CAUSES OF FAILURE IN SEARCH FOR OIL 601 



(/) Personal carelessness of the geologist. 

 {g) Jumping to conclusions. 

 {h) Undue optimism. 

 {%) Faulty instructions. 



(2) Locations not on sufficiently high portions of the dome or anti- 

 cline, due to 



{a) Fear of getting gas. 



{b) Inadequate investigations. 



(c) Improbability of securing desired leases. 



(3) Abnormal sand conditions. 



(4) Absence of knowledge regarding salt water. 



(5) Unconformities. 



(6) "Convergence/' or lack of parallelism of the sands not being 

 understood. 



(7) Inclined axes of certain anticlines. 



(8) Sharpness of certain anticlines. 



(9) Rising and plunging axes. 



(10) Lack of suitable sands. 



(11) Lack of suitable cover. 



(12) Lack of source of supply. 



(13) Past leakage, or imperfect understanding of relation between 

 magnitude of folding and age or metamorphism of the formations. 



(14) Lack of judgment on the part of the geologist. 



It is the intention of tlie writer to take up in a later report these 

 causes of failure, analyze them, and endeavor to derive some conclusion 

 which will eliminate the failure, so far as possible, in geological studies 

 of oil properties. 



Structural "Habits'' Peculiar to Individual Fields 



In any stated field, oil and gas exist after certain methods of "habit," 

 which seem to prevail generally throughout that field. This is because, 

 while the substances adhere in their relations to structural principles, 

 there are modifying conditions which cause certain peculiarities to run 

 entirely through the field. For instance, the central Ohio fields owe their 

 monoclinal structure to the Cincinnati uplift; they are too far from the 

 Allegheny Mountains to be subject to the prominent folds produced in 

 Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but they all show certain tendencies 

 toward anticlinal structure, as exhibited by monoclinal noses and ravines 

 and terraces and by changes in rate of dip in short distances. 



