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National Geographic : 1989 Aug
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enemy artillery batteries, seismology is today the most important tool employed by the oil explorers, barring actual drilling. The heart of seismic prospecting, Laing explained, is comparing the time it takes man made shock waves, such as those from an ex plosion of dynamite, to show up at different locations on the surface. Not so very long ago seismologists made their surveys by comparing data from just a handful of locations. These days, though, to repeat, the easy oil has been found. Almost all the fields that remain are offshore, or thought to be small, or deep, or small and deep, or hid den under complicated geologic features that play games with seismologists. Certain rock formations can bounce a shock wave back and forth within themselves, like dice shaken in a cup, before releasing it to the surface. A geophysicist listening to the echoes might infer a deep structure, while the wily culprit was in fact lying right under his feet. For a demonstration of the uses of advanced seismology in oil exploration, Laing passed me on to Bob Briant, a manager for Halliburton Geophysical Services, Inc. Briant was at the moment conducting a "shoot" in east-central Sumatra, in about 40 square miles of swampy floodplain surrounded by thick, second growth, lowland rain forest. Years ago, Briant told me, an oil explorer curious about the same territory would have "This is the most remote spot I've ever worked in," says Canadian pilot Marko Grubac, flying his helicopter over a waterfall on Papua New Guinea's Mubi River. He carries personnel, equipment, and supplies to wells where no roads exist. A Huli tribesman atop a barrel of aviation fuel hiked to a site at 9,000 feet and, with some 60 others, cleared space for a helicopter to land. The Quest for Oil 247
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