At Sea

One of the world's great oil pools lies in the underwater tidelands of the Gulf of Mexico. To tap it, Humble Oil & Refining Co., a Standard Oil Co. (NJ.) subsidiary, went 7 1/2 miles out to sea, built an island of steel and started drilling through the Gulf floor. Last week, Humble announced that it had brought in its first big tidelands well, a strike that produced 887 barrels of oil a day before it was choked back.

To find it, Humble put its wildcat crews in boats and pioneered some radically new techniques. Its geophysicists cruised the Gulf with seismographs and gravity meters to look for salt dome structures (where salt domes are, there is usually oil), finally spotted one in the waters off Grand Isle, La. (see map, NATIONAL AFFAIRS). An oceanographer who helped plan the Normandy invasion also helped Humble. He gathered the weather data for a stormproof drilling platform that took over 5,000,000 pounds of steel to build and whose pilings were sunk 197 feet into the Gulf bottom.

To supply its 54-man drilling force, Humble shipped food and tools in barges and radar-guided Navy surplus craft from the mainland and the Grand Isle base. After three months of drilling, the Humble men struck oil-bearing sand at 7,000 ft., but plugged back the well when it proved inadequate for commercial exploitation. On the next attempt they struck pay oil at 8,665 ft. Humble is drilling another well, hopes to sink another before year's end. Total investment to date: $2 million.

Humble's big problem now is shipping the oil to the mainland. At present, the oil is going in barges, but the company will probably build a 7 1/2-mile platform-to-maimand pipeline for it. Oilmen think the Gulf pool should ultimately yield at least 4 billion barrels.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.