Without any doubt, the most important energy discovery of the early twentieth century was Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity: E=MC². While only theoretical computations at the time, Einstein’s theory became a cornerstone of physical law. As World War II descended upon Europe and the world, it was a famous letter from Eeinstein to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that stirred the United States into the research and development of the atomic bomb, ultimately changing the world. While the superpowers continued to pursue greater nuclear weaponry after World War II, the peaceful development of nuclear energy has led to a worldwide provision of electricity to people throughout the world, based on the secrets of the atom. The course of human events has forever been changed by E=MC².
The twentieth century must ultimately be described as the energy century. With the development of nuclear energy, mass production of the automobile, the rapid development of aircraft, and burgeoning populations all over the world, mankind has been on a constant search for the most plentiful fuels to power modern society – uranium, coal, oil, and gas.
Up until now, finding those fuels has been both matters of conjecture and a steady growth of man’s knowledge of the earth below – geology. When oil was discovered at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1857, its primary use was for kerosene with which to heat lamps and give light. For over thirty years, gasoline was considered a nuisance byproduct of oil, until the internal combustion engine. Then the world went onto a search for oil. In the early days of oil exploration in Texas, another nuisance byproduct of oil was natural gas. People simply burned it off until scientists learned to harness its power for the most basic life benefits of cooking our food, heating our homes, and powering factories. As demand grew for oil and gas, modern oil giants and thousands of smaller independents went on a drilling binge – but where?
To provide for man’s most primary energy necessities – heating the home, cooking food, cleaning our drinking water, and affordable transportation for billions of people, the most important energy discovery since Einstein’s theory of relativity is the absolute ability to look down into the ground and “see” every drop of producible oil from the surface, to define the individual levels of the earth containing that oil, and to be able to evaluate the location, boundaries, porosity and permeability of that zone before a well is ever drilled. The same technology sees natural gas within its gaseous state and identifies the boundaries of gas deposits, but does not identify the zone(s) containing that gas and does not evaluate porosity or permeability of the gas zone(s) without geological consultation. How are these discoveries now possible?