing their professional continuing education, thereby weakening the federal agency with which they are associated.

I have worked with federal employees for over six decades and have observed that a large amount of their continuing education has been through societies and/or organizations in which they are members or are associated with by virtue of symposia, conferences, workshops, etc.

It is my opinion that no restrictions whatsoever should be imposed on federal employees as to their membership and/or serving as an officer, or on committees of any scientific organization. Participation in outside organizations, such as the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Geological Society of America, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, American Geophysical Union, and numerous other entities of like identity, provide federal employees the opportunity for education and growth in their profession.

In addition: - it keeps them abreast of developments in their fields of science, as well as the results of current research;

- it promotes communication and exchange of technology between the government and academia, industry and other public agencies;

- it provides an impetus for federal employees, through their membership, to move science forward.

By preventing their participation in outside organizations, the Federal employees will become isolated from their peers in the academic and private sector, thus falling behind in the latest technology and current research results. Needless to say, this would have a severe impact on the Federal agencies with whom they are employed.

I trust that such restrictions are not placed on government employees' participation in professional and scientific

Sincerely, Michel T. Halbouty

* * * * * * * * * *

EDITORIAL "Creating a Scientific Underclass"

by Fred Spilhaus, AGU Executive Director*

The free and open participation of all scientists in the scientific enterprise in the United States is being threatened by proposed restrictions on the involvement of federal employees with professional associations. The regulations would effectively prevent government employees from participating fully in the affairs of non-profit societies such as AGU (and SEPM). This would not only hinder the progress of science by prohibiting a large sector of the scientific community from contributing their expertise to the larger good, it would also relegate federal scientists to a second- class status. a develowment that will not enhance the government's recruitment efforts.

The new regulations, part of the new Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch drafted bv the Office of Government Ethics. would virtuallv preclude any federal employee from holding office or

Continued on p. 10

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9 Bullet in Houston Geolog~cal Soclety. December 1991

COMMENTARIES

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Commentaries Column is meant to provide frank

opinions on issues that are relevant togeologists. Commen- taries may not represent the views or opinions of the HGS or its editors. Responses and contributions to this column should be submitted to the Commentaries Column, c/o HGS Bulletin. All submitted material must be accompanied by a name and phone number, but names will be withheld from publication upon request.

Have You Ever Wanted to Punch Your Boss? (or, Is Your Boss a Dodo?)

Has he outlived his usefulness as an effective, inspiring manager? Does he have the attention span of a six year old; the imagination of a cabbage? Is he still in the Dark Ages technologically? Does he think that sequence stratigraphy is a fad, and that geochemistry is a black box? Has it been said that he wouldn't know a prospect from a prostate? Is he still expecting you to find large undrilled surface anticlines in the Rockies, or 10,000 acre four-way dip closures on the Louisiana shelf? Does he have the interpersonal skills of an Atilla, the tact of Phyllis Diller, the subtlety of a Sam Kennison? Is he generous with praise, or generally seeking praise? Does he use people, or does he develop people? Does he promote his career or yours? Is he a boss or is he a leader? Sooner or later. we all find ourselves workins for a boss who has failed to kkep up with the times; who looi<s out only for himself rather than for his people; who takes the credit rather than giving credit. What to do, short of updating your resume? If you've had the misfortune of working for such a boss, we would like to hear from you. How do you cope? And how, short of committing a felony, do you get out of that situation with your career and your sanity intact?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, cont. f rom p. 9 accepting certain types of committee appointments in a scientific society. The new regulations, published in the July 23,1991, issue of the Federal Register (Vol. 56, No. 141, pp. 33811-12, 5CFR2635, Section 2635.806) are titled "Partici- pation associations." Paragraph (b) of this section:

"Unless an employee is specifically authorized by statute, executive order or regulation to serve in an official capacity as an officer of a professional association or similar organization, he may not use official time to administer the internal affairs of any such organization or to carry out its business affairs, or to attend or to participate in meetings or events that primarily serve those purposes."

This proposed regulation would not only apply to elected society positions (President, Secretary, etc.) but would also affect a number of committee positions (Publi- cations, Meetings, etc.) as well. It could even be interpreted to editorships of society journals.

Bulletin Houston Geological Society. December 1991 10

While it would be theoretically possible to participate in the governance of a society as a private citizen using a home office, that would be highly impractical in most circum- stances. The consequence of this new regulation would be to prevent federal employees from full participation in scientific societies. This would reverse a long-standing tradition, observed by virtually all federal scientific agencies, of not only allowing but encouraging their scientists to be active in society governance.

It may be that the new regulations were meant to address a concern about conflict of interest between federal employees and private organizations. If so, the new guide- lines are completely unnecessary, given that existing federal statutes and executive orders adequately regulate conflicts of interest and similar ethical matters. The proposed regulations would not change these laws but would only add a prohibition that will be unfair and detrimental to scientific societies, to federal employees, and to the federal scientific agencies.

If these new regulations go into effect, scientific societies will lose the talent and energies of a substantial number of of their members. (About one-quarter of the AGU membership consists of federal employees.) These members will be removed from active involvement in the infrastructure of scientific societies and they will lose an important avenue of communication that is critical to the advancement of science.

Reprinted and distributed by Robin Dixon, SEPM, with permlsslon of Fred Spilhaus, AGU.

AWG TOPIC

" 'She's the One Who ...' Establishing

an Identity in Your Profession"

BY

ANN AYERS MARTIN

(President, Tertiary Trends Exploration)

Date 8 Time: December 10, 1991 (6:00 - 8:00 PM)

Place: THE MORNINGSIDE THAI RESTAURANT

6710 Morningside Dr. (at Holcombe) in Rice Village

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L

T o the Editor:

Regarding Jane Scheidler's Bulletin article titled "Let's Put the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Perspective," Nov. 1991, p. 28 , I commend the author for her politeness. Good manners are very important. This is a welcome change from the usual scornful, snotty, sanctimonious, egregiously false know-it-all elitist coercive utopian at tacks - on a minority of good U.S. citizens who try earnestly to support a strategic U.S. oil industry to provide for the common defense and to promote the ar t s and sciences, firmly in support of the U.S. federal Constitution.

Nevertheless, elitist coercive utopian propaganda, however polite, is still propaganda. We've heard it all before. No matter how often it is repeated, it is still irresponsible. Professional ethics demand fairness and candor. Propa- ganda organizations should not be tax-deductible (IRS and tax writers, please note!). I would advise the Audubon Society and Sierra Club a s follows.

We a re obligated t o deal neither with the Audubon Society nor with the Sierra Club. More responsible environmental entities exist. We can deal, for example, with the Ornithology Group and the lzaak Walton League. Art Meyerhoff's October 1991 article listed many such groups. We can support responsible ones - and combat the publicly obnoxious ones that merely generate psuedo- environmental political propaganda - impairing and undermining good AAPG members' efforts to promote and provide ethical dissemination of geological knowledge. Enough of such "environmentalists" whose only concern is to preserve a place to ride their saddle horses!

The Sierra Club should be rejected out of hand - if for no better reason than it accepted a n H G S emeritus member 's dues money for some five years, ignored his advice, and even refused to talk with him over the telephone o r to return his calls. The Sierra Club also maintained a sloppy Houston headquarters - which, instead of mitigating Houston's urban blight, aggravated it - for some time. We can, however, deal with an organization of EX-Sierra Club members that might b e formed by its more constructive- citizen members.

Coercive utopians did not invent conservation. W e won World War I1 because we simultaneously conserved oil and produced it full tilt. State conservation agencies have long done a good conservation job. They also exchange information and ideas via the Interstate Oil Compact Commission. Street people surely conserved their money before becoming homeless - but YOU C A N N O T C O N - SERVE WHAT Y O U D O N O T HAVE. G o o d Californians

As to ANWR, growth curves for statewide Alaskan caribou counts and cumulative North Slope oil output mutually track s o closely that the two curves - when graphed - are hard t o distinguish. If oil is worth dying for in the Middle East, it is worth drilling for here.

If the Audubon Society seeks HGS' support , it might earn it by doing the following. First, acknowledge more emphatically that oil exploration and production a t High Island, Texas - active during most o f this century - does not impair birds. High Island is a world-class birding locale. Oil operations have not hurt it a s such. Second, gas- condensate royalties from Audubon's southern Louisiana Rainey Preserve help subsidize Audubon and its publications. Third, nesting birds take advantage of pipe racks, pumps, tool sheds and other oil installations t o enhance their habitats. Publish more photos - from Rainey particularly -- documenting this - instead of hypocritically editing them out. Fourth, acknowledge that their namesake, John James Audubon, probably shot a s many birds a s any other individual in history. A guilty conscience, moral exhibi- tionism and hypocrisy promote neither good U.S. citizen- ship nor U.S. national and international interests.

Harrison T. "Spud" Brundage Consulting Geologist 10019 Warwana Road Houston. TX 77080

EXPLORING THE GULF COAST

PEL-TEX OIL COMPANY

Five Post Oak Park, Suite 1530 Houston, Texas 77027

(713)439-1530

EARL P. BURKE, JR. - President

BRIAN D. BURKE - Geologist

GLENN P. BURKE - Geologist

STEPHEN J. FOLZENLOGEN - Geologist

conserve water - but that did not prevent a disastrous fire s torm from consuming too much of Oakland and Berkeley - partially a s a result of low water main pressure. O n one hand, Get Oil Ou t ( G O O ) denies other Californians state oil royalty money - and all the rest of us federal oil royalty money. Too, they encourage Coloradoans to s top water projects for California!

Bulletin Houston Geologacal Socvety. December 1991

Explore the Gulf of Mexico and still keep

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Bul le t~n Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety, December 1991 12

HGS TREASURER'S REPORT: 1990-91 FISCAL AUDIT

The audit of the 1990-91 HGS fiscal records has been completed and was reported at the October HGS Board meeting. The annual audit is done on an accrual basis, posting income and expenses to the year in which they were incurred. A short summary of the findings is as follows:

Fiscal Year Ending June 30 1991 1990

Total revenues $311,024 $277,675 Total expenses 341,869 289,628 EXCESS (DEFICIT) OF REVENUES

OVER EXPENSES $ (30,845) $ (11,953)

Cash in banks, beginning fiscal year $141,684 $137,957 Cash in banks, end of fiscal year 121,169 141,684 INCREASE (DECREASE) IN CASH $ (20,515) $ 3,727

On a cash flow basis, the HGS funds are down about $20,000 from the summer of 1990. This means that the expenses were about six percent (6%) above revenue, on a $300,000 budget targeted for zero net gain (loss).

There are three factors causing the net loss in the 1990-91 fiscal year. Firstly, HGS hired our office manager Margaret Blake (rather than contracting her through an agent), with all related obligations. As with most start-up operations, expenses were underestimated. Secondly, many of the committees either slightly underestimated expenses or slightly overestimated income. Budgeting is a process of reviewing the past and anticipating the future. With over 30 committees and in excess of 70 events/publications per year, relatively small errors in estimating income and

expenses easily add up to large numbers. Thirdly, and most notably, the production and mailing of the Bulletin exceeds the membership dues. Per HGS member, it costs about $2 more than membership dues to produce and mail the Bulletin; advertising is insufficient to offset this extra cost. Due to the membership drive this past year, the membership, and therefore the net Bulletin cost, increased significantly.

New procedures and policies are being used to better estimate income and to contain expenses. The HGS is dedicated to keeping the prices of meetings, courses, and field trips as low as possible, while at the same time keeping the costs contained. However, much of the HGS income (such as bank account interest and publications sales) and HGS expenses (such as printing costs) are out of our control. Cash flow for this year is expected to be over $400,000. The recently approved 1991-92 budget reflects an attempt to estimate the maximum expected costs and the minimum expected income, in order to predict the "worst case" net of about zero.

SAND1 BARBER

Preparations are underway for The 1992 . G . S.-G.S.H. Membership Directory

Have you moved? a Changed jobs? a Is your area code outside the 713 area?

WE WANT TO KNOW!

Mail any changes/correctionslads to: Houston Geological Society

7171 Harwin Suite 314 Houston, T X 77036

BUSINESS CARD ADS: Individuals may advertise in the Directory by sending your business

card along with a check for $113 to the H.G.S. office.

Deadline for changes: January 15, 1992

13 Bullet~n Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety December 1991

MEETINGHGS DINNER MEETING-DECEMBER 9, 1991Social Period, 5:30 p.m.,Dinner and Meeting, 6:30 p.m.Post Oak Doubletree InnMARK L. BUTLER-Biographical Sketch

Mark L. Butler ispresently a ResearchAssociate with AmocoProduction Research inTulsa, Oklahoma. He isassigned to the SequenceStratigraphic ResearchGroup and is currentlystudying sequence strati-graphic and clasticdepositional problems inthe North Sea. The primarygoal of these studies is thedevelopment of enhancedlithology predictionmethodologies.

Prior to Mr. Butler's transfer to Amoco ProductionResearch in 1989, he worked for several years in Amoco'sDenver exploration office as a Sr. Staff Geologist with theCalifornia Exploration Group. Since 1977, he has been withseveral companies in the petroleum industy: UNOCAL asan Exploration Geologist, Hamilton Brothers Oil Co. as aSenior Geologist and Lear Petroleum as a DivisionGeologist. He received his B.S. (1975) and M.S. (1977) ingeology from Ohio University.

The following two abstracts focus on different aspectsof a single project. These papers were originally presentedby Mark L. Butler and Greg A. Self at the 1991 AAPGAnnual Convention in Dallas. For the purposes of this HGSmeeting the two papers have been consolidated into asingle presentation, and will be presented by Mark L.Butler.

LITHOLOGIC PREDICTION FROM THE STRATALARCHITECTURE OF PLIO-PLEISTOCENE

GULF OF MEXICO:ARE THE EUSTATIC DEPOSITIONAL SYSTEMS

TRACT MODELS ADEQUATE?

by M. L. Butler, G. A. Self, and R. W. Scott

Climatic/eustatic cycles of the Plio-Pleistocene havebeen defined in the northern Gulf of Mexico and preciselytied to their associated sequences and lithologies by meansof graphic correlation. This framework has provided thedata necessary for a detailed empirical evaluation of theeustatic depositional systems tract models. The key to thisevaluation is a eustatic sea level curve derived from fossiland isotope data. A curve of this type has been defined forseveral sequences. Using this eustatic curve the actuallithofacies and position of the various systems tracts weredirectly compared to those predicted by the models.

The evaluation of the data with respect to eustatic sealevel yielded conclusions that are significantly different from

Bulletin Houston Geological Society, December 1991

See page 2 for reservations

and prices of meetings.

those predicted by the model. The most significant of thesedifferences are: 1)significant amounts of sand were deposit-ed in deep water during transgressive and highstandintervals, 2) the observed vertical succession of eustaticdepositional systems tracts within a given sequence aretransgressive, highstand and lowstand, 3) factors other thaneustasy have been the dominant influence on facies distri-bution within the Plio-Pleistocene sequences studied.

These results demonstrate that depositional systemstracts and internal facies distribution could not be adeq uate-ly described by a single model. Therefore, sequence strati-graphic analysis should be empirically based and conductedwithin the context of the basin, instead of being model-driven.

PRECISION SEQUENCE STRATIGRAPHY OF THEPLIO-PLEISTOCENE, GULF OF MEXICO:

DIGITAL INTEGRATION OF SEISMIC, LOG,PALEONTOLOGIC, AND OXYGEN ISOTOPE DATA

by G. A. Self, M. L. Butler, and R. W. Scott

An empirically based, versus a model-driven, methodo-logy was developed based on digital integration of seismicdata with lithologic, paleontologic, and oxygen isotope datawithin a computer workstation environment. This flexibilityallows the interpreter to visualize the fulldynamic range ofthe seismic data and to manipulate both the temporal andspatial domains.

Seven depositional sequences were defined within thePlio-Pleistocene clastic section of the northern Gulf ofMexico basin, offshore Louisiana: Six of these sevensequences are associated with major falls in sea level thato~curred at about 200ka, 500ka, 900ka, 1.5Ma, 2.0Ma,2.7Ma, 3.0Ma and 4.5Ma. Graphic correlation of oxygenisotope stages and foraminiferal climatic assemblagesdemonstrates that these sequence boundaries developedduring third-order cool climatic stages and low sea level.

