PETROLEUM GEOLOGY — LEVOKSEN 233 



tive understand what he was trying to do, now he finds a more tolerant 

 and understanding attitude in the executive departments, which leaves 

 him more freedom to concentrate on his geology without the necessity 

 of promoting it or selling it to someone with no conception of its 

 philosophy or method. Nothing cools the enthusiasm of a scientist 

 as quickly as an unsympathetic superior, and this handicap, which has 

 prevailed in too many instances, is rapidly being lifted to the ultimate 

 good of both the industry and the science. 



Not only is the geologist going into executive positions within the 

 larger units of the industry, but he is also going into the oil business 

 for himself in continually increasing numbers. He may call him- 

 self a consulting geologist, but more often than not he is buying and 

 selling oil and gas leases, drilling wildcat wells, and has oil or gas 

 production of his own. The study of geology and its method of 

 thinking is good training for anyone entering the oil industry in 

 a similar manner to the study of law, which has long been considered 

 a good background for entry into business in general. 



DeGolyer * has pointed out another significant change in the work 

 of the petroleum geologist in that he is becoming more and more a 

 coordinator of a variety of geologic data, all of which are obtained 

 by experts and turned over to him for interpretation. This con- 

 trasts strongly with the older methods, where the geologist went into 

 the field himself to get the data, and returning to his office, made his 

 interpretation. Then, one geologist did all of the geological work 

 incident to the drilling of a wildcat well ; now there may be a dozen 

 or more specialists, each securing data of various kinds, which are 

 put together by the office geologist into a coherent and related whole. 

 Thus today the exploration problem is complex and the high costs 

 prior to drilling a wildcat well may even approach the cost of the 

 well itself. If one is to succeed at this kind of interpretive geology, 

 the need for the best possible training is obvious. 



One of the healthy signs in petroleum geology, therefore, is the 

 interest that is being shown in the college curricula of geology depart- 

 ments. This was aptly put by a petroleum geologist the other day 

 when he said, in discussing one of his college professors, "I worship 

 the very ground he walks on, but he is teaching 10 years behind the 

 times. Something ought to be done about it." 



Well, something is being done about it. After studying all of the 

 college catalogs of geology curricula and after sending out many 

 questionnaires, a committee of interested geologists appointed by 

 Henry Ley, President of the American Association of Petroleum 



* DeGolyer, E., Future position of petroleum geology in the oil industry. Bull. Amer. 

 Assoc. Petrol. Geol., vol. 24, pp. 1389-1S99, August 1940. 



