Theron Wasson

Theron Rhodes Wasson (1887-1970) was a leading American petroleum geologist and engineer, who pioneered the use of geophysical surveys to find oil and gas.

Biography

Wasson was born on his parents’ farm near Springville, NY on April 23, 1887. His interest in geology began in high school at the Griffith Institute in Springville, from which he graduated in 1905. He earned a Bachelor of Science from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now the Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, PA in 1910, and that institution gave him an Award of Merit in 1951.[1] From 1910-1915 he did engineering work in CA, including designing a dam on the Feather River. From 1916-1917 he worked as a geologist in NJ and OK, and enlisted in the US Army in 1917. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant at the First Army Engineer’s School at Langres, France in May 1918, and served as the city engineer of Sinzig, Germany during the US occupation in 1919. From 1919-1920 he did graduate work in geology at Columbia University in New York, NY, where he met his future wife, geologist and teacher Isabel Bassett Wasson. They were married in 1920 and had three children; Elizabeth W. Bergstrom, a biologist; Edward B. Wasson, a petroleum geologist; and Anne Harney Gallagher, an art historian. Theron and Isabel divorced in 1953, and he married Ann Hand in 1959. He died in 1970 and was buried in Springville.[2][3][4][5]

Career

After his graduate studies, he was hired in 1920 as a geologist for the American Oil Engineering Corporation, and in 1921 he conducted the first surveys of the potential for oil exploration in eastern Ecuador with Joseph Sinclair, a consulting geologist.[6][7][8] He was hired as the chief geologist with the Pure Oil Company in 1922, a position he held until 1952, when he became a senior geologist for that company.[9] He worked for Pure Oil in Tulsa, OK, Columbus, OH, and finally in Chicago, IL. He excelled at finding new oil and gas fields—he was called "Pure's top oil hunter"[10]—and was one of the first petroleum geologists to use geophysical survey data. He was credited with finding major oil fields in Venezuela in 1922, in Michigan in 1927, in southern Illinois in 1936, and the Cumberland Field in Oklahoma in 1940.[10] In 1927, he and his staff used geophysical data to find the large Van oil field in Texas,[10][11][12][13] and in 1937 it was also used by him and his staff (working with Superior Oil) to find the Creole field in Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico,[14][15] which was the first offshore oil well in the world in tidal waters;[16] see also Offshore oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and Oil platform history.[2][3] He was profiled in National Petroleum News in 1929,[17] was called "one of the leading geologists of the world" in a 1940 article about oil reserves,[18] and was quoted as an "authority on oil reserves" in Popular Mechanics in 1944.[19] He spoke regularly at regional and national conferences about oil discoveries.[20][21]

Wasson entered private practice as a consulting geologist in 1954. He was active in numerous professional societies; for example, he chaired the annual convention of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in Chicago in 1946, and was made an honorary member of that group in 1961. He advised the geology departments at Princeton and Northwestern universities, and served on committees of the American Petroleum Institute, which gave him a Certificate of Appreciation in 1955. He was a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geographical Society.[2][3][4][5]

From the 1940s to near the end of his life, Wasson spent his summers at the CM Ranch & Simpson Lake Cabins near Dubois, Wyoming, where he shared his knowledge of natural history with other visitors.[22] He helped survey some of the nearby Wind River Range, and a creek in that area was named after him, Wasson Creek.[23] A memorial plaque was placed on a boulder along a trail near Wasson Creek after his death.