The most sand-rich section was deposited during asignificant climatic warm period that developed during themiddle Pliocene, prior to the onset of glaciation of the NorthAmerican continent. During this period, a large delta systemprograded across the shelf and deposited significantamounts of sand onto the slope. This occurred in spite of anestimated 35m sea level rise, above present day.

Significant deposition of potential reservoir sands in theslope environment occurs during every subsequent phaseof sea level fluctuation, the result of the interaction betweensea level fluctuation, climatic variations, sedimentaryprocesses, salt tectonics and basin geometry. The combi-nation of these factors cause wide variation in the timing of,as well as the process by which sediments are shed into theslope environment.

14

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lNTERNA TlONAL EXPLORA TlONlS TS

Chair's Column

We will not meet in December as usual because of the holidays. But this gives us the incentive to work harder during 1992. The program will start with Hydrocarbon Occurrences in Rift Basins of West Africa, presented by Conoco. February 25th is the date of our joint meeting with the GSA International Group. The topic is Eastern European Fold Belts, presented by Leigh Royden and Clark Burchfiel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The March presentation on Petroleum Geology of Malta is by Bill Bishop, who is a consultant in Houston. The April presentation of Gulf of Suez geology will be by Isabelle Moretti of Total and IFP. May and June 1992 presentations are in the works. Geology of Albania and Tectonic Setting of Hungarian Basins are potential topics.

PINAR 0. YILMAZ

INTERNATIONAL EXPLORATIONISTS COMMITTEE MEMBERS 1991-1992 Chairperson & Technical Program:

Pinar Yilmaz, Exxon Prod. Res. Co. . . . . . . 973-3070 I 1 Technical Program Assistant:

Gerrit Wind, Amoco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556-3680

Hotel Arrangements: George Tappan,

Geoservices International . . . . . . . . . . . . 358-4061 A/V Arrangements:

Nat Smith, Exxon Company USA. . . . . . . . 591-5464

Finances & Tickets: Don Young, AGIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 688-6281

Announcements: Thom Tucker, Marathon Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . 629-6600

Directory: Kumar Bhattacharjee,

Sita Oil Exploration House . . . . . . . . . . . 999-6957

Please contact your company representative or call HGS for ticket reservations at 785-6402.

HGS International Explorationists Committee dinner meetings will be on the third Monday night of each month at Post Oak Doubletree Inn in the Galleria. Meetings will include a 5:30 p.m. social hour, 6:30 p.m. dinner and 7:30 p.m. technical presentation.

EXOTIC ROCKS We need exotic rocks for our speaker plaques. Please

bring a sample of your favorite rock to the next meeting. It will help clean up the boxes you stored in the garage. We acknowledge the donor on the back of the plaque.

WE'VE SEARCHED THE WORLD

Dolan & Associates European Non-Exclusive Reports

Central and Eastern Europe has been an area of continuing ~nterest for Dolan 8 Associates since the mid 1980's. In 1987 we produced. In association witb Petroleum Geological Analysis Lid. the report entitled,

PETROLEUM GEOLOGY AND HYDROCARBON PLAYS OF THE EASTERN ADRIATIC

This report concentrates upon coastal and ofishore Yugoslavia and Albania Following on from the success of thls study we have recently completed a complimentary report, in association with Petroleum Geological Analysis Ltd and Petra-Chem Ud., which examines the source rock potenhal of thls reglon:

GEOCHEMICAL ANALYSIS OF SOURCE ROCKS AND SEEPS FROM WESTERN GREECE AND SOUTHERN YUGOSLAVIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR PETROLEUM EXPLORATION

We are also pleased to announce the complenon earl~er th~s year of a series of four companion reports produced in conjunction wth Ouantock Geological Services, enhiled,

CENTRAL EUROPEAN OIL & GAS EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION

I. Galicia (Poland and Ukraine) 2. Sava and Drava Basins (Yugoslavia & Hungary) 3. Vienna Basin (Austria and Czechoslovakia) 4. Basins of the Great Hungarian Plain

For further lntorrnat~on please contact

David Edgar Gus Wilson 3 Old Lodge Place 6610 Harwin, Suite 154 St. Margarets, Twlckenham Houston Middlesex, l W 1 lRQ, England Texas, 77036, USA Tel: (081) 891 0064 Tel: (713) 781 3945 Fax: (081) 892 7094 Fax: (713) 973 2055

Bullet~n Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety. December 1991 16

b

INTERNA TIONAL BRIEF

Spotlight on . . . POLAND By George Tappan*

Poland's history of oil and gas exploration extends from the invention of the first kerosene lamp in 1854. Gas production and distribution systems are well developed, but oil production is far below current needs. Poland imports about half the gas consumed, and 90% of the oil to augment its 3300 BOPD local production.

All mineral deposits in Poland are the property of the State Treasury. Control of these resources is delegated to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources, and Forestry. The Ministry is the Concession Authority. The legal bases are the Mining Law of May 6, 1953, and the Geological Law bf November 16, 1960. Both were amended by Act of Parliament, April 26,1991, to allow foreign companies to participate in petroleum exploration in Poland. Specific issues relating to oil, gas and coalbed methane are dealt with in the Model Contract for Petroleum Exploration and Production.

In its first round of exploration licensing open to the international petroleum industry, Poland offers 32 onshore blocks in two areas of the Polish lowlands, 22 in the Polish Trough of central Poland, and ten in the Baltic Syneclise on the north coast.

Applications for petroleum operations in Poland must be directed to the Concessions Bureau of the Ministry, and received by 5:00 p.m., January 15,1992. They may be submitted by a single company or group for one or more blocks. Individual exploration concessions may not exceed 1200 sq. km., but there is no limit on the number of concessions a company may hold under a single contract. A minimum purchase of US$50,000 for one or more of the data packages offered by the Bureau of Geological Concessions is required.

The Contract The exploration term is for as much as three

additional years. Exploitation concessions will be granted for 20 years, at the discretion of the Minister. A minimum work program will be included in the negotiated contract. Poland doesn't require a minimum expenditure commitment, but the contractor must post an irrevocable bank guarantee which the Ministry can call if the work obligations are not fulfilled. The signature bonus is negotiable.

A Joint Advisory Committee will provide technical coordination between the contractor and the Ministry during the exploration period. If the Ministry exercises its right to acquire a participating

*Reprinted w ~ t h permission, Internotionol Exploration Newsletter, September 30, 1991.

interest in the exploitation phase, a Joint Operating Committee will replace the Joint Advisory Committee.

Despite the number of wells drilled, Poland has a paucity of true exploratory tests located on seismically well-defined structures.

Royalty is fixed at 10% of gross production. Corporate income tax is currently 40% of net income, but may be reduced. A 40% special charge is due on after-tax net income when it reaches a 20% real after-tax rate of return on each concession. After-tax profits may be repatriated.

The domestic market has first call on purchase of natural gas at a price referenced to a basket of fuel oils. If the gas cannot be developed economically for the domestic market, the operator may export it at net realized price. Crude oil is priced at realized market price.

Petroleum Geology The Polish lowlands occupy the easternmost part of

the North European Basin. The stable East European Precambrian Platform on the northeast is overlain by a fairly complete Paleozoic-Tertiary section which thickened west-

17 Bullet~n Houston Geological Society. December 1991

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LICENSE AREAS, FIRST ROUND, POLAND i L

ward in the late Paleozoic and Mesozoic. The first oil field was discovered at Rybaki in 1961, the first gas field at Bogdaj-Uciec how in 1964.

The main exploration targets for the ten blocks offered in the onshore Baltic Syneclise are the quartzitic sandstones of the Lower and Middle Cambrian, charged with hydro- carbons derived from Cambrian, Ordovician, and Silurian source rocks. The overlying Ordovician and Silurian argillaceous sediments provide regional seals. Oil discoveries at Zarnoweic-Debki, Zarnoweic W. and Biatogora on the Baltic coast, another four offshore, a promising gas- condensate show near Malbork, and the Cambrian fields across the border in Kaliningrad to the north, are ample proof of hydrocarbon generation and the undeveloped potential of the area. The Devonian, Carboniferous, and Lower Permian are presumed missing from most of the Baltic Syneclise. The Permian Rotliegendes Sandstone and Zechstein carbonates, though not as well developed as in the center of the basin, are secondary objectives. Triassic carbonates may have reservoir potential for Mesozoic source rocks, but no such discoveries have been made as yet. The Cenozoic is thin andis not considered prospective.

The 22 blocks offered in central Poland are over a deeper, thicker part of the basin. Pre-Carboniferous rocks may be too deeply buried to have reservoir potential in the central area, but eight small gas fields and one oil field have been found in Carboniferous reservoirs west of the areas offered. The most promising objectives in central Poland are the fluvial, lacustrine, and aeolian sandstones and con- glomerates of the Permian Rotliegendes Formation, and the Zechstein limestones and dolomites.

The Rotliegendes sandstone and carbonate of the first cycle Zechstein are normally gas-bearing. The second cycle carbonate, the Main Dolomite, is the primary objective for oil and gas, which often occurs in well-defined reef structures.

Hydrocarbon shows in the Mesozoic have been found in many wells, but no economically viable discoveries have been made to date. Nevertheless, good reservoirs and potential source rocks occur in the Triassic, Jurassic, and lowermost Cretaceous. The thin Cenozoic is assumed to have no potential for oil or gas.

Despite the more or less 2000 wells drilled in the Polish Lowlands, the paucity of true exploratory tests drilled with modern equipment on seismically well-defined structures, leaves the door open for the optimistic explorationist.

Data Available The Robertson Group, in cooperation with the Polish

Oil and Gas Company and the Minerals and Energy Economy Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, has prepared a report on the Petroleum Geology and Hydrocarbon Potential ofPoland, and a number of data packages to assist in evaluation of the two areas offered for exploration license. The report, with text, 84 maps and sections, 86 seismic lines, and 42 composite well logs, is priced at £44,000 sterling. Three data packages on the areas offered, the Northern Area, the Central Area Rotliegenedes objective, and Central Area Mesozoic objective, are available for £35,000 each, not including reproduction and shipping. Infill and ancillary data are also available on request from Robertson, the Polish Oil and Gas Company, and the State Geological Institute.

Bullettn Houston Geological Society. December 1991 18

The Country Poland is one of the largest countries of Central

Europe. It is predominantly low-lying and has a mild climate ranging from -1°C in January to 18OC in July. The Carpathian and Tetra mountains lie along the southern border. Poland has a President, a two-chamber National Assembly, and a free electoral system. The government is headed by the Prime Minister, who is responsible to the lower chamber, the Sejm.

Although Polish is the official language, German and Russian are spoken frequently, and most professionals understand English and some French. The official rate of exchange is 9500 zloty to US$1.00.

References: New Opportunities for Petroleum Exploration in Poland,

Bureau of Geological Concessions, Ministry of Environ- mental Protection, Natural Resources and Forestry.

Oil and Gas in Poland, Polish Oil and Gas Company, June 1991.

Foreign Investor's Guide to Poland, Ernst & Young, March 1990.

Robertson Research presentation, July 1991.

Contacts: Dr. Michal Wilczynski Ministry of Environmental Protection, Natural Resources

and Forestry Bureau of Geological Concession Wawelska 52154 00-922 Warsaw, POLAND Phone: 24 43 93; Telex: 812 816; Fax: 253 972.

The Robertson Group plc Llandudno, Gwynedd 1130 1SA North Wales, U.K. Phone: 0492 58181 1, Fax: 0492 583416

Robertson Research (US) Inc. 820 Gessner, Suite 240 Houston, Texas 77024, USA Phone: 7131984-8491, Fax: 7131984-9854

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"THROUGH THE DOLOMITES A N D APENNINES

by M. Dane ("Duke") Picard

The Apennines are a curious part of the world. At the edge of the vast plain of the Po, a mountain range rises from the lowlands and extends to the southern tip of Italy with a s e a on each side. If this range had not been so precipitous, lofty and intricate that tidal action in remote epochs could have little influence, it would be only slightly higher than the rest of the country, one of its most beautiful regions, and the climate would be superb. Instead, it is a strange network of crisscrossing mountain ridges; often one cannot even find out where the streams are running to.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1786

bears the likeness. How we see William Tell comes from the statue and stamp.

We lunched in Altdorf before heading east for Innsbruck. We bought pastries at a bakery. In Innsbruck that evening we walked for a hour and a half up the mountain above our hotel and into low clouds near the crest. It was not enough to calm all of the French fries, said McBride.

Most of the clouds had cleared by 3:30 in the morning, leaving only a few thick white ones below the high terraces under the forest line down near the river. I could not sleep - it was 8:30 in the evenins in Salt Lake. Bv 7:00 a.m. the clouds were back and the morning was over;ast and cool as

Having spent the sweetest days of spring in a stuffy it had been the day before. interior room with no windows, teaching reluctant students In a few hours we crossed the border through Brenner about sedimentary rocks, I left on a Sunday in June to treat Pass and were in Italy. We began to sample the sand bars my numbed mind and infected sinuses to mountain air in along the Rienza. A road-crossing guard in a little town the Italian Dolomites and Apennines, I first knew of the asked US what we were doing near the river. McBride said Abruzzi - most mountainous part of the Apennine range - we were sand collectors. from reading Ignazio Silone's Bread and Wine when I was 19. At the time I thought I would never get there, my days then being devoted to manning an officers' mess at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. After reading Silone, a geologist wants to see "the end of the world," a village destroyed twice by floods and once by earthquakes. Or to walk in valleys "split, cracked and bereft of vegetation." To a geologist, Silone's Abruzzi resembles the carbonate terrains of western Ireland, the high glaciated mountain valleys in the Big Horn dolomite of Wyoming, and the stark, rock-striped, sha t t e r ed Paleozoic ranges of eas te rn Nevada.

As for the Dolomites, I had fallen for them the year before when Earle McBride and I - taking a great jog to the east - passed through on our way to France. Golden dolomite, crowned and ribboned with snow streams, is a rock nearly impossible to dislike.

I took a plane from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis and then to New York City. A careening carry-on cart in the overhead storage pierced the mouthwash I carried in a small bag. I spent two hours in New York trying to clean the bag, whose breath was sweet but whose bottom was greasy. We flew on to Zurich, arriving at 9:15 Monday morning. Earle McBride, sedimentary petrologist from Austin, Texas, was waiting. He said that I smelled strongly of peppermint.

From Zurich, we headed for Altdorf on our way to St. Gotthard Pass on the north side of the Alps. We were too early in the year - the pass was closed. A statue of William Tell stands in the Altdorf main square. A postage stamp

*Reprinted from Journal of Geolog~cal Education, 1990, v. 38, no. 4

"A road-crossing guard in a little town asked us C

what we were doing near the river. McBride said

we were sand collectors."

We drove back and forth across the Dolomites and across the Apennines at many places. We walked along the major stream courses and sampled rocks of Apennine valley walls and peaks. We drove from Cortina d' Ampezzo in the Dolomites to Ravenna and south along the Adriatic Sea to Roseto and then to L'Aquila and through the Abruzzi. We stayed a night in Pompeii. We went to Tivoli east of Rome. We went back into the Abruzzi. We drove northwest and north to Viterbo, Gubbio, Bagno di Romagna, Modena, Fontanelice, Loiano, and finally northwest from Bologna to Salsomaggiore on the Al . And then we crossed into Switzerland through St. Gothard Pass, recently opened. The whole trip took seventeen days. We stayed in fourteen towns and cities. On such a short trip there was much we did not see.

The Dolomites were named to honor the French geologist, Dodat de Gratet de Dolomieu, Knight of Malta, captious adventurer, aristocratic adherent of the Revolu- tion, august geologist. Dolomieu studied the Dolomites at

I 19 Bulletin Houston Geolog~cal Society. December 1991

the end of the 18th century. He studied Italian volcanoes, and knew that the heat could not come from combustion, but did not reach an alternate explanation. The common calciurn-magnesium-carbonate mineral dolomite, whose reaction to dilute hydrochloric acid is to form slow-breaking bubbles, also honors Dolomieu a s does the rock dolomite, a s tone with 50 percent or more of the mineral dolomite. It is imprecise to give mineral, rock, and mountain range the san-,e name. But geologists, who are little honored any- where and sometimes ignored among more mathematical and experimental scientists, rejoice in honoring the dead Dolomieu.

