OCEANOGRAPHY 1961 — PHASE 3 193 



And parenthetically, I might remark that I am in sympathy with 

 what I take to be the aims of this committee, Mr, Chairman, to in- 

 crease the accountability to the Congress in the area of oceanography. 



I was present at the hearings yesterday, and I must say that per- 

 sonally, as a citizen and as a taxpayer, I am in favor of what you 

 gentlemen are driving at. Self -evaluation is not a good way to tell 

 whether or not you have got a good program. And the only testimony 

 T hear as to whether or not it is a good program comes from the people 

 who are carrying out the program. 



All right; so much for the background of why we are interested, 

 liet us get down to the real purpose of our being here, which is to tell 

 you something about the capabilities of the geophysical industry. 



Our plan is this : That I will tell you something about the capabili- 

 ties of the oil industry side of the geophysical part, and the other 

 members of the subcommittee will tell you something about the capa- 

 bilities of the contractors and the instrument manufacturers. 



Perhaps you will better understand the capability that we have 

 developed if you understand our incentives for developing it. 



We have a trem.endous incentive for developing a rather complete 

 capability in the field of earth science, particularly in geophysics. As 

 you mentioned in your introductory remarks, it is economic. 



The motivation, you might say, is one of the strongest motivations 

 known to man, self-preservation. This is just as true of a corporation 

 as it is of an individual. If we do not do a darned good job of search- 

 ing for the raw materials that are our lifeblood, we are not going to 

 survive. It is this strong motivation for self-preservation that has 

 caused us to develop a very strong capability in the field of earth 

 sciences. 



There are rather large sums of money at stake here. To indicate 

 what I mean, I would like to give you an example or two. 



For the current fiscal year, Standard Oil Co. of California's budget 

 for oil exploration amounts to some $100 million, from one company. 

 Of this total of $100 million, some $12 to $15 million is an expenditure 

 for geophysical data gathering and analysis. The other expenses are 

 for geological work, for land, for exploratory drilling. 



To support this $12 to $15 million of geophysical work, we, that is, 

 the California Research Corp., which is the research subsidiary of 

 Standard of California, have an annual R. & D. budget in geophysics 

 of a little over a million dollars. 



Now the industry total — I do not have any firm figures for that, 

 "but we are by no means the biggest oil company. There are half a 

 dozen others that are bigger. My guess is that the industry overall 

 totals perhaps 10 to 20 times ours. So that this means something on 

 the order of $200 to $300 million per year for surveys in the field of 

 oil exploration. This includes on land as well as offshore. And $10 

 to $20 million for research and development. 



Over the last 10 years, the oil industry has operated domestically, 

 that is to say in North America, an average of 500 seismographic crews, 

 who go out and gather seismic data, by the echo-sounding method. 

 This means an expenditure of approximately $150 million a year, 

 just for seismic data gathering. 



We will hear some more details from this later from our colleagues 

 on the committee. I just wanted to give you a brief outline. 