References

  1. ↑ "Tech honors 16 alumni." Accessed February 18, 2016. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19511021&id=wmAbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=N04EAAAAIBAJ&pg=2842,2322672&hl=en
  2. 1 2 3 Marquis Who’s Who. 1970. Theron Wasson.
  3. 1 2 3 Cram, I.H. 1971. Theron Wasson memorial. AAPG Bulletin, pp. 2067-2068. http://archives.datapages.com/data/bull_memorials/055/055011/pdfs/2067.htm Also by Cram in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, almost the same text, with his first wife and a bibliography added. ftp://rock.geosociety.org/pub/Memorials/v02/Wasson-T.pdf
  4. 1 2 "T. Wasson, 83, geologist and engineer, dies." Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1970, Sect. 1, p. 16. Accessed February 17, 2016. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1970/08/07/page/16/article/t-wasson-83-geologist-and-engineer-dies
  5. 1 2 Theron Wasson. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 55, p. 423, published 1971. Accessed February 18, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=78FWAAAAYAAJ&q=Theron+Wasson&dq=Theron+Wasson&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjatrufxIHLAhWI7D4KHXIZA-c4HhDoAQg6MAY
  6. ↑ Sinclair, J.H. and T. Wasson. 1923. Explorations in eastern Ecuador. The Geographical Review 13(2), April 1923, pp. 190-213.
  7. ↑ Wasson, Theron and J. H. Sinclair. 1927. Geological Exploration East of the Andes in Ecuador. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 11(12), pp. 1253-1281.
  8. ↑ Wasson, Theron. 1921. Journals (handwritten and scanned, online) from oil explorations in eastern Ecuador. http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=726116 (see page 2 of link for scans of 3 journals)
  9. ↑ Theron Wasson. World Oil, Vol. 134, p. 248. Gulf Publishing Company, 1952. Accessed February 18, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=qmpAAQAAIAAJ&q=Theron+Wasson&dq=Theron+Wasson&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxn5zX6IHLAhXFWz4KHaF4BOs4PBDoAQglMAI
  10. 1 2 3 Welty, Earl M., and Frank J. Taylor. 1966. "The 76 bonanza: the fabulous life and times of the Union Oil Company of California." Lane Magazine & Book Co., Menlo Park, CA, 1966. Pp. 294, 299-300, 303, and 308. (Union Oil bought Pure Oil in 1965.) Accessed February 18, 2016 and from library. https://books.google.com/books?id=Awg-AAAAIAAJ&q=Theron+Wasson&dq=Theron+Wasson&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT59u-64HLAhXLaz4KHZ2IA0k4RhDoAQgbMAA
  11. ↑ Liddle, R.A.. 1929. "Van Field, Van Zandt County, Texas: GEOLOGICAL NOTES." AAPG Bulletin Vol. 13 No. 12, pp. 1557-1558. Accessed February 26, 2016. http://archives.datapages.com/data/bulletns/1917-30/data/pg/0013/0012/1550/1557.htm
  12. ↑ Liddle, R.A. 1936. "The Van oil field, Van Zandt County, Texas." University of Texas Bulletin No. 3601. (Includes a photo of a model of part of the field by Wasson and his wife Isabel.) Accessed February 26, 2016. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/24644
  13. ↑ Van field. The Handbook of Texas, Texas State History Association. Accessed February 12, 2015. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dov01
  14. ↑ "LEASING OIL AND NATURAL GAS RESOURCES: Outer Continental Shelf." U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service. Accessed February 26, 2016. http://www.boem.gov/BOEM-Newsroom/Offshore-Stats-and-Facts/Atlantic-Region/GreenBook-LeasingDocument-pdf.aspx
  15. ↑ Wasson, Theron. 1948. Creole Field, Gulf of Mexico, Coast of Louisiana [in] Structure of Typical American Oil Fields, v.3, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, p.281-298.
  16. ↑ ”Offshore Petroleum History,” American Oil & Gas Historical Society, retrieved 1/28/16 from http://aoghs.org/offshore-history/offshore-oil-history/
  17. ↑ National Petroleum News, 1929, Vol. 21 p. 51, accessed February 17, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=DHofAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Theron+Wasson
  18. ↑ Pettingill, S.B., "United States still has most of oil which is factor in war and peace," Toledo Blade, May 20, 1940, p. 10. Accessed February 18, 2016. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19400520&id=m8xOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=bP4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=4591,3295379&hl=en
  19. ↑ Whittaker, W., "How much oil is left," Popular Mechanics, Vol. 81 No. 5, p. 2, May, 1944. Accessed February 17, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?id=hd8DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22theron+wasson%22#v=onepage&q=%22theron%20wasson%22&f=false
  20. ↑ "Business bits," Chicago Daily Tribune, April 30, 1939, p. 30. Accessed February 17, 2016. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1939/04/03/page/30/article/business-bits/
  21. ↑ "Illinois' new oil field shows large growth," Chicago Sunday Tribune, October 10, 1937, Pt. 2 p. 9. Accessed February 17, 2016. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1937/10/10/page/41/article/illinois-new-oil-field-shows-large-growth
  22. ↑ CM Ranch & Simpson Lake Cabins, Dubois, Wyoming: Registration for National Register of Historic Places, 1992. Accessed 1/20/16 from http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/92001249.pdf
  23. ↑ Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). 2016. Feature detail report, Wasson Creek, Simpson Lake quad. http://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=136:3:0::NO:3:P3_FID,P3_TITLE:1604004,Wasson%20Creek

Further reading

Theron Wasson

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, March 16, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.