The Rienza River - roughly the northern boundary o f the Dolomites - was running high. We could not collect samples of the point bars a s frequently as we wished, but we bagged dolomite sand where we could along the river. We a te lunch on an old toll road beside the river, then drove up the Rienza and admired the valley profiles. But the point bars were submerged. We stopped at the summer villa where Gustav Mahler composed his Ninth Symphony. O n the sunny valley slope, with clean, unglaciated dolomite peaks forming the skyline, and splashes of spring wildflowers coloring the floodplin, the day did not evoke the shadow o f Mahler's Ninth and his early death at 50.

Cortina d' Ampezzo is the capital of the Dolomites and the largest town with a population of about 10,000 people. The Olympic winter games took place here in 1956. It is a resort town still. The town sits in a valley beside the Boite River, the major tributary of the Piave, at an altitudeof 3,950 feet. On the west stand the three domes of Tofane, the

highest at 10,640 feet. An ossuary near Cortina holds the bones of 10,000 soldiers killed in World War I .

McBride bought the first of many maps h e would buy in Italy. He cannot pass up a slightly different map. "This map will show the locations of small towns we have stopped at while studying rocks and sand", said McBride.

We walked around Cortina in the chill evening air before the restaurants opened at 7:OO. There were many stray ca ts and few people, Cortina being between seasons. The ca ts looked healthy, unlike the animals on the dock at Portovenere.

In the morning we took a sand sample from the channel of the Rienza headwaters. We were alone in the ancient mountains. We saw the Dolomites as Neanderthal man may have seen them - snow plumes blowing from the high peaks stretching out toward Africa and, in the upper turbulence, the plumes reversing and sometimes swinging northwest toward France. The feeling blotted out the evening's queasiness.

After collecting the Rienza sand, we looked at our map of the Dolomites, counted sample stations, and decided t o sample another river draining the range. The Rienza seemed unpromising. We went to the headwaters of the Boite, where it begins its run south, and collected a bag of sand from this shallow clear tributary to the Piave. It began to snow. Dolomite mud near the banks became pitted -- miniature rimmed impact craters where rain and sleet and snow splashed down.

It was gray and overcast at noon when we reached Longarone. The lawns had been recently tended. Rain had

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fallen off and on all night and began again, lightly, when we reached the cemetery. There were many cut flowers on the markers, red and white carnations and a few vases of spring wildflowers. Drops of water started to collect and run down photographs of people killed in the catastrophic flood that swept over the crest of the Vaiont Dam east of Longarone on October 9, 1963. I had never seen a cemetery with so many pictures of victims, or so many of them children. I walked along among the markers, sometimes speaking a family's name into the light rain.

"On October 9, 1963, about 90 million cubic feet

of mountain slid down steep slopes at 60 miles an 7, hour.. .

At night on October 9, about 90 million cubic feet of mountain slid down steep slopes at 60 miles an hour into Lake Vaiont, a deep reservoir behind the dam in the Italian Alps. The reservoir was less than half-filled. When the slide dropped into the reservoir the water rose 787 feet above its previous level. The slide material filled the reservoir valley for more than a mile along its axis, rising to heights of 500 feet above the reservoir level. The slide and accompanying blasts of air and water and rock caused strong earthquakes recorded many miles away. It blew off the roof of a man's house more than 800 feet above the reservoir and showered the man with rocks and debris. A great wave broke over the dam, 300 feet above its crest, and fell into the gorge below. More than a mile downstream, the waves were still more than 230feet high. Constricted by the steep-sided valley, the water increased its velocity tremendously, snatched up mud and rocks, pldnged down the valley, and burst across the wide bed of the Piave River and up the mountain slope. In Longarone and adjoining towns, water, mud, and rocks killed approximately 2,600 people. It was over in less than 7 minutes. It was the world's worst dam disaster, though the dam stood and the main shell and abutments were not damaged.

Expensive efforts had been made to stabilize the jittery slopes above the dam. For the three previous years, movement on the slope had been monitored. Engineers assured everyone that the dam was safe and the right things were being done. Animals grazing on the slopes doubted the engineers and moved away a week before the flood.

One shoulder of the dam was supported by Monte Toc, called la montagna che cammina by the local people - the mountain that walks. There had been an ancient landslide near Casso above the dam site. In 1960, opposite the Casso slide on the south side of the valley, there had been a smaller slide into the reservoir. Engineers expected another, smaller landslide. Until the day before the disaster, they did not realize that a large piece of land was moving as a uniform mass downslope.

Geologically, almost everything was wrong with the site. The instability of the land was evident. The valley was steep-sided, sharply undercut by the river, with dizzying slopes. The rocks - limestone and claystone and slippery clayey interbeds of the Jurassic Lias, Dogger, and Malm

and of the Cretaceous - were inclined toward the valley axis, providing about the worst stratigraphic and structural geometry for a dam foundation and reservoir. The fractured limestone was riddled with underground solution caverns that collected water which added to the ground saturation. Surely geologists would have noted these relationships and spoken about them before the dam was built. From the outside, one might conclude that in Italy, as everywhere else, dam engineers don't pay much attention to geologists.

Before the landslide, downslope movement of regolith - creep - had been four-tenths of an inch per week, a rapid rate. In September it increased to ten inches a day. A day before the landslide the rate was about 40 inches a day. Beginning in late September the rains began increasing the weight of the unstable slope, raising water pressure in the rocks, and producing runoff that raised the reservoir level while the engineers were trying to lower it. Water from the reservoir seeped into the unstable layers. The great block broke away.

Later in Salt Lake. Chad Gourlev told me the Italians sent the engineers to p'rison after the-~a iont flood. He did not know whether or not any geologists accompanied them. Geologists and engineers studying dam sites seldom consider the prospect of prison in their studies.

We filled the car with gasoline - about $3.50 a gallon in Longarone. I had a cappuccino at a small bar, where a dusty, dispirited dog sat on a small mat near the door. McBride was still off coffee and his stomach was in revolt over some spice or other from dinner. We drove south, staying close to the Piave and looking for a place where we

I Deep thinking. Top results. I I 2950 North Loop West, Suite 300

Houston, Texas 77092 (7 13) 688-628 1 I Bulletin Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety. December 1991 2 2

could get out on a sand bar to sample the sand: the river was flooding and many sand bars were covered. The light rain suddenly became a squall, and then it stopped as suddenly. The sun came out. The river was brown and heavy with sediment, dirty and heavy and bearing no resemblance to the clear blue-green waters running over the bent and broken dolomite in the headwaters above Cortina.

That night we stopped at Ponte della Priula, a tiny town near the Piave, which was absent from many of our maps. McBride's stomach had regained its stability and we had pasta with salsa di pomodoro, caponne, and a tossed green salad for dinner. We drove north ten miles for dessert. It was a neighborhood hangout for young men and women. They came in pairs on motorbikes and on foot for a pastry, a cappuccino, and a Campari.

Late in the morning we arrived at Punta Sabbioni, south of the mouth of the Piave, a few miles from Lido di Jesolo, and across the lagoon from Venice. The sun had won the last skirmish, the soft sea mist everywhere retreating, and the orange-red roofs of Venice lay like a great, rumpled quilt over the lagoon.

A small freighter carefully made its way out to sea. We sampled the sand on the beach. We took pictures of stylolites in gigantic limestone blocks along the jetty, the sort of museum-quality stylolites one never sees in outcrops, but often sees in the bathroom walls of libraries.

We sat on the sea wall and ate a sack lunch -dry tuna, yogurt, green pears, and cookies. I tossed tuna chunks to a white cat hiding below among the gray limestone blocks. He was weak and frightened like the animals on the wharf at Portovenere and on the streets of Milan.

A few feet away five Spaniards took turns fishing with three poles. They never cast far, and caught nothing but big lumps of seaweed while we were there, though they had fine poles and seemed to know how to fish. Halfway to the endof the jetty an old man and woman fished.

McBride began to stare at the limestone blocks, then jumped down to look at one with his hand lens. I sat in the sun, looking toward Venice.

When I think of Venice, no matter how distant or near, I think first of St. Mark's Square and of sitting at dusk on the terrace of Florian's, writing to a special person as I imagined Byron might have written if he had begun school in a one- room schoolhouse and gone on to red-and-orange brick schools in northern Wyoming. At Florian's a thin blue cat crept under the little table, perhaps to avoid the diving pigeons. I gave it a sugar cookie and all that remained of some expensive chocolate ice cream.

The stratigraphy and structure of mountain belts may preserve a record of the geologic history of plate margins. However some Mediterranean orogenic belts may have formed by uplift and gravity tectonics alone; they may not mark plate margins. For example, it is difficult to explain the structure of the Apennines by the subduction process. The partly chaotic allochthon of the Apennines seems to be the product of submarine gravity sliding and not of deformation in a trench.

- W. Alvarez, 1973

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23 Bulletln Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety, December 1991

Bullet~n Houston Geolog~cal Society, December 1991 24

The town sprang up by a miracle - 99 rioni surround- ing 99 castles, 99 squares, 99 fountains, and 99 churches. The Fountain of the 99 Conduits still exists. In the evening a bell in the old tower in the Law Courts tolls 99 times, each one deafening.

We came to L'Aquila in the late afternoon and chose the wrong street on which to approach the center. Soon our car was surrounded by people in the one-lane street; our car, something like a boulder inching its way downslope, but upstream, into L'Aquila. Pedestrians brushed against the sides of the car and, it seemed to me, looked at us menacingly. It seemed hours before we were able to park and walk on to the Albergo Italia.

The Italy Hotel, once a grand hotel in the center of the city, had declined. The rent was $18 a night for two in a room, said the clerk. Many of the tenants were very old. The ceiling of our room held a single small light bulb high above the floor. There was no light bulb in the lamp between the beds. We went out to buy one. After we had eaten, and walked to the highest point in town to see the castle -a fine example of military architecture - and sampled the ice cream, we walked back to the hotel with our light bulb. In a sitting room off the lobby I opened Eugenio Montale's little book of pieces, Poet in Our Time:

Ultimately the true artist is not the poet or the composer of aleatory music, but the man who glances a t a page of advertisements or who hears noises in the street and performs the selectivegesture of isolating, in that chaos, one moment or one detail which might provide a quiver of vital emotion.

U.S. Geological Survey ' 8th Annual

V.E. McKelvey Forum

on

Energy Resources

30 Oral Presentations 53 Poster Presentations

Gulf Coast reservoirs Oil field growth Basin evolution Fractured reservoirs Paleoclimate & rhythms Computer applications Sequence stratigraphy Diagenetic studies Source rocks Coal & coalbed methane

Short Course: "Recent Advances in Plate Tectonics and Continental Crustal Evolution"

by Warren Hamilton

Houston, Texas February 18-20, 1992

Technical Program Registration Information Christine Turner Jan W. Kernan

USGS BAl, Inc. (303) 236-1 561 (301) 588-41 77

AMERADA HESS CORPORATION U. S. EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION

1201 LOUISIANA, SUITE 700 HOUSTON, T X 77002

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That afternoon, inching down the street amid the noise and chaos, my most vital emotion was fear.

We got up early for breakfast at a bar near the hotel. Again I had cookies with orange juice and cappuccino. At almost any bar McBride enthusiastically eats a couple of hard rolls or jelly brioches. I prefer Italian cookies, especially lemon.

I walked across the square, empty and still and cool before the Saturday morning rush, to buy some postcards and a newspaper. We were the only customers sitting outside. I wrote a few lines on a postcard of the Luminous Fountain - the high snow-capped Apennines in the back- ground - to my younger son. I sent Castle at Night to my older daughter.

There is a well-marked road from L'Aquila to Pes- casseroli, but we couldn't seem to find it. While we searched we saw many of the gold-tinted ancient houses that characterize L'Aquila. When we began to pass small herds of sheep tended by black dogs, I decided we were on the right road.

A charmed snake made its way across the road. There were no other cars and we slowed for the snake's crossing.

We went into Pescina where Ignazio Silone was born in 4

May 1900, the month and year of my father's birth. Silone's real name was Secondo Tranquilli, but he came to hate the Secondo. In one dialect it means a jail warden. Pescina was the setting of Silone's first novel, Fontamara, but the lovely name does not suggest the reality of that poverty-stricken medieval village under the Fascists. Pescina is the scene of most of Silone's work, including Bread and Wine.

It began to rain lightly, amounting finally to little more than a mist frosting the mountain flowers in the little rocky glens. What little water struck the ground disappeared at once and went into cracks and joints. We saw no Fontamaran springs:

A poor, thin spring rises from beneath a heap of stones a t the entrance to Fontamara and forms a dirty pool. A few paces away the water burrows into the stony soil and disappears, to reappear later in the form of a more abundant stream a t the bottom of the hill.

Our friend Roberto Colacicchi, Professor at the Uni- versity of Perugia, carbonate petrologist, geological states- man in Italy, and generous and discerning host in Perugia, was one of eight geologists who collaborated on the

Continued on p. 38

2 5 Bulletin Houston Geological Society. December 1991 ,

GEOLOGIS

HGS ENVIRONMENTAL/ENGINEERlNG COMMITTEE SHORT COURSE DECEMBER 11,1991 Time: 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. Cost: $15; free for unemployed HGS members Location: Paul Revere High School Auditorium

10500 Briar Forest (just west of Sam Houston Tollway)

Speaker: Dr. Jack Matson, University of Houston Subject: The Expert Witness Speaker: Dr. Joe W. Stuckey,

Woodward-Clyde Consultants Subject: Environmental Law Considerations for

Oil and Gas Leasing

JACK V. MATSON-Biographical Sketch Jack V. Matson, Ph.D., P.E., Environmental Engineer-

ing, Rice University; M.S., B.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Toledo; Professor at the University of Houston, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. Matson has served as an expert witness for both the defendant and the plaintiff in a wide variety of suits involving citizen groups, Fortune 500 companies, federal programs,

portation and disposal, Superfund contracts, PRP liability issues, environmental site assessments, underground storage tanks, landfill matters, acquisitions/mergers, successor liabilities, environmental insurance, contract dis- putes and settlements, liens, commercial leases, and decep- tive trade practice claims. His experience with permit applications has included state effluent discharge permits for waste water treatment plants, NPDES permits, water well permits, incinerators, and injection wells. Past responsibilities have also included work with RCRA, CERCLA, TSCA, CWA, CAA, AHERA, OSHA and other federal and state statutes. He has handled various asbestos abatement issues. He also has worked with many local, state and federal agencies, including OSHA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dr. Stuckey has managed investigations, planning, preliminary designs, final designs, consulting, surveying, construction, operation and/or maintenance responsibilities for various commercial and industrial projects.

and municipalities. ~xperienced in giving testimony, Matson has appeared

in more than 30 hearings before the Texas Water Com- mission, testified before municipal and other quasi-judicial bodies, and given prepared testimony at numerous open meetings.

(NOTE: Dr. Matson will have his book on Expert Witnessing for sale at the meeting.)

THE EXPERT WITNESS Litigation is being used more and more to solve

problems. Last year alone, over 25,000 suits were filed involving industry, engineering firms and construction- related companies. Testimony of experts directly impacted the outcome of these cases.

To be effective as an expert witness requires not only expert knowledge of your profession but also familiarity with legal protocol, techniques and language.

JOE W. STUCKEY-Biographical Sketch Dr. Stuckey is an attorney with a B.S. degree in Civil

Engineering from Texas A&M University (1964) and a J.D. degree in Law from the University of Houston (1974). Presently with Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Dr. Stuckey's environmental practice has focused, in part, on regulatory and liability issues associated with hazardous wastes, toxic chemicals, solid wastes, water pollution, air pollution (including both indoor and outdoor air pollution), including real estate transfers, corporate risk management, property damage, and related transactions.

He has experience with various types of environmental services contracts, remedial action, hazardous waste trans-

Bulletin Houston Geological Society, December 1991 26

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW CONSIDERATIONS FOR OIL AND GAS LEASING

This presentation will introduce geologists and petroleum landmen to the environmental liabilities associated with oil and gas leases. Potential personal environmental liabilities for geologists and landmen will be discussed. Special issues associated with "old" petroleum fields also will be reviewed.

