210 OCEANOGRAPHY 19 61 — PHASE 3 



An oil company does not really care whether the survey in the 

 Persian Gulf agrees with the one in the Bay of Fundy or the waters 

 off Trinidad, or something of the sort. 



Mr. DiNGELL. No ; but the scientist concerned with that same survey 

 for another purpose might be very vitally concerned, might he not? 



Mr. Savit. Yes. 



Mr. Miller. You might go out and determine the height of a moun- 

 tain or the height of a plane ; but if you know the height of the plane 

 above sea level and the height of the mountain above sea level, you 

 can refer it to something el se. 



Mr. Savit. This particular factor is especially important in the field 

 of the earth's gravitational field. 



Mr. DiNGELL. I am very interested in the way you as an industry 

 plot these figures in these charts that you presented to us today. Are 

 you implying that when a survey is made by, let us say, scientists 

 attached to a university or an institute of some kind, they do not do 

 it in this way ? 



Mr. Savit. They do not. There are several reasons. One, of course, 

 they have not had the funds or inclination to develop the system. This 

 is not a cheap system. There is probably a quarter of a million dollars 

 worth of equipment, in addition to the ships and nontechnical equip- 

 ment, that went into producing these particular things. 



Secondly, the universities have not had the problem of having to 

 survey in detail very large areas. They are going out and doing 

 reconnaissance work. Generally there are several graduate students 

 aboard the ships who can do the manual work, and the results can be 

 plotted in a reasonable amount of time, sometimes within a month or 

 two after the end of the cruise. 



Mr, DiNGELL. I note that you plot a cross-section of the ocean's 

 floor. Is that correct ? 



Mr. Savit. One of those is a cross-section ; yes. 



Mr. DiNGELL. Your dealings with your clients are principally with 

 the oil companies ? Is that correct ? 



Mr, Savit. That is correct. 



Mr. DiNGELL. In order to explore this thing fairly, would I be fair 

 in assuming that you generally have a pretty good idea of what you 

 are looking for when you go out ? 



Mr, Savit. In a sense, we do. That is, we are looking for certain 

 types of irregularities or anomalies, if you wish, in the earth beneath 

 the ocean floor. 



Mr. DiNGELL. At economically feasible depths for drilling and so 



Mr. Savit. For drilling, yes. Generally, the depths that we handle 

 considerably exceed the economic bounds for the present, because at 

 very small additional cost we can get additional data which may be 

 useful 5 years from now when the oil companies can do a little better 

 on depths. 



Mr, DiNGELL, All right. Let us talk, now, in terms of when the 

 universities and the scientific institutions and so forth go out. Do 

 they know what they are looking for, exactly, when they go ? 



Mr. Savit. Generally, in the reconnaissance-type surveys that have 

 been done to date, they do not. This is pure research. 



