Douglas Michael Morton
Encyclopedia
Douglas Michael Morton (11 July 1924-22 November 2003) was a pioneering petroleum geologist and a leading authority on the geology of the Middle East. He is most noted for his work with René Wetzel on the geology of many parts of northern Iraq in the 1940s and 1950s, recorded in the Stratigraphic Lexicon of Iraq, which is still a standard reference today. He and Wetzel also carried out a series of pioneering expeditions in south-western Arabia and Morton led the first geological field party into central Oman at a time when tribal affairs were extremely volatile.
In 1959, on the basis of his own and others' field research, Morton published "The Geology of Oman", a major contribution the geological knowledge of that country. Morton was a significant figure in the debate about the origin of the Semail ophiolite on the Hajar mountains of Oman. George Martin Lees in 1926 had advanced the theory that the rocks had been pushed into place whereas Morton in 1959 argued that they had flowed into position. This debate was carried forward by prominent geologists such as Ken Glennie and Hugh Wilson.
In the latter stages of his career with the Iraq Petroleum Company
, Morton was head of the Geological Department of the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company at the time when the massive Bu Hasa field was discovered. He was deputy leader of the Royal Geographical Society expedition to the Musandam peninsula, the first Western expedition to that part of the world. He ended his career as a consultant and advised the Hunt Oil Company on their operations in Yemen, which led to the first commercial discovery at Arif in that country in July 1984, followed by eleven fields in the next eight years.
Because Morton worked across the full range of IPC concession areas he gained an extensive knowledge of the field geology of the Middle East. His work and that of colleague Don Sheridan in Oman was commemorated in 2010 by the naming of fossils in their honour.
, England, on 11 July 1924. Despite the loss of her husband in 1931, his mother Lucy was able to support her family and see him through secondary education at Royds Hall School
. Inspired by stories of his relatives John Morton and Sam Brighouse in the founding of Vancouver
in the 19th century, Morton became interested in geology as a result of geography lessons at school and he went on to take a degree in the subject at the Huddersfield Technical College. He completed his studies at Leeds University and graduated in the summer of 1945. At this time, the Iraq Petroleum Company
(IPC) was looking to recruit geologists as part of recommencing of its oil exploration operations in the Middle East. Morton applied for the post of assistant geologist and was appointed in the autumn of that year to take up his duties in Palestine
and Transjordan
.
in Palestine to pick up service personnel following the end of World War II
. Haifa was the site of an IPC oil refinery where oil was received via pipeline from the Kirkuk
oil field in Iraq for transportation by sea to Europe and the United States of America.
Irrespective of its title, IPC operations were not confined to Iraq and through a number of associate companies included all parts of the Middle East within the limits of the defunct Ottoman Empire, according to the Red Line Agreement
of 1928. Therefore, over the next 26 years, Morton would find himself posted to many different areas of the Middle East. As a consortium created from five different groups, IPC was able to draw staff from its partner companies such as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
(later Anglo Iranian, then BP), Royal Dutch Shell
, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony-Vacuum. This gave the company’s geological department a remarkable range and depth of talent in its exploration programmes. As a result, during his time in the company, Morton worked with distinguished geologists such as Jim McGinty, Sami Nasr, Louis Dubertret, Leo Damesin, R.G.S. Hudson, H.V. Dunnington, F.E. Wellings and Norval Baker.
Morton's first posting was to Jerusalem, where operations were concentrated over two countries, Palestine and Transjordan. The primary role of the geologists was to survey the terrain by mapping and plane tabling
exposed rock formations. Field parties would venture from the main field camps, Kurnub (Palestine) and Mafraq (Trans-Jordan), setting up smaller tented camps, known as "fly camps" in the desert terrain. During this period, Morton became fluent in Arabic, which was essential for exploring the remoter regions of the Middle East.
The search for oil in Transjordan was unsuccessful. The most promising signs of oil were at Mezra’a, where the geologists found bitumen-soaked rocks with a powerful oily smell. On the eastern shore of the Dead Sea between Zerqa Main and Mezra’a (Lisan) there were several oil seepages in the Wadi Mojil, and in the sea itself, and also gas seepages. After the last earthquake there in 1927
huge blocks of bitumen had been found floating on the sea, which also was a strong indication of oil. This, however, did not guarantee a large reservoir of oil in the ground. As a result of the rift and surrounding faults, the rock faces on either side of the Jordan Valley had been exposed, thus allowing any accumulations of oil to escape.
Morton was in Jerusalem at a time when the British mandate of Palestine was coming under increasing pressure. While staying in the YMCA, opposite the King David Hotel
, he witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of the hotel by the militant Zionist group the Irgun
on July 22, 1946 in which 91 people died and 45 people were injured. Although the company started drilling a test well near Gaza
in 1947, drilling was suspended in February 1948 when political disturbances made it difficult and dangerous to carry on.