NATIONWIDE OPPORTUNITIES

Petroleum Testing Service, Inc., an established 30 year old test ing company, providing laboratory services for all phases of core analysis, reservoir f luid studies and environmental services is seeking qualified:

Technical Sales Personnel

Core Analysts

Laboratory ManagerslSupervisors

Environmental Chemists

Geochemists

Appropriate de rees andlor experience re ulred. Those interested In joking a growing company s%ould forward their resume with salary history, work references and

eographlc preference to: Larry Kunkel, Director o f 8 erations, PETROLEUM TESTING SERVICE, INC., 12051 ~ P v e r a Rd., Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670. A n equal opportunity employer.

ANCHORAGE, AK

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UTILIZATION OF BOREHOLE GEOPHYSICAL TECHNIQUES I N

GROUND-WATER A N D HAZARDOUS WASTE INVESTIGATIONS

January 24-25,1992 - North Harris College Date & Friday 24th 6:30 to 10:00 p.m. Time: Saturday 25th 8:30 to 4:00 p.m.

Location: North Harris College 2700 W. W. Thorn Dr. (just south of 1960 between Hardy & Aldine- Westfield)

Cost: $90 tuition (includes extensive course notes and refreshments) $20 for full-time students and unemployed H G S members

Sponsored Oyo Geospace by: Welenco Geophysical Services

Terrasciences

Wireline logs were introduced into the United Sta tes in 1929, two years after the first log was run in France by the Schlurnberger brothers. Logging technology soon spread from the oilfield to the ground water industry, with water wells being logged in the United States a s early a s 1936.

Although the ground water industry has run logs in numerous wells during the past fifty years, most logging technology was developed specifically for the petroleum industry. Until recent years there was little research into applying borehole geophysical techniques to the study of ground water aquifers. However, beginning in the 1970s there was a surge of interest by the ground water industry in

utilizing wireline logs. Today, borehole geophysical logs provide a wide range

of information for ground-water/environmental studies. They provide data for identifying and characterizing aquifers, characterizing contaminant plumes, designing well tests , placing screens, completing wells, and evaluating well completions. Logs are used for stratigraphic correlation, mapping the vertical and lateral extent of aquifers and csonfining beds, and determining depositional facies. They also provide the ground-truth for surface geophysical studies.

This school, taught by Dr. Hughbert Collier, surveys yround-water/environmental logging: tools, iqterpretation techniques, and applications. The school is designed for anyone who needs to be familiar with borehole logging technology. No prior logging knowledge is required. Extensive course notes will be provided.

HUGHBERT COLLIER-Biographical Sketch Hughbert Collier, the instructor, is an Assistant Pro-

fessor at Abilene Christian University (ACU), Abilene, Texas. For the past four years he has conducted a research project for the Texas Water Development Board o n "Bore- hole Geophysical Techniques for Determining the Water Quality and Reservoir Parameters of Fresh and Saline Water Aquifers in Texas". He has taught several courses on groundwater logging. For five years he taught courses on well logging, wellsite geology and sedimentary petrology at ACU. He has served a s president of the Abilene chapter of the Society of Professional Well Log Analysts and is a member of the Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers.

Forney & McCombs is actively seeking high quality drillable prospects or development of geological/geophysical ideas or leads. We can operate or participate with proven industry companies. Partial interests are acceptable.

2 7 B u l l e t ~ n Hous ton Gealoq~i, i l S o u e t y December 1991

I The Houston Geological Society Field Trip Committee

I presents the following field trips, in cooperation with the

I Geological Society of America - South-Central Section Meeting, Houston, February 1992

Part~cipants who are not registered for the GSA meeting will be charged a $10 additional registration fee. All trips will depart by bus from the Rice University stadium parking lot.

Please call the H G S office at 785-6402 for additional information and trip descriptions.

TRIP #3 - NASA - JOHNSON SPACE CENTER TOUR: Lunar Samples & Planetary Imagery

Saturday, February 22,8:00 a.m. t o approx. 3:00 p.m.

LEADERS: John W. Dietrich and David L. Amsbury, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

FEE: $18 per person (includes bus transportation and refreshments). Each must be a U.S. citizen or present a valid green card for admission to NASA.

LIMIT: 45 persons

TRIP #4: ENVIRONMENTAL & ENGINEERING GEOLOGY IN THE HOUSTON METROPOLITAN AREA

Sunday, February 23,8:00 a.m. t o approx. 6:00 p.m.

LEADERS: Carl Norman (University of Houston) and Saul Aronow (Lamar Univers~ty)

FEE: $40 per person (includes transportation, lunch, refreshments and guidebook)

LIMIT: 45 persons

TRIP #5: UNITED SALT CORPORATION HOCKLEY MINE Hockley, Texas

Saturday, February 22 (two sessions: 5:30 a.m. - 11:OO a.m. and 8:15 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.)

LEADERS: Daryl Wilson (United Salt Corp.) and Jeff McCartney (Texas Brine Corp. )

FEE: $50 per person (includes transportation, breakfast with first session, lunch with second session, refreshments, and guidebook materals).

LIMIT: 20 persons (10 per session)

TRIP #6: RECENT SEDIMENTS O F SOUTHEAST TEXAS: Exploration, Environmental & Engineering Implications

Saturday, February 22,7:30 a.m. t o 6:00 p.m.

LEADER: Rufus J. LeBlanc, Sr. (Rufe LeBlanc School of Clastic Sediments, Houston).

FEE: $40 per person, (includes transportation, guidebook, lunch and refreshments)

LIMIT: 45 persons ............................................................................................................................................................................

Please send your registration and a check made out t o "HGS FIELD TRIPS" to: Paul Britt, Elf Exploration, 1100 Louisiana, Suite 3800, Houston, Texas 77002

(Participants not registering for the GSA meeting add $10 special registration fee)

I TRIP(S): AMOUNT REMITTED:

I Name: Company:

I Address: Phone:

I City, State, Zip Fax:

--- -- -

Bul le t~n Houston Grologlcal Soclety December 1991 2 8

DEC. CALENDAR of EVENTS

GEO-EVENTS

S U N D A Y

1

MEETINGS IN HOUSTON

M O N D A Y

2

HGA Luncheon, Enterta~nment by the "Sugar and Spice Singers", The Houston~an, Dec. 4.

SEPM Gulf Coast Section 12th Annual Research Conference, "Coastal Depositional Systems in the Gulf of Mexico: Quarternary Framework and Environmental Issues", Adam's Mark Hotel, Dec. 8-1 1.

TUESDAY

3

HGS Dinner Meeting, Mark Butler, "Lithologic Pre- diction from the Stratal Architecture of Plio/Pleistocene Gulf of Mexico: Are the Eustatlc Depositional Systems Tract Models Adequate?" and "Precision Sequence Strati- graphy ot the Plio-Pleistocene Gulf of Mexico. Digital Integrat~on of Seismic, Log, Paleontologic, and Oxygen Isotope Data", Post Oak Doubletree Inn, 5:30 p.m., Dec. 9.

GSH Luncheon, Alistar Brown, "Seismic Interpreta- tion, Today and Tomorrow", Houstonian, 12 Noon, Dec. 9.

WEDNESDAY

4

HGA Lunc h ~ o n \"gar & 5 p ~ e

S i n g r r s rhr Hou+tonmn

AWG Dinner, Ann Ayers Martin, "She's the One Who ... Establishing an Identity in Your Profession", Morningside Thai Restaurant, 6710 Morningside Drive, 6:00 p.m., Dec. 10 (If attending, call Anglia Sweet 556-7067).

SIPES Luncheon, Tom Vance, "Saving for Retire: meni", Petroleum Club, 11:30 a.m.. Dec. 19.

AROUND THE COUNTRY AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, Dec. 9-13,

OTHER EVENTS HGS Environmental/Engineering Geology Short

Courses, "The Expert Witness" and "Environmental Law Considerations for Oil and Gas Leasing", Paul Revere High School Auditorium, 10500 Briar Forest, 6:00 p.m., Dec. 11.

B u l l t t ~ n Houston Geo log~cn l So i le ty December 1991

THURSDAY

5

FRIDAY

6

SATURDAY

7

PANHANDLERS OBSERVE! The Panhandle Geological Society is offering for sale the following items:

CROSS-SECTIONS Vertical Scale: 1 inch = 300 feet Cloth Copies - Cost Plus $5.00

1. North-South from Seward County, Kansas through Floyd County, Texas. 19 Wells. 27" x 57". Paper - $5.00

2. West-East from Union County, New Mexico to Ellis County, Oklahoma. 17 Wells. 27" x 57". Paper - $5.00

3. North-South from Morton County, Kansas to Lubbock County, Texas. 22 Wells. 27" x 47". Paper - $5.00

4. North-South Stratigraphic Cross Section: Dalhart Basin to Palo Duro Basin, Cimarron County, Oklahoma to Deaf Smith County, Texas. 14 Wells. 28" x 3 4 . Paper -

$5.00 5. Correlation Chart: Texas Panhandle and Adjacent

Areas. Paper - $2.50

BOOKS 1. Field Trip of Alibates Flint Quaries, Alibates

Indian Ruin, Santa Fe Trail, Sanford Dam, Potter and Hutchinson

. . . . . . . . . . . . Counties, Texas, September 1963 $ 3.00

2. North Central New Mexico Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conference $ 5.00

3. Selected Gas Fields of Texas - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Panhandle 1977 (Reduced) $10.00

4. *Selected Oil & Gas Fields of - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Texas Panhandle 1990 $28.00

Panhandle Geological Society P.O. BOX 2473

Amarillo, Texas 79105

Add $1.00 Handling Charge Per Item *Now Available

Additional Charge for Postage

Publications may also be obtained from: Edith Quine

81 1 Browning Amarillo, Texas 79104

806-373-2654

HELP WANTED Charles Overton would like to turn the Remembrances

Committee over to someone. If you would be willing to help, please call 622-0922.

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SUITE 2 4 0 0 JIM BLOOMQUIST (303) 298-1000 DENVER. COLORADO 80202 (303) 298-8881 F a x

Bulletin Houston Geological Soclety December 1991 3 0

FOURTH ANNUAL BASS G S H / H G S T O U R N A M E N T

IT'S SPRING LUNKER TIME AGAIN ! ! !

GET YOUR

WHEN:

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SPONSORS WELCOME!!

MARCH 21 - 22, 1992 TOLEDO BEND (FRONTIER PARK) SAME GREAT PLACE!

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Contact Joe Alcamo at 531-7929 or Bill Roach at G59-6111 for additional information.

GSH/HGS BASS TOURNAMENT REGISTRATION FORM

NAME : PARTNER S NAME :

ADDRESS :

PHONE : (HOME ) (WORK)

Enclose your check of $40.00/contestant payable to ~eophysical society of Houston (GSH) Bass Tournament. MAIL TO: JOE ALCAMO

4055 CHAPEL SQ. DRIVE SPRING, TEXAS 77388

3 1 Bulletin Houston Gfo loyc 1 1 S a i i r t y D r i e m b p r 1991

FEATURE

THE MINER'S CANARY: UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF EXTINCTION

by Niles Eldredge

Nearly everyone knows something about dinosaurs- including the obvious and important fact that this once diverse array of imposing creatures became extinct. The media has been full of reports that it might not have been a catastrophic collision between the earth and one or more comets that killed off the dinosaurs. Actually, the extinction that brought the Mesozoic Era ("Age of Reptiles") to a close 65 million years ago killed off thousands of species, on both land and sea. It was a truly global, mass extinction-and the evidence shows that it probably took over a million years to occur.

There have been six mass extinctions of roughly the magnitude o f the one that took out the dinosaurs. The greatest mass extinction of all forms the division between the Paleozoic ("Ancient Life") and Mesozoic ("Middle Life"). At the end of the Permian period, some 230 million years ago, the most devastating mass extinction (so far!) wiped out perhaps as many as 96% of all species, according to paleobiologist David Raup. Think of it - life nearly ceased to exist 230 million years ago. Yet some species squeaked through, and life diversified once again-only to be cut back in later extinction events. Evolution itself seems to hinge on extinctions cutting back on existing life forms, creating opportunity for new species to develop in their stead.

S o major extinctions are very real. But can they tell us anything about our own environmental dilemma, where species a re disappearing at the rate of one or more a day? In the old days, miners would take canaries down the adits with them. A sickly bird warned of noxious gases. Today, the ever-diminishing flights of migrating songbirds each spring serve as a large-scale analogue of those canaries; the environment seems to be degenerating at an alarming rate. Homo sapiens seem to be the central culprit in the modern extinction episode. Our chemical pollutants cause holes in the ozone layer and account for the greenhouse effect. .Yore subtly pervasive, our agriculturally-based mode of life underlies our settled existence, which in turn goes hand in glove with an ever-expanding human population. Agriculture is the main transformer of habitats. We have become divorced from direct involvement in local ecosystems; only a few tribes of hunter-gatherers remain integrated with local ecosystems in the fashion of our remote ancestors--and nearly all other species that have ever existed.

Yet the mass extinctions of the past happened during the last 570 million years-and the human lineage did not split off from apes until four or five million years ago. What caused those ancient extinctions? Evidence is mounting

Rcprinledfrom D~scovr re r ' s Club, T r a ~ ~ ' e l n o l o s /ram the Amencan Museum 01 h'atural History, Sprmy 1991.

Bullel~n Houston Geolog~cal Soc~ety. December 1991 32

Continued on page 33

that it was also the transformation of habitats, usually brought on by global climate change, usually a significant lowering of the eartll's surface temperature. The comets that shook the earth at the end of the Cretaceous were merely the coup de grace. The ieal culprit in the mass extinctions of the past were radical disruptions of habitats brought on by climatic change.

The moral of the story is clear: our own activities are mimicking, at a much quicker pace, the effects of natural climate change, change that has, from time to time, wreaked drastic effects on all living denizens of the earth. Whether it is the here and now, or the remote geologic past, extensive habitat destruction inevitably spells doom for the world's organisms. The difference now, of course, is that we, Homo sapiens, "man the wise" have it within our capacities to arrest the course that we have in all innocence taken over the last 10,000 years. Arrest it we can, and arrest it we must; if we do not, it won't be just spotted owls and snail darters that will face extinction, but all livingspecies, most certainly including ourselves.

O N THE MOVE

Mark R. Johnson has joined Tenneco Gas as staff geological engineer. Previously with the Gas Research Institute in Chicago.

Claude P. De Roster has joined Oil Data Inc. as Manager Russian Exploration Ventures. De Roster has over 25 years of international exploration experience with geophysical contractors and major oil companies.

Charles (Chuck) Andrews has joined Optimum and Tape Technology Services, Inc. (OTS) Houston, Texas, in a marketing affiliation, as a consultant.

Steve M. Tyrrell has joined Optimum and Tape Technology Services, Inc. (OTS), Houston, Texas. Steve will assist the Company's marketing organization in areas of Data Management and Pre-processing services.

Allen K. Cregg has been appointed Director of Integrated Studies, Geological Sciences, Core Laboratories, Dallas. Previously Senior Project Geologist with Core Laboratories in Dallas and Exploration Geologist with Shell Western E and P, Inc. in Houston.

Steven E. Thornhill has founded Terra Nova Research, Inc., a geo/environmental consulting business in Naperville, IL. He was previously staff geologist for Eichleay Engineers in their environmental department.

Mr. Thornhill's new business address is: 25W035 Keswick Lane, Naperville, IL 60540; Phone (708) 717-0633.

Marcus L. Countiss has joined Pogo Producing Company as senior geophysicist, Gulf of Mexico. He was formerly on contract to Texoil Company as consulting geophysicist.

Ken Nemeth has joined Browning Oil Co., Inc. in Dallas as a petroleum geologist effective August 1, 1991.

Howton 1330 Post Oak Boulev~ird

1 Iouston. 'TX 77056 (7 13) 623-6544

Denver Midland 14001 E. lliff IoW N. Big Spring

Suite 500 Suite 400 Aurora, CO 800 14 Midland, TX 79705

(303) 695-8778 (9 15) 684-0600

Corpora tlon

A Sub.1dl.r~ of PUBLIC SERVICE ENTERPRISE OROUP INCORPORA TED

OIL AND GAS EXPLORA TION & PRODUCTION

James B. Gresham VP Exploratlon

Thomas M. Deete? Mgr. Onshore (h1e~o~o:c ) Exploratlon

James D. McCuIIough Mgr. Offshore Ex~lorat lon

Michael S. Young Mgr. Onshore (Gulf Coast) Exploration

HOUSTON GEOLOGlCAL A UXlLIA R Y

The second 1991-92 Executive Board Meeting of the Houston Geological Auxiliary was held October 29 at the home of Suzanne Womack. Following the meeting a New Members Lunch was enjoyed.

