Open Writing

It was an early July Saturday in 1966 and I had been asked to meet and accompany two major oil company excecutives. I was instructed to pay all their hotel and meal accounts. These gentlemen had come to South Africa to negotiate with Soekor, (a government search for oil program), for off-shore oil drilling rights. They wished to see evidence of "a Cretateous Finger in the Perserverance area". Cretateous rock is the fine sandstone rock in which oil was formed some 50 to 60 million years ago and a finger refers to that portion of the sub-terranian rock massive which is relatively near or above the surface of the ground. My instructions were to show them escavations and road cuttings.

This instruction was not so easy to carry out at short notice.

They arrived at 11 am in a Boeing 727 and instead of slowing down to land they accelerated and did a low level high speed fly past over the airport runway, then high speed turn over Algoa Bay to approach for a normal landing. Their flight opened a Air Force Air display that day.

It was the most thrilling experience the travellers had ever had. They had flown frequently all over the world and prefered to fly in VC 10's of BOAC (pronounced "Bouack" by them). They delighted in the quiet rear enginening of the VC 10 and I surmise their almighty dollar had the desired effect on the service of the British carrier.

They were a geophysicist (the senior man) and a geologist. My car that we had at our disposal was a 2 litre German sedan and not designed for off road use.

I knew that the main exposed rock faces around Port Elizabeth was not what they were looking for in that they were Quartzitic. I drove them via Greenbushes to Uitenhage. A few Kilometers before Uitenhage we came across an ancient disused mine shaft . My guests said it was either a gold or copper mine. We then went bundu-bashing around Perserverance, but no joy. We aborted our search and repaired for tea at the old Royal Hotel at Uitenhage.

As it was Saturday afternoon, normal tearooms were closed. During tea they brought out geological maps dating back to 1835 which indicated that in those times the Landrosship of Perserverance was based in Graaff-Reinet and extended as far south as Port Elizabeth, at least that is what the charts indicated. This important fact, I realised, made our quest, in time available, near impossible. I asked, "Have either of you, seen elephants in the wild? We can view them at about a half an hour's drive from here.''

They had not viewed game before so we moved out, taking the gravel road off the Graaff-Reinet road. We were in the last little kloof leading to the Sundays River bridge, having rejoined Macadamised road, when one of them called "Whoa there! This is what we are looking for!"

We stopped and they examined rock outcrops on our right, for about 15 minutes. We continued onto the Sundays river flats and even before we crossed the bridge, one of them remarked "My God they've got mountains of it with about 3 metres of Marl on top!" Marl is sandstone soil with chunks of white quartzitic rock scattered about in it.

Well, we saw plenty of elephants, for in those days the public was not allowed within the elephant enclosure and the Park authorities used to feed them with lorryloads of donated (I think) reject scrap oranges at 4 PM. When suggesting the viewing detour, I knew for sure, that we would succeed.

On the way back to Port Elizabeth I asked them what they would have done if we had not found the evidence of a cretateous finger. They said it was no problem, as the islands in the bay were cretateous and they would have taken a helicopter or boat out to them the next day. It was good that they did not tell me that at the outset of our search!

It turned out that most of our local rocky shoreline consists of the very thing we were looking for. Late that night, dining in the penthouse restaurant of the hotel, I asked, "What does an oilfield look like? I cannot visualise it.'' The younger replied, "Your Algoa bay is about 100 kilometers long, east to west and about 30 kilometers wide, north to south. It is only about 100 metres deep on average. Imagine it to be about 3000 meters deep and containing dispersed, permeated pockets of oil representing 50 percent of the total volume.....that would be a very good oilfield to find.''

He went on, "We usually strike the oil beneath the seabed and then follow the field towards the shore, as it is then more economical to recover on land.''

The wine flowed, and the geophysicist bought, on his own account, 12 cases of KWV brandy to be delivered independently to Abidan, the Persian oil centre.

The geologist said, "You know, the triangle of land bounded by Uitenhage at its northern apex, the Gamtoos river mouth in the west and Sundays river mouth in the east, has the largest concentrations of reptile types and numbers to be found anywhere on earth. It is similar, only more so, to Los Angeles in that respect.'' He went on, "It took 35 years to develop the Venezuelian or Canadian fields and bring them on stream. You remember where we first spotted what we were looking for, well, within 70 kilometers of that spot, there must be oil, how far and how deep, I do not know. Once you have sorted out your politics, Port Elizabeth, right out to Grahamstown, could become the Los Angeles or Oil City of southern Africa especially when in future years the present oilfields of the world run dry.''

To check the validity of his statement, I asked him what his job was and he replied, "I mark the spot on the map where my company will drill for oil."

Enough said. I did not think it was the wine speaking!!