NATURE 



525 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1904. 



PETROLEVU. 

 The Oil Fields uj Russia, and the Russian Petroleum 

 Industry. By A. Beeby Thompson, A.M.I.M.E. 

 Pp. xviii + 504; plates and maps. (London: Crosby 

 Lockwood and Son, 1904.) Price 3/. 35. net. 



THE aspect of this large and attractive, well printed, 

 and freely illustrated addition to the enormous 

 literature of the Russian oil fields (which extends to 

 many hundreds of books and articles) excites hopes of 

 a comprehensive summary of the principal facts dis- 

 persed through the unwieldy mass of record, and (.t a 

 formulation of the laws of which those facts are the 

 tangible expression. Such a summary is a great 

 desideratum, for, apart from the polyglot condition of 

 the recorded information, and the difficulty of access 

 to the original sources in the files of Caucasian journals 

 and unpublished records, the subject is one demanding 

 the conjoint forces of the geologist, the chemist, and 

 the physicist, whilst the past has shown that con- 

 clusions reached by the study of any of these branches 

 separately may directly traverse those based on other 

 categories of data. 



The title-page sets forth the aim of the work as a 

 practical handbook on the exploration, exploitation, 

 and management of Russian oil properties, with 

 collateral considerations on the origin of the petroleum 

 and the modes of its utilisation as fuel. The statistics 

 of production constitute Appendix A (pp. 399-432), and 

 forty-five pages of official regulations form Appendix B, 

 which is followed by some useful tables of physical and 

 other data, and a few pages treating of the latest 

 developments in exploration and utilisation. 



The value of the work lies principally in its technical 

 element, based on several years' practical experience 

 in the region, whilst it merits attention, with or with- 

 ojt acceptance, on the scientific side, which is dealt 

 with somewhat too theoretically. In regard to 

 geological matter the treatise is disappointing, as we 

 have an excess of general lithological detail, but the 

 scantiest stratigraphical information. Fuller indica- 

 tions in this respect, with less and better founded 

 speculation as to primzeval conditions of deposition, 

 would have made the book of higher utility in regard 

 to its first stated aim, that of assistance in exploration 

 for oil. For this accurate details of composition and 

 structure (including correlation from point to point) 

 are essential, and such are regrettably absent from the 

 work under consideration. 



\\'e must demur, at the outset, to the alleged con- 

 formability of the Aralo-Caspian surface-beds to the 

 oil-bearing Oligocene and Lower Miocene strata, a 

 view which is probably the cause of the author's re- 

 jection of the anticlinal structure as the predominant 

 factor in concentrating the petroleum along the axes 

 of flexure. The assumption (p. 60) of the existence of 

 synclines equally rich with the anticlines is one not 

 warranted by the results of operations in any oil field 

 of known structure, and therefore where, as in the 

 Baku fields, the structure of the petroliferous series is 

 masked by an unconfiirmable superincumbent mass, 

 NO. 1822, VOL. 70] 



the flexures in which are discordant in strike -with 

 those of the subjacent rocks, positive evidence of pro- 

 ductive synclinals may legitimately be demanded in 

 place of mere hypothetical surmise of the existence of 

 such beyond the depth accessible by the drill. The 

 natural exudations, mud volcanoes, and gas discharges 

 are all situated on anticlinal axes, exposed by denuda- 

 tion of the Quaternary cover. 



\\'e cannot, for the simplest of chronological reasons, 

 accept the suggestion of the oleaginous quality of the 

 sturgeon and other Caspian fish as having any bear- 

 ing whatever on the origin of the Caucasian petroleum 

 (p. 64), and no evidence is advanced of kinship of the 

 Oligocene with the existing ichthyofauna. (It is not 

 imagined, per contra, that caviare is a modified 

 bitumen.) 



Briefly reviewing various theories as to the origin 

 of petroleum, and noting the possibility of its being of 

 different source in separate areas, the author wholly 

 rejects, on adequate geological grounds, the hypothesis 

 of inorganic origin ; whilst from the scarcity in the 

 series of the remains either of fibrous vegetation or 

 of diatoms, he doubts the contribution, from the 

 vegetable kingdom, of much, if any, of the enormous 

 bulk of Caucasian petroleum. The large percentage 

 of carbonate and phosphate of lime in the rocks points, 

 on the other hand, to abundant animal life, but the 

 author, gratuitously assuming the seolian character of 

 the oil sands, gives, we think, too much rein to imagin- 

 ation in invoking periodical sandstorms from hypo- 

 thetical deserts to effect sudden extinction of these 

 deep-sea organisms over limited areas, and their 

 entombment in similarly limited patches of the de- 

 posited sand, now converted into " pockets " charged 

 with the resulting petroleum. The belief in catas- 

 trophic hecatombs of this nature is some three gener- 

 ations out of date, and can only be regarded as a super- 

 stition. Not only is the abnormally lenticular structure 

 of the oil sands hypothetical, the data obtained by 

 boring being equally explicable by reference to fault- 

 ing, but sandstorms that should, for a few score yards 

 only, saturate a deep sea to the degree of suffocation 

 of its denizens, must have been evoked by the Genius 

 of Destruction from Arabian or other Oriental deserts, 

 and the existence of such deserts in Oligocene times, 

 when continuous sea united the Atlantic and Pacific 

 Oceans in these latitudes, is more than doubtful. 



In dealing with the Grosny field, and the isolated 

 spots in Daghestan that have yielded evidence of oil, 

 the author mentions the difference in lithological 

 character between these and the Baku fields, but with- 

 out the explanatory information that these northern 

 fields are of a different geological series, the Lower 

 Miocene, whereas most, if not all, the Baku oil comes 

 from Oligocene beds, though traces of Miocene occur 

 in the southern part of the province. 



The term " excitement " is applied by the author in 

 a new technical sense to designate the disturbance of 

 the equilibrium of a region by the rapid discharge, 

 through borings, of fluids and discrete solids previously 

 under great pressure, and the effect of the sudden 

 arrests and renewals of the flow owing to temporary 

 chokings of the exit. The widespread vibrations pro- 



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