It comes a s no surprise that the annual H G S Shrimp Peel October 11 was a great success. I would like to thank HGA volunteers Jeanne Cooley, Betty Hastings, Helen Hutchison, Cynthia Meeks, J o Ann Noll, Jean Richardson, Jerry Smith and Dianne Strong for their help at the ticket table.

A "Huge Thank You" to the Spouse Activities Commit- tee for the G C A G S Convention held in Houston October 16-18. The Committee, listed below, worked long and hard to produce entertaining events for the spouses.

CO-CHAIRMEN Mrs. James B. Bennett (Kathryn), HGA President Mrs. Stewart Folk (Mary) Mrs. Clyde Harrison (Marilyn) Mrs. James 0. Lewis (Gwinn)

HOSPITALITY CENTER AND CRAFTS Mrs. Ted Ashford (Bonnie) Mrs. J . Denny Bartell (Dixie) Mrs. Brian O'Brien (Sandra)

TOURS Mrs. Jon Champeny (Joyce) Mrs. Paul Hoffman (Tina)

LUNCHEON Mrs. Robert Pace (Geri) Mrs. Charles Trowbridge (Myrtis)

ENRICHMENT Mrs. Glenn Allen (Suzy)

INFORMATION CENTER Mrs. Scott Laurent (Carlita) Mrs. Chuck Noll ( Jo Ann)

PUBLICITY Mrs. Dan Smith (Laura)

Too numerous to mention are the many HGA volunteers who worked with the Committee and the HGS, but who also deserve thanks.

A Geo-Wives "Homecoming Party" was held October 30 at Las Alamedas Restaurant. It was a great time for visiting among present members of Geo-Wives and Geo- Wives Alumni and for hearing some interesting stories from Past Presidents.

The following was sent in by Nancy Anderson who along with Shirley Gordon will chair the December Social Event.

The Houston Geological Auxiliary will have a Christmas Luncheon o n Wednesday , December 4 th at T h e Houstonian. The Luncheon is scheduled to begin with a Greeting and Visiting Melodies performed by The Sugar and Spice Singers. In addition, we feel very fortunate to have

Dave Ward a s a guest speaker. Come join us for a fun and festive Holiday afternoon. Please call Shirley Gordon (494- 1338), Nancy Anderson (975-6388) or Joyce Champeny (465-2905) for reservations.

Again we ask all H G S members to take their Bulletin home to their spouses s o they may be informed of our HGA events. A membership form is provided below.

The membership form should be accompanied by a check in the amount of $15.00 and returned to the Membership Chairman, Mrs. Keith Hawkins at the address below.

Mrs. Keith Hawkins 2515 Anniston Houston, Texas 77080 (713) 462-2925

YEARBOOK INFORMATION

Address -

Home Telephone

H G S Member's Company

Bulletin Housfan Gralogtcal Soc~ety . December 1991 34

oust on Courses Public Courses in Houston / I W I

--

For ~ n o r . ~ in l immtion oil all of o u r training rc\our.ce\, o r to recei\e our 1092 catalog contact:

' IHRDC I I I K I K ' 1 llnuston Oric L t ' e \ r c l ~ ; ~ \ e C'cn~c'r 10777 W c \ t l i e ~ r ~ ~ c r . Suire 1080

I l cw \ ton . 7'X 770-12 ' l c l : ( 7 1 3 ) 7 x 2 - 4 0 0 7 Fax: (7131 782-0660

1 2 'l ii 1 5 M WELL- lads, ai:(, iua~ng porosity logs a n d core ana ly s~s on T a n y

S o i ~ t h ~ e s t Lou~s iana dlso M a ~ c Pass, Breton and Chandeleur Sound Areas

I n f ~ l e c a b ~ n e t s by T and R PENTON & PENTON

Box 308 DeQuincy, LA 70633 (31 8) 786-31 12

ULTRAMAR OIL t!k GAS LIMITED

16825 NORTACHASE DRIVE

HOUSTON, TEXAS 7 7060 (713) 874-0700

SEEKING WELL DEFINED, LOW TO MEDIUM RISKED ONSHORE: AND OFFSHOW

GULF COAST DRILLING PROSPECTS.

CONTACT: STEVE M. SMITH KANJIT K. DAS

(Americas) Inc

A Spirit of Discovering

The Inland Business Unit. Focused on exploration opportunities in the Mid-Continent, Permian Basin and Rocky Mountain areas.

Ron Meers Manager Exploration Inland Business Unit 5847 San Felipe, Suite 3600 (7 1 3) 780-5 1 02 Houston, Texas 77057

NEW MEMBERS

SEPTEMBER ACTIVE MEMBERS Calvin E. Allison Wellsite Geologist Guowrviirs Int~rnational P 0 Box 672325

G e r a r d o H. Garc ia Sr Geologist Atec Environmental Consultant:. 7600 W Tidwell #802 Houston. TX 77040 939 8888

Deborah A. Marot ta Staii Geophysicist Anioc o Prvduc tion C o P 0 Box 3092 Houston, TX 77253 556 2557

J a m e s C . Scheihing Exxon USA 800 Bell P3963 Houston, TX 77002 656 4506

J o s e p h M. Whited Hydi-oyeoloq~>t E K M S ~ ~ ~ ~ t t l w t . ~ t 16000 Mi,rnt~ri& DI Houstoii. TX 77071 496 9600

Houston. TX 77267 873 2052

J o h n Scot t M,iiicqing Directl~r P G A Ltd 75 Hawkvalley O r r s Maida Valr W A ~ i s t r ~ h 17

Lawrence R. Baria Ownrr Jur.1 Srcir, li Inc P 0 Box 997 Jdckson, MS 39205 i601 I 352 5562

J o h n D . Harding Oper Geologist Columbia Gas Developint~nt One Rlverway Houston. TX 77251 871-3634

Dennis J . McCormick Vice President

Alan D. Zick L~ivisloll G c ~ ~ l p l l ~ ~ l < 151

Aiiada kc) Prtr,iiei~iii 16801 G r i . ~ t ~ ~ p ( ~ i i i t f'k DI *200 Hwst i~r i . TX 77060 87.1 8 /34

Source Environmentdl Sciences 7010 NW 100 Dr 1-louston. TX 77092 S c o t t M. Shemwell

Dlr of Sales Westein Heniisph~re Sierra Geophysics 2700 Post Oak Blvd 41900 Houston, TX 77056 961 1077

Fred C . S impson 19219 Cdndlebrook Spring, TX 77388 353 1034

Jeffrey M. Skinner Ind. Grologist Jogler lnc. 9715 Derrinyton Houston, TX 77064

Hudson F. Biery Gec~k~gist 3900 Dunlavy #I Hous~on. 7-X 77006 522 3000

William W. Bland, I1 Presid~nt Hor~zontal Re Entry C o P 0 Bnx 2147 Houston. TX 77252 527-6693

J o h n P. Havens President Seismic Exchange 520 Post Oak Blvd k700 Houston, TX 77027 623 8300

J a m e s D. McGinty, J r . Geologist Ecology & Environment Inc 6440 Hillcroft k402 Houston, TX

NEW ASSOCIATE MEMBERS Diana A. Denison G ~ o t e c h Hardy Oil O G'is USA In< I600 Smith @I400

G e o r g e M. Morgan D~rector of Reserves Tenneco Gas P 0 . Box 61548

Prent i ss C. Havens Chairman of The Board Seismic Exchange Inc. 201 St Charles Ave. X4300 New Orleans. LA 70170 (504) 581-7153

Houston, TX 77208 757 45 14 Annet te Marshall Hack

Student Grol Shell Oil CCI P 0 BCIX 4252 Hw5ton TX 77210 870 3276

J a m e s C . Bloomquist Mgr Seismic Acquisitio & Mktg Reconnaissance Seismic Corp. 555 17th St. +I2400 Denver, C O 80202 (303) 298 1000

Char les A. O'Niell, Ill Cha~rman of The Board Laurel Operating Co. 1100 Louisiana 82640 Houston, TX 77002 651-1588

Edward F. Hawkinson Sr. Geologist Groundwater Technology 1213 W. Loon N. #I00

T e r r a n c e J . Stanislav Sr Geophysicist B H P Petroleum (Anier~cas) liic 5847 San Felipe k3600 Houston, TX 77057 780-5101

Houston, TX 77055 680-1515

Amy K. Wegman Geo Tei h Wintershdl 5 Post Oak Pnrk a800 Houston. TX 77027

William W. C a r p e n t e r Sales Manager Schlurnberger Well Services 5005 Mitchelldale #280 Houston, TX 77092 957 6600

Char les R. Oliver Special Projects Fina Oil & Chemical 1301 McKinney Houston, TX 77010 652-5926

Wilson H. Herrod District Explr Mgr. Marathon 011 Co. 5555 San Felipe Houston, TX 77253 296-2626

R e x D. S t o u t Assoc Geologist Samson Resources 2 West 2nd St. Tulsa, OK 74103 (918) 583 1791

Cather ine C . S t r o n g Sr. Geok~gist Placid 011 C o 3800 Thanksgiving Tower Dallas, TX 75201 (214) 880-1103

Diane G . Williams Student 505 Cypress Stdtlon Dr it4202 Houstoti. TX 77090 440 3441

William A. Clark Selsmic Broker Seismic Exchange 520 Post Oak Blvd. #700 Houston, TX 77027 623-8300

Rober t P a r k s Geologist Kelley 011 Corp 601 Jefferson #I100 Houston, TX 77002 652-5244

Alan L. Howard Sr Geologlst Brierley & Lyman 1600 Broddway #I125 Denver, C O 80202 (303) 832-9636

S t e p h e n M. Windle PI rsideiit S J R Hes(,urces P 0 Box 681626 Houston, TX 77268 580-0962

Bill Clay Consultant P O Box 52552 Lafayette, LA 70505 (318) 232-9371

Dave P a s t a Geologist Texaco P.O. Box 430 Bellawe, TX 77401 432-6763

J i m B o b J a c k s o n President Trace Oil & Gas Co. Inc 811 Dallas St. #922 Houston, TX 77002 757 7883

Chr is topher Tenney Sr . Research Geologist Exxon Production Research P.O. Box 2189, St 4292 Houston. 7-X 77252 965-4301

William D e a n Sr Geonhvsicist Bobby J . Pa t r ick

Exec Vice President Seismic Exchange 201 St. Charles Ave. #4300 New Orleans, LA 70170 (504) 581-7153

. Plains Resources Inc. 1600 Smith Houston, TX 77002

David C . Kasper Exploration Geologist Exxon USA 440 Benrnar, Km. 2205 Houston. TX 77210 591-5567

Michael D. Van Horn Sr . Project Geologist Br~tish Gas 1100 Louis~ana k2500 Houston, TX 77002 752 8274

P e t e r Dolan Managing D~rector Dolan & Associates 3 Old Lodge Place, St. Margaret Twl 1Rq United Kingdom

Paul M. Rady Chlef Geologist Barrett Resources Corp. 1125 17th St. #2400 Denver, C O 80202

H. Douglas Klemme President Geobas~ns Ltd. Box 1798, R r l Bordvllle, VT 05340 (802) 297~1821

F r a n k A. Van O v e r m e e r e n 2623 Forestbrook Dr. Spring, TX 77373 353-7651

Rober t J . W e e d e n Geologist Greenhill Petroleum 11490 Westheimer #200 Houston, TX 77077 589-8484

William S c o t t Whi te Geologlst E R M Southwest Inc. 16000 Memorial #200 Houston, TX 77079 496-9600

Allen E. Evans, J r . Geologist Exxon USA P O Box 4778 Houston, TX 77210 775~7380

Michael T. Reblin Geophysicist Consultant Unocal P.O. Box 4551 Houston, TX 77210 287~7639

8. Brick Robinson Vice Prestdent Southwestern Energy Productton 5600 N. May Ave #300 Oklahoma City, OK 73112 (405) 843 5539

L. Elizabeth Kormeier 10953 Belnhorn Houston, TX 77024 465-5228 Neil S. Fishman

Geolog~st U S Geologlcal Survey Box 25046 Denver, C O 80225 (303) 236 1644

Jeff B. Les ter Vice Pres~dent Seismic Exchange 520 Post Oak Blvd. #700 Houston, TX 77027 623-8300

Bul le t~n Houston Geologlcal Society December 1991

OCTOBER ACTIVE MEMBERS

Steve K. Anna G E O I C I ~ I C '11 & Ktdsrvr Mgr C ~ t a t l ~ n 011 bi Gi i s C u r p 8223 W i l l ~ ~ w Pldre Sou th K250 Hc~ust i~ri TX 77070 469 9664

David R. Flinn A d ~ m c e d Geologist M,rratlion 011 C o P 0 Box 3 I28 Houston, TX 77253 296 21 12

James F. Meacham Stdff Paieontolog~st Shell 011 CII P 0 Box 576 H o u s t m , TX 77096 723 9774

James C . Schlueter S r Geologist B H P Petroleum (Amerlc a s ) Inc 5847 San Fellpe #3600 Houston, TX 77057

Troy R . Thompson Geophysrc~st Exxon C o . USA 233 Benniar Houston. TX 77060 775 7403 James W. Schmoker

Geolog~s t U S Geolog~cdl Survey Mail S t o p 960 Denver. C O 80225 (303) 236~5794

George M. Smith, 111 h t e r p r e t a t ~ l m Specldhst Restech 3707 FM 1960 West n400 Houston. TX 77068 537 8300

Ted G . Apotria Asso<- Kesc~,rr< li Geolog~st Shell Ucvel(~prnent C o P O Box481 Hoirstc~li TX Y7001 215 7612

Roberto Garcia Prlnclpdl Expl Geol Phrlllps Petroleum C o . P 0 Box 1967 Houston. TX 77251 669-7505

Loren F. Phillips Hydroge~~logist J o n e s & Neuse Inc 1181 1 1 10 East Houston, TX 77029 450-1882

Roxie L Voran Geok~glsl Corrlgdn Consulting Inc P 0 Box 99 Seabrook TX 77586 474 3455

Lee B. Backsen Prrsldelil G e n c r d A ~ l ~ ~ i i t ~ ~ G d j C m s t 1300 Mil111 St -512 Houstr~i i . 1-X 77002 65 1 956 1

F. E. Hand S t . E x p Geologist E u o n CI I USA P 0 Box 4778 Houston. TX 77210 775 7556

Sach Prasad VII-e Preslderit Mlss~mer & Assor 222 Penbrigh~ Lh a205 Houston, TX 77090 872 9676

Virginia J . Waters Paieontologist Unocai P 0 Box 455 1 H I Y I ~ ~ o : ~ . TX 77210 28; 74.13

David N . Welch Sr S t ,~ f i Geologlst Uliioi-, Texas Petroleum F' 0 Box 2120 Houston. TX 77252 684 4 126

Michael A. Spanglcr Geologlral Advisor C o n o c ~ i Inc P 0. Box 2197 Houston. TX 77252 293 4145

Ronald G . Herdman Grdog i s t Exxon C I I USA 3616 Kirhniond H ~ ~ u s l o l i . TX 77046 965 7426

Edward Ramirez Mktg Mgr Ldtiri Arnerlcd G E C O Prdkld 1325 S D d r y Ashfl~rd Houston TX 77077 870 1880 Frederick Spiegelberg

4207 Brown~ng Houston, TX 77005 667-7644

William R. Stanton Geol Expl C o n o c o lnc 600 N Dairy Ashford Houston. TX 77079

Douglas H. Wilson S r Geolugrst Arco 011 & G a s C o 15375 Memorlal Houston. TX 77095 584 3022

Douglas A. Holmes I i idr~wndent 24 Hy,ic~i~t t i Dr C i ~ v ~ i i y t m , LA 70433 1504) 892 1930

T. L. Reed Aszo~ . Geol Eng Shell Western E & P 200 N Darry Ashford Rd Houston. TX 77079 870 3805 James W Holmes

G P O I I ) ~ I I I Newheld Erplc~rdtion 363 N S'ini Houston Pk

82020 Houston TX 77060 847 6039

NEW ASSOCIATE MEMBER

Arch M. Reid Profeswr

wy E Unlv of Hous~or i Derx r ~ f G e o s r ~ e r i c e s

Theresa Mary Stieger Geologist Pacific Enterprises 1200 17th S t "2200 Denver. C O 80202 (303) 629 8686

Houston. TX 77204 749 3871

Patricia A. Jonesi A c ~ t Executive Geoquest Technology C o r p 4605 Post O a k Place Dr

William E Hottman Stdf GEOI Eng Shell Offslirirt. 4 13 R ~ ~ z e d o w t i M,~ndeville LA 70448 (504) 626 0218

Kelly G . Robertson G e ~ p h ~ s i c ~ ~ t Seagull Energy C u r p 1001 F a n r r ~ ~ i 81700 H ~ ~ u s t o i i . TX 77002 95 1 4765

Emily L. Stoudt Mgr Reservoir Geology Texdco EPTD 3901 Briarpark Houstun. TX 77042 954 6036

Houston. TX 77027 627 7180

Raul Huerta E ~ p I o r ~ ~ t ~ o n Supv E x x m C O USA 233 Betini<~r Huirstoii. TX 77060

Carl D. Scharpf Geologist Amocu P r o d u c t ~ o ~ i C o P 0 Box 3092 H o ~ t s ~ o n . TX 77253 596 768 1

Frank W Thomas Project Geologlst W o o d w ~ d Clyde Consultants 7330 W e s t ~ i e w Dr Hou\ton, TX 77055 6889111

Timothy N. Diggs Ex~ilor~rt i i~r i C k v h g i s ~ Shell Wr\ti,rr~ E & P In<. 200 N Ddlry Asliir~rd H<~us to t i . TX 77079 870 2851

Hadi Alexander Koja Geol~igic~i l A s s o c ~ , ~ t e B H P P e t r ~ i l e w ~ i 5847 S'in Fellpe U4500 H o u s t ~ m . TX 77057

MARC B. EDWARDS a Geological Consult ing & Regional Studies a (713) 668-5088

M I O C E N E Southwest Louisiana Lower Miocene study in progress

Geotales, continued from p. 25 geological map of the Abruzzi National Park. It is a lot of map and only about $5.

