File 2249/1915 Pt 4 ‘Oil: Mesopotamia & Persia. (General File) 1920–24’ [‎100r] (199/484)

f 1 disagree with the views put forward in lr„ Smellie's
l^-bistan PSper * 1 8m C0Ilv “ced that the oil of Mesopotamia is
>d*H»Dobbs* in< ^ 1 ^ enou3 t0 "i 16 ^ts Series* that it is very likely
indigenous to some extent to the Mocene as well, and
perhaps even to the Upper Cretaceous. All that I have seen
myself, including the Maidan~i~Naftun field in Persia,
is* in my opinion, of Pars age, and the probability is that
tms statement is applicable to nearly all areas of
economic importance in Mesopotamia and Persia. The close
analogy between the nature of the oil-bearing beds in
Mesopotamia, Persia, the Punjab, Assam and Burma, and the
still more striking analogy in the sequence from a gypsum
and salt-bearing petroliferous series to a fresh-water or
fluviatile one in all these countries, leave little room
doubt that the history of the deposits is bound up with
• the history of the accumulation of oil and is not independent
of the latter. In any ease, supposing oil to have migrated
upwards from pre-Pars beds, it would make no difference
at all to our experimental programme, for the oil would
migrate into Pars anticlines, or perhaps exceptionally into
Bakhtiari (Kurd) beds, and these would have to be tested in
the usual way. Before any change of policy is contemplated,
1 think the views of men like Messrs. Cunningham Craig,
Lister James, Dewhurst, Mayo, Hoble, Evans, &c», should be
asked for* M? own are strong on the point, and are the
result of fifteen years r experience in Asiatic oilfields.
Oil-drilling is always speculative, and I do not say that
migration has never taken place, but I certainly think that
the Pars series is the important oil-bearing series of the
parts of Mesopotamia and Persia visited by me, and I would
in no way alter or curtail experimental exploitation*
Blanks will be drawn here and there no doubt, as we are
dealing with an elusive mobile fluid and not with an