40s and 50s Memories
fieldwork in Croatia with abiding memories of
Dalmatian songs and slivovic with my fellow
geologist from Zagreb, Vlado Jelaska, with
whom I unwittingly barged across a film set
for a spaghetti-western in the Dinaric Alps with
our party of mules, to the disgust of Stewart
Grainger, who was on the spot.
Niger, 1963, with Cretaceous dinosaur vertebra
Then three years in Brunei, living in the oilfield of
Seria, exposed us for the first time to the exciting
world of oil drilling. This was mostly offshore in
the South China Sea, in Brunei, Sarawak, and
the then named British North Borneo. Security
of radio from rigs was helped by our Swiss-
German geologists whom hardly anyone could
understand. Life in the Seria camp was very hot,
humid and interesting. Jungle noises at night
where the trees came within fifty yards of the
bungalow, glaring oil flares burning and a busy
social life based on the central Panaga Club.
In many ways it was yesterday's world, with
Commonwealth Day celebrations competing
with Dutch Night, Bastille Day, Chinese New
Year and even the Munich Beer Festival as the
different expatriate nationals vied with each
other, doing their nostalgic thing. The most
memorable diversions were the trips far up river
by prahu to visit and stay in Dayak longhouses.
The discovery of a huge natural gas field in
Groningen, Holland led to the search for more
gas in the southern North Sea and fields were
soon found and developed there in the fifties
and sixties. As Shell was in the forefront of
these activities we found ourselves in London
of all unromantic places. Though somewhat
galling to be stuck in an office in Waterloo the
work was extraordinarily exciting. New unheard of geology was being revealed in the very
backyard of this century-old science. In fact,
the story of North Sea oil exploration has yet to
be properly told in my opinion. Not only was it
trail-breaking in the technical sense, it was an
astonishing episode of entrepreneurial energy
and risk-taking. There was luck too, in the timely
arrival of the big computers needed to make
sense of the deep architecture of the rocks
below the seabed. By 1970, the industry was
finding locations for floating drilling rigs, and oil
fields were beginning to turn up in the central
North Sea. New rigs were being built that could
drill year-round and through the stormy winters
in the deep northern waters beyond Shetland.
Soon giant fields like Brent over 20 miles long
were being found and clusters of many others
in the UK and in Norwegian waters. It was an
exhilarating six years.
One of hundreds of student protesters in Tiananmen
Square, Beijing, June 4th, 1989
Then for us it was back to air-conditioners and
mosquitoes in, this time, Nigeria and to very
different oil exploration in the swamps of the
Niger delta. In our four years based in Lagos
we travelled through most of the country, or
one could say, the three countries, Yoruba land
to the west, Hausa land to the north, and the
Rivers / Ibo country to the east. Life was never
easy, insecurity and shortage of necessities
endemic, but the country and the people were
very appealing. It was important to be able to get
out of Lagos from time to time. Many have not
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