Close to 1:00 o'clock we drove into Pescasseroli, birthplace of the philosopher Benedetto Croce, and center for the Abruzzi National Park. It is a small town in a basin flanked on either side by beech and fir woods. Looking for somewhere to lunch, we picked the Ristorante il Caminetto, a restaurant where we discovered too late, that one is wise to be careful what he samples, for the manager ran from table to table offering various dishes, and those we sampled not only remained on our table, but showed up on our bill.

On a sunny Sunday morning, we went to the ruins at Pompeii. We had breakfast in our hotel room -a red orange, a little tuna on hard bread, a couple of lemon cookies, half of a hard pear - and walked to the ruins well ahead of other tourists, and managed to maintain our lead all morning. By early afternoon we were overtaken and overrun at the amphitheater where a young Japanese man photographed McBride as he peered at a detail of the structure with his hand lens. A geologist's world swings wildly from mountains tens of miles in the distance to feldspar crystals at his fingertips magnified ten times by a hand lens, to photographs of algae in oil shale five thousand times enlarged. "Things as they are" may refer to things of vastly different scales.

Pompeii and Herculaneum and Stabiae were buried under ash over two days by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. There was a strong tremor that morning, and three feet of cinder soon covered the ground. Apparently the eruption was quiet enough at the start for many people to flee, but those who took cover indoors, probably to save posses- sions. were overcome because of darkness and a second

rain of ash and cinders and lava flows as the volcano became more violent. The town was finally buried under 20 to 23 feet of ash and lava. About 16,000 people died, many clutching bags of coins and jewels. Pompeii was completely forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1595.

For me the lingering presence of people in the streets and squares and stores and dwellings was the most arresting quality of the ruins. Because of their long burial, they seem to be there still, unliberated by the excavators. Not all of Pompeii has been excavated and some parts will never be, though excavation at Pompeii has been less difficult than at Herculaneum.

The streets of Pompeii are straight and intersect at right angles. They are sunk between raised pavements, interrupted at intervals by stone blocks which allows one to cross without stepping off the pavement, a welcome convenience when the streets become channels at flood times. Between the stepping stones there is room for chariot wheels.

We joined a short line of people in a sidestreet waiting to tour a former house of prostitution. The rooms were small, the halls narrow, and the wall art unappealing. The cries of pleasure must have been audible throughout.

A little more than two hundred years ago on March 2, 1787, J.W. Goethe started up Vesuvius. He had taken only fifty steps when the smoke became so thick he could hardly see his shoes. He pressed a handkerchief over his mouth, but it didn't help. His footing became unsteady "on the little lava chunks which the eruption had discharged." His guide disappeared. He thought it better to turn back and wait for a day with fewer clouds and less smoke. Four days later Goethe, the German painter Tischbein, and two

GAMMA SP E I - I _

The Use of New Concepts

Larry Meckel Harry Roberts r

Bulletin Houston Geologlcdl Soc~ety . December 1991 3 8

Sponsorea by.

The Continuing Education Committee of the

CORPUS CHRIST1 GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The CCGS is pleased to announce that an ADVANCED CORESCHOOL will be offered on Friday, December 6'h, 199 1, from aam until 4:30pm a t the Emerald Beach fioliday Inn. This school will cover eveiylli ir~g tha t can be done with and to a core from South Texas. Begining with a review of the basic nleasurenlenls that are made on a core sample, a conlprehensive discussion of the application of core information to the description of a reservoir will be presented. The discussion will include the limits that are inherent in typical core analysis data and lhe things [hat can be done to improve core salnple acquisition to inlprove [ha[ analysis. The school will irlclude a delailed look a t petrographic tools [hat are available Lo identify reservoir constituents. 'I'he uses of thin sections, x-ray defraction, infared slxclr-oscopy, and scanning clcclron nlicroscopy lo undcrstand a reservoir will be shown. A rcvicw of Ccrmation damage, ils eficcts and prevention will follow. lixanlplcs Croru the Frio, the Ycgua, the hliocene, the Lobo, and the Wilcox will be discussed. 'I'wo leu1 books, FUHDAMENTALS OF CORE AliALYSIS and PETl?OGLIB!?H JC -_dPPLICdI!C)_N_S-OR_.-RES~R_VOJE_EJPL_4RbTl[lH_44D EXPLOITATION, are included wiih the course. t i luncheon will be served.

Name:

39 Bull< t ~ r i Houstor> Gi,oloqi< .il Sot 8ili D l , i.n\i,~ r 1991

guides - "one elderly, one youngish, but both competent men" - climbed the cone and reached the crater mouth in an interval between two smalleruptions. They could not see anything because of clouds of steam from thousands of fissures. Standing at the "sharp edge of the monstrous abyss," they were suddenly shocked a s thunder shook the mountain and a terrific charge flew past them. The little party retreated, covered with ash . Happy to survive, they withdrew to the foot of the cone.

McBride and I and assorted young Italians, several grandmothers, and a group of German teenage students, climbed Vesuv~us on Sunday afternoon. It was a brilliant day, with a few high clouds over the Bay of Naples but none over the volcano. Down the slope we could see Pompeii. Down into the crater, after a short wait, we could see tiny puffs of steam rising. There was no thunder. There was little steam. Our survival had seemed more uncertain on the way up the volcano's flank when a green Fiat cut across our path on a switchback and careened perilously on up the road.

Near the top of Vesuvius is a little shop that sells postcards, small banners, candy, and warm soda. From the children running the shop, I bought a bottle of something called "Brillante." It was bitter. I drank little of the Brillante.

"Near the top of Vesuvius is a little shop that sells postcards, small banners, candy, and warm soda."

McBride found a card showing a Vesuvian eruption a s a yellow nuclear cloud, with successive jets of sulfurous steam rising to great heights over the summit of the strato- volcano. I looked at the faded cards in a rickety metal rack, but could see nothing interesting or attractive. I settled for a photograph of the last great eruption, which destroyed Massa and San Sebastian in 1944. Vesuvius has been quiet since, and is perhaps long overdue, if one believes in its periodicity. Certainly, in Vesuvius, volcanologists have the best long-term record of any volcano.

O n the way to Tivoli, east of Rome above the Roman Compagna, 1 began reading Sicilian Uncles by Leonardo Sciascia. I have not visited Sicily. I a m many books ahead of where I want to go.

Monday morning we sat on the porch outside the restaurant of the Motel River near Tivoli. I struggled with the Italian spor ts pages - pink sheets filled with soccer and motor racing. It was nearly nine when we checked out and drove to the Villa d'Este to s e e the fountains. We forgot our passports at the Motel River and had to drive back later to pick them up. O n a Monday in April more than 400 years ago, Montaigne came from Rome to dine at Tivoli. He wanted to see the famous palace and garden, which were incomplete and "not being continued by the present cardinal." He was struck by the sights and sounds of the fountains - the noise of cannon shots, of harquebus shots, and the songs of birds. He wandered through the "gushing of an infinity of jets of water" and by the head of pillars where "water comes out with great force, not upward but toward the pond."

I am also partial to waterfalls and fountains. The thing that first made them special for me was a trip to Yellowstone National Park with my parents, brother, and sister when I was a boy. We saw Grand Geyser and Old Faithful Geyser. And I tried to understand geyser action, the heating of water in the pipes, the rise in temperature toward the boiling point, the quiet flow of fountaining water a few feet above the vent, the lowering of the boiling point in the pipes, and the explosive change to steam and violent eruption. I remember the feel of the sinter around the geysers and the tremble of the earth a s Old Faithful erupted. I was delishted - when a change in the wind direction blew spray on me.

We drove through rain deep into the center of Sulmona, looking for a hotel in this medieval city. It was cold. The rain came in bursts and gusted along the meandering narrow streets off of the piazza. The gray sky and threatening storm brought back memories of days and evenings when I tended the dron herd on Gooseberrv Creek near Worland. the new lambs frightened and wet and bawling a s the rain became sleet blowing against red-brown and green badlands.

I saw a small hotel sign in the middle of the scarred street. A middle-aged woman with light blue~green hair said we could not stay where we had parked. I ~batched the car while McBride went to rent a room. A young man came out of the hotel, the Stella, to find us a parking place. He looked up and down the street , and walked over to a car parked near a municipal building. He recognized the car. He found the owner, got him to move it, and we pulled into a spot beside a dumpster in front of a church.

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W r walked through the center of Sulmona. Small shops there featured sugar-coated almonds - dark red, orange-pink, olive-brown, brilliant green, and blue-green leaves and fruit on tiny trees. I bought a pocket knife for my younger son and later sold it to him for a dime - insurance against the cutting of ou r friendship. I bought a picture for a writer fl-lend, a scene of mountains and a valley made with metal pieces.

For myself, I bought a cotton tennis shirt. It had an insignia that resembled a spotted star thistle - many small heads of pink-purple flowers and narrow leaves. The cotton was dyed pale olive but the minute I got home and put it on it began to change color. Dusky yellow spots appeared down the left side below the thistles. I s tarted to eat a peach and the juice dripped on the shirt, which broke out in moderate- yellow and yellowish-gray splotches, resembling the first stage of some rare tropical disease. Before I washed the shirt. pale greenish-yellow piping began to appear. It never recovered its original color and became whatever dull olive or yellow or brown the dye changed to after each washing or rain.

"In this town everything closes early," said the manager of TI-attoria d a Ginos. N o doubt this is correct , but it is true fol- 'ill the small towns and cities in the Apennines.

In 1933 an ear thquake wrecked the church of San Frances io della Scarpa , said McBride. We walked through the thln dark streets of Sulmona, the birthplaceof Ovid. The rain had stopped and the s t ree ts were empty. That Ovid preferred Rome to Sulmona is not surprising.

New s t r~ ic tu ra l a n d geochronologic studies provide strong support that crustal shortening due to plate convergence is the probable cause of much of Northern Apennines orogeny .... These studies indicate that crustal shortening associated with continental collision is not confiniW to the su ture zone (the former plate boundary) but is heterogeneously distributed throughout a broad zone cvtending for considerable distances into the corltinc.rit a1 crust of the collided plate.

- Roy Kligfield, 1979

Robert L. Folk, the sedimentary petrologist, may be stopping III Viterbo with students, said McBride. Given the route we were taking down the Apennines, then north again, Viterbo was roughly o n our way to Gubbio. We

decided t o look for Folk. We would not have visited Viterbo otherwise

Folk travels by train in Italy and stays at the least expensive hotels. We inquired a t several on the Via della Cava, a frighteningly crowded street. He was not registered. We decided to stay at the Albergo Roma, the most Folkian hotel we had seen. McBride described Folk to the young woman at the desk. She said she had not seen anyone like that for a long time. but she would tell us if h e checked in.

We walked to a small square for ice cream. The same people passed our table many times, middle-aged men walking arm in arm, young men laughing and shouting, a young woman pushing a stroller containing a fat baby who slept through the noise. The people of Viterbo did not appear prosperous. The square and streets were dirty. I later read in Montaigne's journal that he did not find a single gentleman among the inhabitants of this town in 1581 - "they are all laborers and merchants."

From an extravagant menu of desserts I chose a banana split. As pictured, it was beautiful. I thought of Tommy Schultz's drugstore in Worland and Saturday after- noons I spent there after I collected from my paper route. Tommy Schultz sold a caramel malt and a grilled-cheese sandwich for fifty-five cents in 1941. The delightful-appearing banana split in Viterbo sold for 6,000 lira, a little less than $5.00.

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The dinner wine: Est! Est! ! Est! ! ! In the morning we walked to the railway station. There

were few hotels. Beyond the station was a three-star hotel, but neither McBride nor Folk would stay there. I said Folk might - he had some money for research expenses. In the lobby three fashionably dressed young men in blue suits and red silk ties quickly surrounded us. They had no record of a Folk. They had not seen anyone who resembled him, certainly not lately, said one in rapid Italian. They did not really listen to McBride's description of Folk. They walked with us through the lobby to the street.

After dinner I stopped in the TV-room at our hotel. I began to watch a gangster melodrama - dead men and live men tossed by gangsters into car trunks in the middle of the night.

The TV-room was the popular room of the hotel and no one stayed in the adjoining bar for long. Perhaps it was more than a TV-room. Attractive young women met and left frequently with middle-aged men. The young women seemed to live at the hotel. One was waiting for her friend Jessica and every few minutes she walked into the lobby and called loudly for Jessica. Jessica had the look of one who had been influenced by Claudia Cardinale. They left together. Allother young woman came in carrying Camillo, a small gray monkey wearing green pants. Camillo talked, sucked the young woman's fingers, and swung on the frayed curtains. He picked up a cigarette butt from behind the old couch and chewed on that.

Approaching Gubbio in the early dfternoon - after stopping in Perugia to buy one of the fabled roast chickens.

whose spicy flavor McBride has been unable to duplicate in Austin, Texas - we pulled off for lunch on a low hill incarnadine with blooming poppies. The narrow dirt road followed a high contour on the hill; the poppies were neatly strung in an unbroken arc below the road ending at a red-roofed farmhouse. The cosmic collision hypothesis, s~igges ted by concentrations of iridium 100 times or more the crustal averages in claystone, at or near the Cretaceous- Cenozoic boundary near Gubbio and other places, was a hypothesis hard to hold in the mind while sitting in the sun, the brilliant flowers falling down the hill to a stripe of yellow earth. Though asteroids collide with Earth every 40 to 50 million years, cosmic catastrophes seem out of the question in Umbria.

We stopped a few minutes at the gorge where the first iridium anomaly was found. I s tood with one foot on the Cretaceous, the other on the Paleocene, earliest epoch of the Cenozoic. 1 sampled the red-brown siltstone at the boundary and McBride took my picture a s I gazed up- section toward Recent rock. If a large asteroid body - 6 to 9 miles in diameter - had hit the earth 66 million years ago as Alvarez, Alvarez, Asaro and Michael have postulated, the extinct dinosaur lines and those of many lesser creatures ended cataclysmically somewhere stratigraphically below my left little toe and above an abandoned brown sweat shirt on the bare hogback. The hypothesis: the asteroid collision threw up '3 gigantic dust cloud of astcroid ; ~ n d eal-ti? materials. the sun wcis o b s c ~ ~ t - ~ d f o ~ n)c, : l ths, plhotosr;:; thesis stopped, t h r earth was chdled. ,111d :he d o ~ ~ n 01- so dinosaur generd st111 Ilving - out of <~i-:out 240 genera t I i ' i+

Bullet~n Houston Geological Socjety December 1991 4 2

once existed in the Mesozoic - died. The last dinosaurs lived chlefly around the drying western interior seaway of North America.

