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.

Geologist Theron Wasson surveying over Jakeys Fork, Wind River range, near Dubois, Wyoming, 1941.

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][6]

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.[7][8][9] 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.[10] 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"[11]—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.[11] In 1927, he and his staff used geophysical data to find the large Van oil field in Texas,[11][12][13][14] 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,[15][16] which was the first offshore oil well in the world in tidal waters;[17] 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,[18] was called "one of the leading geologists of the world" in a 1940 article about oil reserves,[19] and was quoted as an "authority on oil reserves" in Popular Mechanics in 1944.[20] He spoke regularly at regional and national conferences about oil discoveries.[21][22]

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][5][6]

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.[23] He helped survey some of the nearby Wind River Range, and a creek in that area was named after him, Wasson Creek.[24] A memorial plaque was placed on a boulder along a trail near Wasson Creek after his death.

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References
  1. "Tech honors 16 alumni". The Pittsburgh Press. October 21, 1951.
  2. Marquis Who’s Who. 1970. Theron Wasson.
  3. Cram, I.H. (1971). "Theron Wasson Memorial". AAPG Bulletin. American Association of Petroleum Geologists: 2067–2068.
  4. Cram, Ira H. "Memorial to Theron Wasson" (PDF). Geological Society of America Bulletin.
  5. "T. Wasson, 83, geologist and engineer, dies". Chicago Tribune. August 7, 1970. p. 16.
  6. Theron Wasson. The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time. University Microfilms. 1971.
  7. Sinclair, Joseph H.; Wasson, Theron (April 1923). "Explorations in Eastern Ecuador". Geographical Review. 13 (2): 190–213. doi:10.2307/208447. JSTOR 208447.
  8. Wasson, Theron; Sinclair, Joseph H. (1927). "Geological Exploration East of the Andes in Ecuador". Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. 11 (12): 1253–1281.
  9. Wasson, Theron (1921). Journals from oil explorations in eastern Ecuador (Report). Carnegie Mellon University.
  10. "Theron Wasson". World Oil. Gulf Publishing Company. 134: 248. 1952.
  11. Welty, Earl M.; Taylor, Frank J. (1966). The 76 Bonanza: the Fabulous Life and Times of the Union Oil Company of California. Menlo Park, California: Lane Magazine & Book Co. pp. 294, 299–300, 303, 308.
  12. Liddle, R.A. (December 1929). "Van Field, Van Zandt County, Texas: Geological Notes". AAPG Bulletin. American Association of Petroleum Geologists. 13 (12): 1557–1558. doi:10.1306/3d932899-16b1-11d7-8645000102c1865d.
  13. Liddle, Ralph Alexander (January 1, 1936). "The Van oil field, Van Zandt County, Texas" (PDF). University of Texas Bulletin No. 3601.
  14. Smith, Julia Cauble (June 12, 2010). "Van Field". Handbook of Texas (online ed.). Texas State Historical Association.
  15. Leasing Oil and Natural Gas Resources: Outer Continental Shelf (Report). U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  16. Wasson, Theron (1948). Powers, Sidney (ed.). Creole Field, Gulf of Mexico, Coast of Louisiana. Structure of Typical American Oil Fields: A Symposium on the Relation of Oil Accumulation to Structure. Volume 3. American Association of Petroleum Geologists. pp. 281–298.
  17. "Offshore Petroleum History". American Oil & Gas Historical Society. Retrieved January 28, 2016.
  18. NPN, National Petroleum News. 21. McGraw-Hill. 1929. p. 51. Retrieved February 17, 2016.
  19. Pettingill, Samuel B. (May 20, 1940). "United States still has most of oil which is factor in war and peace". Toledo Blade. p. 10.
  20. Whittaker, Wayne (May 1944). "Popular Mechanics". How much oil is left?. 81. Hearst Magazines. p. 2. ISSN 0032-4558.
  21. "Business Bits". Chicago Daily Tribune. April 30, 1939. p. 30. Retrieved February 17, 2016.
  22. "Illinois' new oil field shows large growth". Chicago Sunday Tribune. October 10, 1937. p. 9. Retrieved February 17, 2016.
  23. "CM Ranch & Simpson Lake Cabins". Dubois, Wyoming: National Park Service. September 15, 1992.
  24. "Wasson Creek". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey. June 5, 1979.

Further reading

Theron Wasson
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