Abstract: Legislation and "Tomorrow's Oil from Today's Provinces"

Arthur O. Spaulding

Henry M. Johnson, elected president of the United States in 1980, has just received congressional approval to spend $500 billion to explore for and produce oil and gas from the last remaining frontier for oil discovery in the country: the outer continental shelf. With a broad smile and undisguised optimism, he calls in Secretary of Interior Larry Lichen to give him instructions as to how to spend these funds.

"Larry, we have got to find more oil at once. Just as I've said for years, the oil industry has done a rotten job despite their incessant complaints that all we had to give them was a competitive environment and the absence of regulations and controls, and they could supply the country with all the fuel we need. Now get out there and show the people of the United States that we're better than the Post Office. And, speaking of environments, I know you won't befoul ours because of your brilliant record of preserving them over the course of the past 10 years. Larry, I have complete faith in you."

Jack R. Jameson, career geologist for ONEX (that stands for No. 1 in Exploration) Oil Company until it was forced out of business by the U.S. Oil and Gas Service after dismemberment at the hands of Congress and the administration, philosophically reflected upon his circumstances: "For 10 years I spent every waking moment telling people how necessary oil and gas were, how and where industry could find them at no environmental sacrifice, and look what happened--no more depletion, no more IDC's, no more profits, then no more industry. Now to find oil, I have to go to Mr. Lichen and tell him about convolution and unconformities. And if I drill a dry hole, I have to explain to him and maybe the entire Congress what went wrong."

But otherwise, look at the security I've got working for the Service. With people starving in the streets and freezing to death for lack of cheap fuel, the Feds will pay me more than I ever got at ONEX. And besides, you can't find an unemployed geologist. In fact, it is hard to find a geologist at all."

Legislation and "Tomorrow's Oil from Today's Provinces"? In petroleum, there is no tomorrow on the basis of today's legislation.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90976©1976 AAPG-SEPM-SEG Pacific Section Meeting, San Francisco, California