When the cosmic collision hypothesis was first proposed to explain the demise of the dinosaurs, it appealed to a variety of minds. There are hundreds of hypotheses to account for this particular mass extinction, but this one is certainly favored by journalists.

Paleontologists were particularly skeptical of the cosmic collision, arguing that the Late Cretaceous extinctions were not catastrophic. Only a small percentage of all dinosaur genera were still alive in the latest Cretaceous. Ammonites, the best guide fossils for worldwide correlation, did not become extinct suddenly at the end of the Cretaceous. They merely became less diverse. In the middle L-ate Cretaceous there were about 100 genera of ammonites. By latest Cretaceous, only ten genera were left.

The climatic cooling following the hypothetical come- tary collision spared insects, birds, mammals, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, burrowing snakes, and the majority of plants in low and middle latitudes. "Whatever the cause of their demise, the roughly simultaneous and abrupt death of the phytoplankton that devastated the marine nutrient pyranlid, seems more than enough to account for other marlnc> txtmctions," said Preston Cloud.

Vve .;topped overnight at Bagno di Romagna on the way from Gubbio, spending the day in the field at localities of Contessa claystone. We were curious to see how deeply Tricl-tic-hr~~is had burrowed into the claystone, an excep- tionally t h ~ c k (45 feet) turbidite, termed a megaturbidite by the great subrnar~ne-fan authority, Franco Ricci Lucchi,

professor at the University of Bologna. Deposition of such thick fine-grained beds should have wiped out all local benthonic animals. We wondered if this had happened, and how quickly the area would be repopulated if it had been, and by what?

We had little trouble finding the Contessa localities, but much trouble in placing them on our map. The narrow Apennine roads sometimes defy location. Italians also rernove road signs, said McBride.

We forded a shallow river to reach one locality. There was a remarkable amount of trash along the banks and on the floodplain-unmatched sneakers, plastic bottles, torn and weathered pants and panties. O n the stream bed in mitl-channel bars, there were football-sized boulders, fringed by algae around the smooth bald pates of polished sandstone. Where a thin film of mud and algae covered the worn boulder tops, the rocks were slippery and treacherous to s tep on.

I cut my wrist breaking through thick brush above the floodplain. Talus covered the steep mountain apron and presented an unpassable route upward to the Contessa. McBride worked his way out a few yards onto the apron but turned back. I did not make it that far, falling behind in my little war with the brush, slowed down by constantly looking out for poisonous snakes. McBride never sees snakes. But I s ee them everywhere in the field: every swaying grass clump and rattling thistle makes me jump.

The Contessa megaturbidite here was laid down by deep ocean currents flowing north. All the other sediment, according to our reading o f the current directions from flute casts on the soles of the sandstone, came from the north.

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We found a great variety of trace fossils in sandstone, andin some claystone below the Contessa , but none in the Contessa sandstone. Chondrites occurs in the fine-grained Contessa , down to about 15 inches below the base of the hemipelagic bed, and Trichichnus to about 55 inches. A tourist bureau might bring people here to s e e the high smooth green hills, broken badly during mountain-making, and the narrow country roads like giant spider webs dropped o n a n unsuspecting elephant herd, but tourist bureaus seldom leave beaten tracks. In a light rain that came and left and came again, the beauty was in the soft green hills, the isolated belts of brown and gray rock, and the still sky.

M o d e m is a pleasant place but the most expensive one we stay in regularly. I approached Modena looking for the enchanted Farnese tower, the slender one built o n the broader one mentioned in Stendhal's novel The Char ter - house of Parma. But the tower never existed either in Modena or Parma.

Daniela Fontana and Rodolfo Gelmini, University of Modena, worked with us on the metamorphosed Triassic Verrucano sandstone in Tuscany. The four of u s stayed for a few days at Albinia, a small town that has not made its way into guidebooks o r into anyone's printed journal. With Gelmini driving and shouting at slower ca r s and people, we roared down the Tuscany coast to Ansedonia where Puccini may o r may not have composed part of Tosca. From the old wall, once we careened our way up to i t , we could look across the lagoon to Mount Argentario where the Verrucano crops out . McBride began to choke up and lose his volce. Aromatic plants - not the rocks - had made him suffer.

The Verrucano sandstone is sufficiently metamorphosed to he perplexing to sedimentary petrologists - our specialty - but t oo little metamorphosed to interest metamorphic petrologists. The Verrucano is a great sandstone sequence with few advocates.

Last LIII a delegation of Modena businessmen came t o Salt Lake C ~ t y for a visit, a sort of Chamber-of-Commerce tour. I was surprised to learn that Modena is a sister city to Salt Lake. The businessmen were studyingour way of doing things. I l o ~ , e Salt Lake a s much a s a native. I love the four seasons. the deer eating my tulips, Lazuli Bunting and Greentai led Towhee feeding from a pie pan on my deck, the lights at night, the lake, the broken mountains, a pale brown-

haired woman. But I cannot imagine that Modena has a lot to learn from us.

The Italians were small, trim, stylishly attired, and affable o n television. They did not even wince when one of the local announcers called their city Mow~deena.

Though McBride has told me many times, I cannot recall the kind of cars made in Modena. Maserati? Or perhaps it is Ferrari, o r both. Though Modena is a large commercial center in Emilia-Romagna, it does not look like a city with car factories. None of our friends in the geology department are experts on the business life. And none of them seems t o know that Mary of Modena, unlucky consort of J ames I1 of England, was born there. But they d o know where there is a good restaurant and fine Larnbrusco and the best sandstone outcrops in the Apennines.

" I cannot recall the kind of cars made in Modena. Maserati? Or perhaps it is Ferrari, or both."

We stopped the night in Fontanelice, our last night but one in Italy. W e came to take another look at Trichichnus, one of the smallest megascopic trace fossils. O n a light olive-gray claystone face Trichichnus resembled short burnt-gold hairs unaccountably standing on end, but poised to vanish when the sun struck the shadowed wall.

McBride has a keen eye for the tiny trace fossil. He first saw this one in basin-plain and outer fan-lobe strata of the Marnoso-arenacea Formation when we stopped in the canyon on the way to Castel del Rio, a town devastated in World War 11. I was crawling along looking a t burrows of a trace fossil ten times a s wide a s Trichichnus. McBride did not shout , though almost any paleontologist would have hollered.

The Trichichnus animal burrowed vertically down through silt and clay and then horizontally o n top of sand. It is most abundant in siltstone and claystone.

W e a te dinner in Fontanelice down by the river below the channel sandstone of the Marnoso-arenacea. The cafe offers a small menu, the river setting, dusk coming down the canyon wall, and low prices. A man on a white gelding, and his daughter astride a sleek bay, galloped up to the porch, tied the horses to a tree, and had a glass of wine. Refreshed, they rode off, shouting and whipping the horses into a gallop on the graveled road. Our friend Giani Zuffa - incoming

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president of the International Association of Sedimento- logists - said he did not know them or where they came from.

Back at Giani's house I mentioned how much I admired Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia and how much I believed Lawrence had learned about the people in such a short time. Francesco and Laura Dessi, friends of the Zuffas from Florence, began to speak excitedly. Francesco's father, Giuseppe, it seemed, had written the fine novel Paese D'Ombre. Paese D'Ombre evokes best, said Francesco, the people and the land of Sardinia. I promised to read the book.

"I was here informed of a stupid thing I had done in forgetting to visit a mountaintop ten miles this side of Loiano and two miles off the road, from which, in rainy or stormy weather and by night, you can see flames coming out to a very great height; and my informant told me that in the big upheavals there are sometimes disgorged little pieces of money with some figure or other," said Montaigne.

McBride and I also did a stupid thing at Loiano. Two years ago we stopped there to sample concretions, part of our long-term study of carbonate cementation. From the maps we carried, or the articles on the several formations, or lack of perspicacity, or some combination of these things, we sampled the wrong formation. Last year on our way north we stopped again and had an ice cream cone and found and sampled the rocks we had intended. We did not see flames or little pieces of money, nor did we when we were there before.

The hotels in Loiano had a poor reputation in Montaigne's time: "There are only two hostelries in this village, which are famous among all those in Italy for the treachery that is practiced on travelers in feeding them with fine promises of every sort of comfort before they set foot to the ground, and laughing at them when they have them at their mercy: about which there are popular proverbs." With that warning in mind we did not stay overnight. Instead we headed north to Pianoro where we measured the dimen- sions of concretions and took pieces for isotope and petrographic study. From previous samples we found that the quartz has been badly fractured during earthquakes and the mountain building that formed the northern Apennines. This is a complication. The original character- istics of the quartz and other minerals in the sandstone may not be determinable

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After Pianoro we were caught in a phantasmagoria of weekend traffic - people on their way back to Bologna on Sunday evening. At Bologna - still under the spell of Loiano - we missed the turn northwest onto the A1 to Salsomaggiore Termi.

Our delay in traffic and at Bologna meant we could not reach Milano, which I believe Earle was not keen to do anyway. He does not share Bob Folk's or Italo Calvino's high opinion of Milan and passes on half an excuse. Milan traffic or air pollution may suffice.

Salsomaggiore Termi was a welcome surprise. It was not in any of our books. It provides a watering place for those temporarily fleeing Milan and, in the inexpensive little hotels, a place for widows and aunts seeking resort gaiety at a low cost. We reached Salsomaggiore Termi a little after 7:00 p.m. It was 8:00 o'clock before we found a hotel, the Albergo Venezia, and then we were at its back door. It took ten minutes for the proprietor to find us as we knocked and rang the bell.

We took a ritual stroll along the piazza, sampled the ice cream, which was above the low Loiano standard, and discussed the wisdom of field studies in geology. We began to plan the next year's field work in Italy, certain we would be there again, unable to leave the broken rocks alone.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I value the many suggestions on this piece by Patricia

Cowley and Craig Sanders. Jeanette Stubbe and Nancy Stroud did the word processing.

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REFERENCES: Aivarez, V J . , 1973, The application of plate tectonics to the

Mediterranean region: in lmplicatioms of Continental Drijt to the Earth Sciences, Academic Press, London, v. 2, p. 893-908.

Alvarez, L., Alvarez, W., Asaro, F., and Michel, H.V., 1980, Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary ex- tinclion: Science, v. 208, p. 1095-1108.

Cloud, Preston, 1988, Oasis in Space: Earth History from the Beginning: W.W. Norton and Company, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110, XVIII plus 508 P.

Goethe, J .W. , 1982, Italian Journey (1786-1788): originally entitled Italienische Reise, North Point Press, San Francisco, California, 507 p.

Kiersch, G.A. , 1964, Vaiont Reservoir disaster: Civil Engine- ering, v. 34, p. 32-39.

Kligfield, Roy, 1979, The Northern Apennines a s a collisional orogen: American Journal of Sclence, v. 279, p. 676-691.

Montaigne. Michel, 1983, Montaigne's Travel Journal: North Point Press, San Francisco, California, 175 p.

Montale, Eugenio, 1976, Poet in Our Time: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd, 18 Brewer Street , London WIR 4AS, 79 p.

Silone, Ignazio, 1933, Fontamara: J .M. Dent and Sons Ltd., Aldine House, 33 Welbeck Street , London W1M 8LX, 180 p.

Silone, Ignazio, 1937, Bread a n d Wine: Signet Classic, New American Library, New York, New York 10019, paperback, IX plus 286 p.

M. DANE ("DUKE") PICARD-Biographical Sketch

As readers of his essays know, M. Dane Picard is from Worland, Wyoming, was once the point guard for the Worland Warriors, and admires Rachmaninoff immensely. Like George Washington and Henry David Thoreau, Picard was a surveyor, locating the first two wells on Worland Dome, and work~ng on several earthen dams and many sugarbeet fields in Washakie County. In 1950, following an undistingu~shed tour in the U.S. Navy, he earned a B.S. degree in geology from the University of Wyoming.

T h r o ~ ~ g h the 1950s Picard worked as a petroleum geologist in the Rocky Mountain area. Exhilarated from night-school teaching at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, he decided to become a teacher. In 1960, he went to Princeton University where he earned a Ph.D., completing a dissertation on normal and reversed magnetic intervals in the Triassic Chugwater Group in Wyoming. After Princeton he taught for five years at the University of Nebraska. Since 1968 he has been professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah. He has supervised 40 students that completed advanced degrees: 6 dissertations and 34 M.S. theses. Though Picard considers himself to be a person with few political skills, he has been president of the Rocky Mountain Section of AAPG, general chairman of a national meeting of the GSA, a delegate for eight years to the AAPG House of Delegates, president of the SEPM, and president of the National Association of Geology Teachers. He has spoken frequently, particularly on lacustrine rocks, to geologists in Australia, South Africa, England, Spain, the universities of Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and s o on. He has published extensively -

books, papers, abstracts, book review, essays, poetry. In the AAPG Bulletin alone, he has published 26 articles, 44 book reviews, and 41 abstracts. His 1975 book Grit and Clay drew good reviews, a s did Sedimentary Structures of Ephemeral Streams, a 1973 book co-authored with Lee R. High, J r .

Professor Picard has four children: Marion, finishing a Ph.D. in economics at the University of California, San Diego; Jacqueline, about to embark on motherhood and an MBA at the University of Oregon, Eugene; Dane, finishing an MFA at Cal Arts, Valencia, California; and Bennet, in his junior year of philosophy at the University of Utah. Readers of his essays have met Picard's Samoyed, Nina, and his black, cat , Sherman.

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National Rig Count: October 12-796; Year Ago-1,064 Gulf of Mexico Rig Count: 107

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Enron Oil & Gas will drill an 11,400' Lobo test 1 3/4 miles northeast of Lobo production ("Lobo 3" and "Lobo 6" sands) at Mujeres Creek Field in eastern Webb County. The #1 Hughes Ranch is 4500' northeast of the dry Chapman #1 Hughes (TD 11,300') which logged both "Lobo 3" and "Lobo 6" sands. Lower Wilcox structure here is irregular southeast dip.

Santa Fe Energy has completed its #1 State Tract 256 as a new Frio gas discovery about !/2 mile southeast of Frio production at Nuarc Field in extreme southwestern Aransas County. Directionally drilled from a surface location on Redfish Bay State Tract 255, the new producer tested 3,759 MCFGPD and 97 BCPD through perfs 9456- 9604'(0A) with an AOF of 15,200 MCFGPD. At the middle Frio horizon the discovery spots on local southwest dip and is fault-separated from Frio-productive Traylor Island Field to the northeast and Nuarc Field to the northwest.

A 4000' lower Edwards test has been staked by Pantano Energy in north-central Bastrop County, 4 34, miles southeast of Austin Chalk, Buda and Georgetown oil production at Sayersville Field. The #1 Cates is about smile west of two dry lower Edwards tests, the Plains #1 Coffield and Energy Exploration's #1 Oak Hill. Lower Edwards structure is regional southeast dip.

Bass Enterprises Production will evaluate Yegua sands at the #1 Hawes, located in far western Wharton County, about 1/2 mile northeast of several Frio gas producers. The wildcat, projected to 9000', is a north offset to the Jones- O'Brien #1 Hawes 111, a 5600' unsuccessful Frio attempt, and is a mile northwest of closest Yegua production in

Menefee Field. At the Vicksburg horizon the new test spots on east dip, downthrown and in close proximity to a down- to-the-basin fault.

A 13,500' Wilcox test has been scheduled by Maersk Energy in south-central Montgomery County, one mile east of Wilcox oil production at Magnolia's #1 Chase National Bank, discovery well for Tamina Field. The #1 M&M Minerals is about 3800' northeast of the Moran #1 M&M Minerals, D&A at 16,537' after encountering the objective Wilcox sands between 8830-13,500'. At the top Wilcox horizon the wildcat spots on southeast dip off the Tamina Field structure, upthrown and in close proximity to a down-to-the-coast fault.

