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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2017
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Ever-optimistic
oilmen hit dry holes
in Pacifi c Northwest
Companies spend fortunes
sinking ludicrously
expensive holes on
educated guesswork
By MATT WINTERS
EO Media Group
P
etroleum geology is anything but straightfor-
ward. The earth is so ancient — and has so often
fl opped over on itself, weathered down, thrust
up, broken apart, erupted, iced over — that fi nding
where petroleum is trapped can seem like a three-way
marriage between advanced science, black magic and
dumb luck.
Even so, the fi nancial rewards are so fantastical,
companies spend fortunes sinking ludicrously expen-
sive holes based on educated guesswork. In 2015, for
example, Royal Dutch Shell abandoned a disappointing
$8 billion quest for crude in the U.S. Arctic.
The association of oil with areas where carbon-rich
sediments have settled for ages is strong enough that
it makes sense to sink exploratory wells wherever riv-
ers join oceans. Look around the world and you’ll fi nd
ample examples near the mouths of great rivers where
oil is found in abundance. The Gulf of Mexico, into
which the Mississippi has fl owed for eons, brims with
oil. The Niger River Delta in West Africa is one giant
pincushion and refi nery.
So you’d think someone would take a chance and
plop down some oil-exploration money around the
Columbia River estuary. And you’d be right — they
have, more than once. As you can tell from the absence
of derricks, pumps and pipelines, they weren’t a success.
Long Beach Oil
Retired businessman David Aase told me a few
weeks ago of how exciting it was for him and high
school classmates when an oil rig set up operations near
the shoreline in Long Beach, Washington, in June 1953.
Long Beach Oil Co. erected a 132-foot steel drilling
tower on what was then an undeveloped part of South
10th Street — now Sid Snyder Avenue. To place this in
a modern context, it likely would have been near the
World Kite Museum.
Derrick-men from Vernal, Utah, and Casper, Wyo-
ming, operated the rig, while three Washington rough-
necks ran the drilling equipment. (Roughneck started as
a term for 19th century traveling carnival workers but
was transferred to drillers by the 1930s in recognition of
their tough, dirty, transient work.)
“Local folks were quite amused this week watching
workers trot here and there, high above the earth, while
erecting the derrick tower,” the Chinook Observer
reported June 26, 1953.
Excitement grew, as by July 17 the well reached
1,915 feet “and still going through shale and sandy
deposits which look mighty favorable toward a strike.
Light showings of oil were evident for some 600 feet
of drilling …. We are defi nitely ‘over the trap,’ and so
long as the earth’s formation continues as favorable as
present, we shall keep drilling to 6,500 feet,” the com-
pany president said.
But they pulled the pipe out upon reaching 2,103
feet — 4/10ths of a mile — at a cost of $70,000, after
tests punctured their high spirits. The fi rm fi rst intended
to move north up the beach a couple of miles and try
again, but by August, the show was packed up and hit
the road for parts unknown.
The Astoria shale
This was by no means the fi rst effort to fi nd oil in our
vicinity. A 1914 report by the U.S. Geological Survey
found , “A few attempts to obtain oil have been made,
eight wells having been drilled in northwestern Ore-
gon, all of which are dry, but one of which, near Dallas,
yielded a small fl ow of gas.” However, the USGS said,
these wells weren’t based on valid geology and did not
“afford a fair test of the ground.”
A geological formation on both sides of the Colum-
bia estuary — the Astoria shale — contains many
marine fossil species, which might be seen as a poten-
tial indicator of oil. But the USGS noted: “Sandstone
dikes are very abundant. Probably not less than a hun-
dred may be seen in Astoria …. One would think, there-
fore, that if much free oil had ever existed in the shale
or underlying sandstone it would have escaped through
the sandstone dikes, ( which) is adverse to the belief
that there are underground oil reservoirs in the Asto-
ria region.”
This didn’t discourage efforts to fi nd oil. Besides
the 1953 drilling in Long Beach, accounts also exist of
oil exploration at McGowan, Washington, just oppo-
site Astoria, in 1928-30. Local historian Joan Mann
reported in a 1994 Sou’wester article that Union Oil
Co. of California reached a depth of 500 feet in March
1929, “plagued with breaking lines and bits as it forced
through hard volcanic rock.” Work reached 3,800 feet
in June 1930, fi nding natural gas and traces of oil. The
effort ceased at 4,300 feet and a cost of $200,000. After
infl ation, this would amount to something like $2.8 mil-
lion today.
So why isn’t there much oil here? I took my last col-
lege geology course in about 1979, then switched to
studying oil and gas law, before deciding being a small-
town newspaperman was much more entertaining —
even if also less lucrative. But I feel safe in hypothe-
sizing that violent earthquakes at this intersection of
crustal plates are unfavorable for forming and retain-
ing petroleum. Could be, too, that the Columbia’s car-
bon-rich sediments are carried far off into the deep
ocean hereabouts, where the continental shelf drops
steeply into the Pacifi c. Maybe some future technology
will exploit oil out in the deep blue sea, but hopefully
only after we’ve learned how to do so without endan-
gering the global climate and our nearby environment.
Local heroes
Geologists and others involved in oil, gas and min-
eral development were among my childhood heroes.
Dad’s geologist friend Walt Roberts was an endlessly
fascinating fount of fi rst hand stories about battling
giant anacondas in the trackless Columbian swamps,
while Mom’s cousin Wally Bell graduated from the
famous Colorado School of Mines before gallivanting
around Venezuela for years back when it was a func-
tioning country on an upward trajectory.
Though our families were in distinctly different
political camps, another geologist who made a power-
ful impression on me was John Wold, Wyoming’s for-
mer congressman, who died last month at 100. A trib-
ute by one of his friends made me smile — “probably
the most hands-on, enthusiastic, optimistic explorer
of things to do with energy.” You couldn’t meet Wold
without a bit of his sparkling and friendly attitude rub-
bing off. He was endlessly generous with his time,
attention and money.
One of my favorite fi ctional oilmen was portrayed by
Burt Lancaster in the 1983 movie “Local Hero.” (Peter
Capaldi, the current Doctor Who on BBC, also has an
important supporting role in the fi lm.) Although more
curmudgeonly than most of the ever-hopeful geologists
I’ve gotten to know, Lancaster’s character Felix Happer
in some ways epitomizes the profession’s “get it done”
drive. This isn’t an approach that dovetails well with
the modern regulatory framework, but it is an American
archetype, one we can still celebrate.
I’m glad oil exploration didn’t succeed here —
this place might be unrecognizable. But we ought to
be mindful of the ever-hopeful men who chased their
dreams down expensive boreholes around our beautiful
estuary. Dreams, even some we don’t share, are more
precious than oil.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the Chinook
Observer and Coast River Business Journal.
File Photos
A front page of the Chinook Obs
erver from nearly 64 years
ago reports one of the final atte
mpts to find oil near the mouth
of the Columbia River.
Oil exploration
across the
Columbia from
Astoria in the
late 1920s
consumed
the modern
equivalent of
$2.8 million on a
mostly dry hole
nearly a mile
deep.