Last week, many of our readers participated in IMAGE in Houston, an international conference focused on discovery and innovation. As we look forward into the future, we also want to acknowledge our past. This week’s newsletter focuses on a bit of petroleum history.
On a personal note, this edition marks my 1-year anniversary of writing GeoLifestyle, and I have enjoyed every minute. You can read past editions in the Archive.
Now, let’s step back into the 1950s.
Sharon Lyon
Editor, GeoLifestyle
The Restless Earth
Cockrell, Alan. The Restless Earth. WordCrafts Press, 2022
The Restless Earth, written by geologist Alan Cockrell and published byWordCrafts Press, is a story based on History: The Citronelle Oil Field in Alabama was discovered in 1955 by an independent oil geologist. He managed to get a rig and start drilling. Oil was discovered, and the field grew to more than 500 wells. It was Alabama’s first and only giant oil field, and still produces today.
The Plot: Protagonist Ethan Bonner, an independent petroleum geologist, maps a prospect using Gulf Oil data. Gulf has drilled a dry hole to 7,012 feet, but Ethan’s prospect is deeper, targeting a disjointed seismic reflection with a subtle arch. His objective is the Lower Cretaceous beds that produce 80 miles west in Mississippi.
The Difficulties: The moneymen turn him away, saying his science is bad; saying he is too far away from oil, calling him a fool. His peers, smelling the stench of failure, distance themselves from him.
His bills and worries mount. His drilling rig breaks down almost daily. His crew, tired of working for nothing, threatens to walk away.
Figures wait in the shadows, scheming. Eager, desperate faces of farmers, merchants, and townspeople stand aside, praying his good luck will be theirs.
One woman who believes him says what he can’t seem to fathom—that his real discovery will likely not be at the bottom of his hole.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Alan Cockrell this week:
Q:Alan, I just loved your book, and it brought back so many memories. At the beginning, you write about Ethan, in the 1950s, using seismic data and contouring a map. I did this by hand in the 1980s as well. What is your experience in the petroleum business?
A: I started out five years removed from my BS degree by a tour in the USAF. That got me a veteran’s nudge into a regulatory agency as a “staff geologist.” It was mostly a paper-pushing job. The upside was they let me attend graduate classes. But I never finished the graduate work. I put out some feelers and landed an invitation to join with an independent out of Oklahoma City working their Jackson, Mississippi, field office. The work was enthralling. We explored the Interior Salt Basin and the Black Warrior Basin. I loved creating structure maps, isopachs, cross-sections, and interpreting seismic. After a dozen of the best years of my life, the industry crashed and the company folded. I dusted off my USAF wings and became an airline pilot. But I never lost my love for geology.
Q:What made you interested in the Citronelle Field?
A: I was giving a talk on my 2005 non-fiction book, Drilling Ahead: The Quest for Oil in the Deep South. Afterwards, an attendee came up and told me he thought the story of Citronelle would make a great novel. I pondered for a long time and finally started on what would be the most satisfying writing I had done since I began in 1995. It still is.
Q:I’ve found in my own writing that explaining scientific concepts in fiction is difficult. Your book has quite a few geological and drilling terms. What techniques did you use to explain these clearly to your readers?
A: I avoided a common mistake in fiction writing: directly lecturing the reader. I sought to explain terms and concepts by embedding them in dialogue. An example is when Laura, a middle-school teacher, persuades Ethan to talk to her class about geology. The kids learn the basics from Ethan’s simple explanations, but they carry home with them concepts of Deep Time that don’t sit well with their parents. This causes trouble for Ethan and distracts him; his prospect is only half sold and has already spudded. Ethan’s discussions with his alcoholic landman and crusty driller open many doors to do a little “educatin’” without making the reader aware of being educated.
Q:Why do you think it is important for us to remember petroleum history?
A: Much, if not most, of the history and rich lore of this business is verbal. I interviewed about 50 people, and that wasn’t enough. History is ultimately not about numbers and dates; it’s about people, and that is what my books focus on.
Q: What primary takeaway from The Restless Earth do you want the reader to remember?
A: When the century turned, the oil industry turned with it, never to go back. Horizontal drilling and shale busting changed the landscape of prospecting. I hope the business, the industry, and especially the geo-professionals of today and the future, never forget their heritage.
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W. M. Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park, Baldwyn, Mississippi
Darrell D. Barnes/Google
From the Citronelle Field, we’ll follow the Mississippi Embayment 200 miles northward to explore the Lower Cretaceous on our own. At the W. M. Browning Cretaceous Fossil Park, near Baldwyn, Mississippi, you can dig for Cretaceous fossils and keep what you find.
Geology: The area is within the Mississippi Embayment, a trough extending from southern Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. Filled with Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments, the embayment is the northward extension of the Gulf Coastal Plain.
In Mississippi, late Cretaceous beds are exposed only in the northeastern part of the state. The beds dip westward beneath younger strata due to the subsidence of the embayment.
The area was beneath shallow Gulf waters in the tropical Cretaceous environment. Deltaic sands interbedded with marine sediments, with some beds grading laterally into one another.
The late Cretaceous formations from oldest to youngest are the Tuscaloosa, Eutaw, Mooreville, Coffee Sand, Demopolis, Ripley, Prairie Bluff, and Owl Creek.
Fossils at the W. M. Browning Park are found in the Late Cretaceous (75-million-year-old) base of the Demopolis Formation (also called the Demopolis Chalk), which lies unconformably above the deltaic Coffee Sand.
Paleontology: Common fossils include shark teeth, stingray dental plates, bony fish teeth and vertebrae, ammonites, mollusks, brachiopods, and bryozoans.
Turtle bones and shells, crocodile teeth, and mosasaur bones and teeth have been found.
The tooth of a theropod dinosaur and teeth of a hadrosaur were discovered nearby.
Visiting Tips: The park is free and open to the public.
Fossil hunting is done in the creek. Wear shoes that can get wet. The streambed is full of large concretions. Bring shovels and sifters.
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