In northeastern Montgomery County, Tortuga Interests will drill a 6300' Yegua wildcat about 1 1, miles north of Wilcox gas production at Conroe North Field. The #1 Qualline Brothers is one mile northwest of an 11,555'dry hole (Moran g2-A Hutchings-Sealy) which logged the entire Yegua section between 4640-6100'. Nearest Yegua production is 5 '4 miles southwest (and on strike) at Rosner- Anderson Field. Top Yegua structure here is regional southeast dip with strong local nosing.

South Louisiana Exchange Oil & Gas will drill 4200' Miocene test, the

#1 Harvey, Sr., 3 miles southeast of Lake Rosemound Field in northeastern West Feliciana Parish. Shallow gas has recently been discovered in massive Miocene and Oligocene sands at Wilson and Northeast Spillman Fields, with average initial production at NE Spillman being 388 MCFGPD. and 250 MCFGPD at Wilson. Wilcox structure is regional southwest dip with broad local nosing

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Looking for prospects to drill or ideas to

put together. Texas RRC Districts 2,3 & 5.

Barry Weaver Bill Elliott

Bulletln Houston Grologra l Soclery December 1991 48

MESOZOIC TREND East Texas

American Cascade Energy has opened Trojan Horse Field at 1 1 s P1 Taber-Honsinger, a new Woodbine gas discovery in northeastern Leon County, about 3 4 mile northwest of the operator's #1 Astromovich, field opener for Wooden Horse Field (also Woodbine). Flow rate was 4.206 MCFGPD, 3 BCPD and 7 BWPD through perfs 5981- 96'. At the2 base Austin Chalk horizon the discovery spots on a srnali southeast plunging nose and updip to Wooden Horse Fkld production.

South Arkansas Cobra Oil & Gas will drill a 9500' Smackover wildcat

in southwestern Union County, about 2 miles southwest of upper Smcickover production at Stateline Field, discovered last year. The #1 Buckworth is one mile southeast of the Murphy c l Chester which cored and tested the upper Smackover with no significant shows. However, cores in the lower Smackover contained oil and gas odor and oil stain in fractures within dense, hard limestone. At the top Smackowr horizon the new venture spots on the southwest flank of a broad south plunging nose, with the operator probably targeting a stratigraphic trap similar to that controllin~j production at Stateline Field farther updip.

Alabama Two new discoveries have been reported at opposite

ends of Escambia County, Alabama. In the northwestern

corner of the county, Phillips Petroleum has completed a Smackover oil discovery 4 miles west of the town of Huxford. The #1 ATlC 12-14 flowed 98 BOPD and 108 MCFGPD through perfs 14,710-750'. Top Smackover structure here is moderate southwest dip off a small structural closure.

In far eastern Escambia County, Spooner Petroleum has opened Hickory Ridge Field at its #1 Edwards, a Frisco City Sand (Haynesville) oil discovery 3 1, miles north of the community of Bradley, and 4 !:, miles west of Frisco City oil production at West Falco Field in adjoining Covington County. Flow rate was 117 BOPD from 12,834-846'. At the top Smackover horizon the new producer spots on a small structural closure, and within '9; mile of five dry holes drilled by Houston Oil & Minerals and Spooner between 1979 and 1989.

GULF OF MEXICO Provided by Dwight's, a SOFTSEARCH Company

Kerr-McGee and Phillips Petroleum have drilled a successful horizontal well in the Breton Sound area, Block 21, offshore southeastern Louisiana. The new producer was completed at 5300' in the RA Sand with an 800-foot horizontal length. Production rate in Sentember was 1,250 BOPD and 722 MCFGPD.

Marathon Oil has announced the successful completion of a well on South Pass Block 89. The 15-X was drilled to TI1 17,850' at a bottom hole location 4085' southeast of the surface location on South Pass Block 86. Analysis of

SEQUENCE STRATIGRAPHIC GRID (DIP & S TRIKE SECTIONS)

$3.500 per well

I Each Phase Fea tu res : I u J e t a i l e d Wel l R e p o r t s o Sequence S t r a t i q r a p h i c C r o s s - S e c t i o n w i t h Condensed \, H igh R e s o l u t i o n B i o s t r a t i g r a p h y and P a l e o b a t h m e t r y C h e c k l i s t s S e c t i o n s , Sequence Boundar ies . Systems T r a c t s ( B a s i n J Sequence S t r a t i g r a p h y A n a l y s ~ s C h a r t f e a t u r ~ n q well l o g . age, F l o o r Fan. S lope Fan, P r o g r a d i n g Complex, T r a n s g r e s s i v e

systems t r a c t s , p a l e o b a t h y n e t r y and h i s t o g r a m s and H i g h Stand Systems T r a c t s ) ' ' R i o s t r a t i g r a p h i c C r o s s - S e c t i o n (Phases 1 & 11) w i t h 25 B e n t h i c o I d e n t i f i c a t i o n of u p t o 1 4 Condensed S e c t i o n s ( 5 . 8 t o 0 .46 m . y . )

and P l a n k t o n i c F o r a m l n i f e r a l and Ca lcareous Nannofoss i l " t o p s w o A l l Sequences and Systems T r a c t s a r e c o r r e l a t e d w i t h Wel l from a p p r o x i m a t e l y 10.000 f e e t o f s e c t i o n p e r w e l l Logs and Se iwn lc Record S e c t i o n s by Dr . P e t e r R. V a i l

F o r f u r t h e r i n f o r m a t i o n , p l e a s e c o n t a c t :

W a l t e r W. W o r n a r d t , Ph.D. 5755 B o n h a n e , X406 H o u s t o n , T e x a s 77036 MICRO-STRAT INC. Phone: 713-977-2120 Fax: 713-977-7684 M I C ~ O ~ P U ) O ~ I O I ~ Y

logs and cores has confirmed the presence of 248' of hydrocarbon pay on the northern portion of South Pass Block 89. Development is planned, with production scheduled to commence in mid-1992.

Also on South Pass Block 89, OKC Limited Partner- ship has reported that its recently concluded 89-15, located 1800' south of the Block 86 lease line, encountered approximately 300' of net pay between 16,808-17,676'. Wells 86-1, 86-2 and 86-3 have previously been drilled on Block 86, with 86-1 testing 9.18 MMCFGPD and 1,266 BCPD (1988), and 86-2 flowing 3,744 BOPD and 4.29 MMCFGPD (1990).

INTERNATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS Provided by PETROCONSULTANTS, Foreign Scouting Division, Geneva, Switzerland

LATIN AMERICA Argentina

Trend has announced a gas discovery at its wildcat Parva Negra x-1, the company's first well in the Chihuidos permit, Neuquen Basin. Drill s tem tests in the Upper Hauterivian Avile Member of the Agrio Formation produced up to 2,100 MCFGPD from an interval above 1000 m (328 1').

Colombia Ecopetrol has made another Putumayo Basin dis-

covery at its wildcat Cencella 1. The well was drilled to TD 9620' before testing an unspecified formation which yielded 1,614 BOPD (28.6" API) and 156 MCFGPD. The reservoir is probably the Upper Albian to Santonian Villeta Formation, which is the reservoir at the 1989 discovery

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The potential of the southern Apennine Range was confirmed at the recent successful appraisal, Tempa Rossa 2d, drilled by Total Mineraria on the Tempa Rossa structure. Location is 32 km (20 miles) southeast of Potenza and 1 miles south of the discovery well, Tempa Rossa 1, drilled by Fina in 1989 in the adjoining Laurenzana permit. The new producer was suspended at 5037 m (16,526') after testing 1,366 BOPD (17" API) from a 778'gross interval below 4800 m (15,749'), and 2,172 BOPD (17" API) from an 806' zone below 4479 m (14,696'). The Upper Cretaceous carbonate reservoir lies on a structural high on the Apulian Platform.

Turkey In the Thrace Basin, state company TPAO suspen-

ded Seyman 2 a s a gas discovery. The 4790' wildcat is located in exploration license 2777, District I, less than a kilometer from Seyman 1, a 4951' wildcat drilled and abandoned, reportedly dry, by TPAO in 1969.

In the Southeast Turkey Basin, TPAO suspended wildcat Ikizce 1 a s a n oil discovery in exploration license 2774, District XII. No test data for the 7517' well have been released. Location is 1.9 miles north of TPAO's 1990 Tokaris 2 oil discovery.

Netherlands (Offshore) Placid has made a gas discovery at its N/7-2 wildcat on

the boundary with territorial waters and a short distance east of NAM's Ameland gas field, currently under development. Test results have not been disclosed.

Bulletin Houston Geologca l Society December 1991

United Kingdom (Offshore) Hamilton's 110/13-5 wildcat has discovered a new gas

structure in the northern part of the block, flowing 70,000 and 80,000 MCFGPD respectively from two unidentified intervals. Mobil's 48/17a-11, a short distance north of Lancelot and on a separate structure, tested up to 19,500 MCFGPD from the Rotliegendes.

AFRICA Egypt

Shell has made a gas/condensate discovery in its Western Desert concession of Matruh in the Northern Egypt Basin. Wildcat Matruh 1-1 flowed 22,000 MCFGPD and 2,200 BCPD from the Jurassic Khatatba Formation above 4757 m (15,608'). Inasmuch as this new find is in an area with several undeveloped gas fields (Khalda's Tarek Field and Phillips' oil and gas discoveries around Khepri), the construction of a new gas pipeline from the western part of the Western Desert to the Nile Delta area is being considered. Namibia

OPIC has spudded wildcat Opo 1, its first well in the Etosha license. Location is on the Opononoe Deep prospect north of the Etosha wildlife park, about 300 km (186 miles) NNE of Walvis Bay. Planned TD is about 4000 m (13,124'). One stratigraphic test and three dry holes were drilled in the area by Etosha Petroleum in 1970.

NEAR EAST Iran (Offshore)

Khazar 1, the first of three deep tests to be drilled in the Iranian sector of the Caspian Sea is reported to be a discovery. Strong gas kicks, overpresscred intervals and an

PETROLEUM GEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS LTD

MESOZOIC SOURCE ROCKS OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA A reassessment based on analysis by

Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography

+ The report will provide a comprehensive re-evaluation of the Mesozoic source rock potential of the offshore basins of Western Australia. It will be based on new analyses of the identified source rock horizons, particularly by Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography, supplemented by data available in the public domain.

+ The potential source rocks of Western Australia contain considerable amounts of terrestrially derived material. Available data, particularly Rock-Eval, may seriously underestimate the oil potential of the sequences. Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography provides a more accurate analytical technique for assessing the source type. + Delivery of the new data to purchasers will begin in 1991. The final report will be completed by mid 1992. + Contact: Petroleum Geological Analysis Limited John Scott (Australia) Grenville LUM (UK) Tel: 61 9 454 5201 Tel: 44 734 594802 Fax: 61 9 454 5522 Fax: 44 734 575074 Saker Geological Services Gus Wilson Tel: (713) 781 3945 Fax: (713) 784 0638

unexpected section of salt and anhydrite were encountered in the Tertiary uphole section of Khazar 1. The test then penetrated the Cretaceous, encountering gas shows, lost circulation at about 4220 m (13,846'), and finally bottomed at TD 5570 m (18,275').

Oman PDO has made an oil discovery at its wildcat Ghazara

1, located on the eastern flank of the South Oman Salt Basin, 4.3 miles southeast of the Karim West oil field. Karim West produces from glacio-fluviatile sandstones of Permian and Ordovician age. Ghazara 1 reached a TD of 1821 m (5975').

FAR EAST Brunei (Offshore)

Elf announced a significant oil and gas discovery in PMA Area B license in the Baram Delta province. Wildcat Jamalulalam Barat 1 tested an aggregate of 1,710 BOPD , 29,300 MCFGPD and 566 BCPD from two of several Neogene reservoirs.

India (Offshore) State company ONGC announced a discovery in the

offshore Bombay Basin. Wildcat Ratnagiri B-C1 tested an average 1,685 BOPD from 1991-98m (6532-55') in the lower part of the Eocene Bassein limestone, the main producing horizon in the Heera, Panna and Bassein fields. The new find is about 1 '/z miles north of the R-13 oil accumulation.

Indonesia (Onshore) On South Sumatra, Asamera has suspended wildcat

Dayung 1, in its Corridor Block, as a gas well. TD was 1871 m (6139'), probably in the Paleogene Lemat Formation. Best test flowed 8,700 MCFGPD from the interval 1491- 1560 m (4892-5118'), with additional tests planned.

On Irian Jaya, PertamiaITrend found oil and gas at wildcat SE-0-1X in the Kepala Burung Block. Tests of two zones yielded an aggregate 3,568 BOPD (32" API) and 4,000 MCFGPD from a pay in the Miocene Kais Formation at a depth of about 2895 m (9498'). Further testing was underway at the end of August. The new find is just under two miles northwest of the Salawati Field.

Pakistan State company OGDC reported an oil discovery in the

Wassi EL license in the lndus Basin. Wildcat Meyen lsmail 1 tested 1,320 BOPD (44" API) and 780 MCFGPD from the interval 2178-2220 m (7146-7284') in the Cretaceous Lower Goru Formation.

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Centfmd Petroleum Gealoglsl 2925 Cen~fted Professional Geologist 4851

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Bulietln Houston Geologlral S o c ~ e t y December 1991

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Contact: Pat Martin Exploration Manager (713) 759-0661

1212 Main, Suite 422, Houston, T x 77002

5 5 Bu l l e t~n Houston GeoIog~cdl So< FIV Deceniber 1991

"Support those who support our Society. "

I ADVERTISERS AAPG Agip Petroleum Amerada Hess Corp. Amoco Production Company Arkla Exploration Ashland Exploration Co. BHP Petroleum Bureau of Economic Geology Cabot Oil & Gas Crosbie-Macomber Daniel Geophysical, Inc. Dolan & Associates EDC Edelman, Percival and Associates Marc 6. Edwards Enron David Fontaine Forney & McCombs Four Star Printing Co. GECO Geomap Company

Geotrack International GM A Halliburton Logging Service Horizon Exploration Company IHRDC Integrated Energy Incorporated Lauritzen Energy, Inc. LCT Kerr McGee McCord Exploration Co. The McKenzie Companies Micro-Strat lnc. Norcen Explorer. Inc. Oil & Gas Directory Omni Laboratories Paleo Control, Inc. (21 Paleo Data, Inc. Pel Tex Oil Company Penton & Penton Petroleum Information Corporation Petroleum Geological Analysis Ltd.

Petroleum Testing Service, Inc. Petrophysical Properties, Inc. Petrophysics. Inc. Professional Seminar Group Reconnaissance Seismic Corp. Res Tech Houston Sandefer Oil & Gas Inc. SL International Seismograph Service Seitel, Inc. Subsurface Consultants & Associates Sinclair Exploration Company Tech-Reprographics Tejas-Luciana Exploration Company Transco Exploration & Production Co. Ultramar Oil & Gas Limited UMC Petroleum Corporation Union Texas Petroleum United States Geological Survey Wentworth Energy Inc. Western Atlas

INTEGRATED ENERGY INCORPORATED

1200 Travis Suite 325

Houston, Texas 77002 Tel. (713) 650-8414

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Actively Seeking well Documented drilling, production and enhanced

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How to Litigate Effectively: I

Communicafe I Call for FREE brochure: David Fonfaine (7 1 3) 783-0020 Licensed Geologist

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5 5 0 WestLake Park Blvd., Suite 3 5 0

Houston, Texas 7 7 0 7 9

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EDELMAN, PERCNAL and ASSOCIATES BIOSTRATIGRAPHERS

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Open Hole Logging Cased Hole Logging and Perforating Rotary Sidewall Coring Wellsite Seismic Services

1415 Louisiana, Suite 2300 - \ Houston, Texas 77002 Houston Sales 650-1994 1

- -

B u l l e t ~ n Houston G e o l o g ~ ~ a l Soclety December 1991 56

"Support those who support OUT Society."

1 GEOMAP serving the petroleum industry for 30 years and now with. . . COMPANY

I Quulity datir is n n w - an accident: it is always the result of high intention, siticew efSoi-t. intelligent dii-ection and skillfir1 execution.

Seitel. Inc. represents the wise -- - choice of many alternatives.

The Regional Seismic Acquisition Specialists

(713) 558-1990

Bulletin Houston Geological Society 71 71 HARWIN, SUITE 314

HOUSTON, TEXAS 77036-21 9 0

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1991 bulletin houston geological society · advert~sing ..... bruce falkenstein. amoco production...

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