Letters

This page has been created to facilitate rapid and timely interchange of opinion. Each month (space permitting) a selection of these letters will be published in Geoscientist , the colour monthly magazine of the Society Fellowship.

Correspondence strings are listed in the order that they are begun, the most recent string at the top. Within each string, letters are listed with the first letter of the string at the top, and subsequent letters below.

This page contains letters from the current year.  The archive of letters from previous years are accessible by clicking the links to the left.

If you wish to express an opinion, please email the Editor. Letters should be as short as possible, preferably c.300 words long or fewer. You may also write to:

Dr Ted Nield, Editor, Geoscientist, c/o The Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BG.

• Please note that letters will be edited for publication. This particularly applies to versions  printed in the magazine.  The Editor reserves the right not to publish letters, at his discretion. Writers should submit their letters electronically to ensure rapid publication. All views expressed below are the responsibility of their authors alone.TN

Restore Rig 20's missing footage!

From Peter Jones (Rec'd 31 December 2011; Pub'd 17 January 2012)

Sir, There are few geologists left who have actually had the unforgettable experience of seeing Rig 20, BP’s award-winning documentary film (Palme d’Or, Venice Film Festival, 1951) showing the fiery blowout of a BP exploratory well at Naft Safid in the Zagros foothills of Persia.

The film showed the huge logistical and technical problems encountered in preparation for extinguishing the blaze with two controlled explosions, one to remove the damaged rig and related debris, the second to snuff out the flame. The operation was organized by Myron Kinley, then the world’s most famous fighter of oilwell fires and blowouts, directing a volunteer crew.

The climax of the fifteen-minute film is the short sequence which, filmed from a rocky hill top nearby, shows the explosion which removed the broken well head Two weeks later the second charge snuffed out the fire, allowing a new wellhead to be installed, shutting off the well. In the words of Henry Longhurst, (1959), author of Adventure in Oil ¹, audiences saw “a demonstration of the forces of nature about which people talk with awe to this day. It is the highlight of a spectacular film made on the spot and is inevitably received by audiences with a momentary silence, followed by a gasp of wonder.  A second or two after the explosion came the fantastic sight of a whole half mile of pipe shooting from the hole.it shot away high into the sky, far above the thousand feet of flame and here, twisting and turning and writhing like a serpent, it broke as into mere piece of string and fell slowly to earth.”

Rig 20 is available in DVD format from BP, but that unforgettable sequence has been cut! Now the DVD shows only an obscured upward view of the base of the smoke cloud filmed from beside the wellhead itself, filmed by an incredibly brave cameraman, with only a brief explanation of what was happening unseen, in the sky above. All that is left now to preserve that event is the still photograph (attached) in Longhurst’s book.

I obtained the CD (gratis, many thanks) from BP with the thought that the film would be a truly unforgettable training tool, showing the geological dynamics and hazards involved in hydrocarbon exploration and development and the role of overpressure in structural geology. However, without that “silence and gasp” reception by audiences, I suspect that the original film would not have received such a prestigious award.

This letter then, is my appeal for support in restoring to the DVD of Rig 20 the content of the original award-winning film, making it a wonderful and dramatic teaching tool for geoscientists as well as many others who work in the oil industry and academia.

Reference

1. Longhurst, Henry, 1959, Adventure in Oil, the Story of British Petroleum. Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 286p.

Earth bloats

Rec'd 17 December 2011; Pub'd 17 January 2012

Sir, I refer to the article in the December/January issue.  This process of Mantle-derived uplift recognised in the North Atlantic Ocean surely has a much more extensive corollary, long recognised, in the Gregory Rift Valley of Kenya. In 1965, I showed that peneplains on Precambrian surfaces on the western margin of the Rift Valley had been uplifted by a distensive process, prior to rifting (McCall 'Geology of the Sekerr Area, Rept. No 65, Geological Survey of Kenya, 859pp). Strangely, Wiliam Pulfrey, the Chief Geologist, would not accept the evidence and added notes to my report to say so, but B H Baker and E P Saggerson recognised the same process, independently, on the other margin. The same distensive process is obviously applicable on a smaller scale to plumes, and also caldera volcanoes, prior to caldera subsidence. The distensive push can only come from the Mantle (?), though whether convection is involved is debatable in these cases: I wonder if it is necessarily involved in the short pulses from the Icelandic plume?

Insensitive – and unwise

From Martin Isles*

Sir, I was considerably saddened to see the photo on page 7 of the Dec2011/Jan2012 issue depicting a person crouching adjacent to the vertical sidewall at the base of an unsupported trench of at least 4 metres depth. At best, what is shown is plainly bad practice; at worst your journal is effectively condoning a potentially life-threatening situation.

With the long sad history of so many deaths and major injuries arising from trench collapses, for ‘Geoscientist’ to print this image without any warning or comment is irresponsible and unprofessional. As a geologist-by-training, to see my profession’s otherwise excellent magazine failing to prevent the publication of such an image demonstrates clearly that there are fundamental lessons still to be learnt.

The law on such issues reflects what should be simple common sense, i.e. any such work must be risk assessed by a competent person to ensure a safe system of work to control the risk of trench collapse. As an absolute minimum, for the protection of themselves and others, geoscience companies and individual geo-scientists should be familiar with at least the basic legislation, viz:

• Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, Sections 2 & 7
• Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, Reg.3
• Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007, Reg.31

The offending image shows the reddish-brown Upper Triassic Branscombe Mudstone Formation with its green-grey reduction interbeds. In geotechnical terms, these lithologies might reasonably be described as moderately competent. But a journal with the professional standing and responsibilities of ‘Geoscientist’ should take much more care to ensure that such images – editorially of interest for scientific reasons – do not depict examples of operational bad practice. In short, procedures should be in place to ensure that every such image in every issue is vetted by a person with competence in practical health and safety. In certain non-UK circumstances where operational practice is to a lower standard, then an editorial comment to this effect would be appropriate.

I look forward to safer issues of ‘Geoscientist’ in the future.

* Director, Health & Safety, MPA President, The Institute of Quarrying

From Chris Jerram (Rec'd & Pub'd 8 December 2011)

Sir, I am sure I am not the first, and almost certainly I will not be the last, to make comment on the photograph accompanying the Glimpses of the past (Geoscientist 21.11). In a year when the owner of a ground investigation company was convicted of corporate manslaughter and the unfortunate victim was a Fellow of the Society, it is surely the height of insensitivity and lack of common sense that the picture shows a geologist crouching in front of a vertical face that must be well over 3m high.

The defence might be that the exposed strata is competent rock and the superficials have been battered back (slightly). However, what sort of example does it send out to members of our profession who now think that the Geological Society give tacit approval to activities such as those depicted in the photograph?

GRM emphasise to all of our staff that entry into un-shored excavations below 1.2m should never be attempted. The excavation depicted could well be perfectly safe, but a young geologist taking a casual look at the magazine would probably be understandably confused by the apparent double standards and decide that our H&S advice is flawed.