In 1948, Morton was posted to Syria and, based in Aleppo, he took charge of a field party in the north-west of the country. The party included new geologist Ziad Beydoun
. "The most striking result of the work,’ wrote the geologist E. J. Daniel, ‘was to establish the occurrence of Jurassic limestone in the region … the application of this work is more towards an understanding of the general geology of north-west Syria; and some useful information regarding the origin of the basic igneous rocks of the district, and also in respect of faulting, has been collected."
IPC eventually abandoned oil exploration in Palestine, Transjordan and Syria without making any commercial discoveries.
and Dhofar
) between 1947 and 1953. At the start of their first expedition, in November 1947, they met the explorer Wilfred Thesiger
who was about the commence his second crossing of the Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter). The subsequent expedition to the Mahra
country (today's Yemen) was hazardous. The rugged terrain ruled out motor transport and the survey party had to travel by camel and dhow. Tribal tensions delayed their progress in Al Ghaydah
as Morton and the expedition doctor were briefly held prisoner. Morton and Wetzel, together with IPC liaison officer, Major Tony Altounyan, went on to carry out a survey of Dhofar province, a province of the Sultan of Oman, Said bin Taimur. The expedition was funded by the oil company with the result that the survey party of three had an escort of 76 camel-borne tribesmen. The resulting survey was completed in March, 1948 and, on their recommendation, IPC abandoned the Dhofar concession in 1950.
In 1949, they returned to the Aden Protectorates to carry out a survey of the territory around Shabwa and Beihan.In the autumn of 1953, Morton led a geological field party to the bedouin well at Thamud, in the Eastern Aden Protectorate.
outcrops. This work was later incorporated in the Stratigraphic Lexicon of Iraq which remains a key reference.
Pre-war geological investigations in Iraq had been suspended as a result of civil disturbances, and were not resumed until 1946 when ‘a planned campaign of stratigraphic research was set afoot’. Under the overall charge of Colonel Henson, the project involved a vast amount of fieldwork and laboratory studies. René Wetzel directed most of the work in Kurdistan, the Sinjar and the western desert, assisted by Morton and a number of other geologists such as Dr R.G.S. Hudson (‘Doc’), Charles André, Harold Dunnington and Henry Hotchkiss over a period of six years. Deeper wells were drilled to locate older deposits: this resulted in oil being discovered in the Middle Cretaceous at Ain Zalah, Kirkuk and Bai Hasan.
Morton and Wetzel ran a number of photographic, stratigraphic and structural sections, and surveys, in various parts of Kurdistan,
in order to define the attitude and composition of the strata within the concession areas. The information from these and measured sections led to a number of prospective oil-reservoir rocks being defined.
through the Wadi Jizzi which resulted in a shooting incident but no casualties. This, together with the occupation of the village of Hamasa in the Buraimi Oasis by a Saudi Arabian contingent in 1952, led to IPC operations in central Oman being shelved.
In February 1954 IPC renewed its efforts to explore central Oman with its "Operation DEF", a plan to land a party of oil company personnel and troops at Duqm
on the southern coast. Morton, having been appointed to lead the geological field party from Duqm to Jebel Fahud
in Oman, handed over the Thamud expedition to his colleague, Ziad Beydoun, in order to join the Duqm landings. The field party reached Jebel Fahud in October of that year. During the next two years, while IPC drilled for oil at Fahud, Morton and his team of geologists and a surveyor, Nick Fallon, mapped the central areas of Oman. Although IPC's attempts to find oil in Oman were unsuccessful, Royal Dutch Shell
as the major partner in the reconstituted company, Petroleum Development of Oman, subsequently located a major oilfield at Fahud which extended to within a few hundred metres of the original well. In November 1955, a few days after the expulsion of the Saudi Arabian contingent from Hamasa, Morton and his field party reached Al Buraimi
.
In 1957, Morton was appointed Senior Geologist, Persian Gulf. In 1959, he attended the 5th World Petroleum Congress and delivered a paper entitled ‘’The Geology of Oman’’ which became a standard reference for those studying the geology of Arabia. This was described by the Chief Geologist of IPC, N.E. Baker as follows: “The factual geological data represent a vast amount of arduous field work by himself and his colleagues. This is a major contribution to the geology of southern Arabia, ranking along with Lees’ (George Martin Lees
) early work on the geology of Oman. The present contribution embraces knowledge gained from photo-geology, surface examinations, geophysical surveys, and subsurface studies of the results of eight deep wells drilled in the area. Hence, it constitutes a solid foundation for future regional studies.”
(RGS) expedition to the Musandam
Peninsula in Oman. This followed the lifting of a 50-year ban on foreigners being allowed to visit the area on account of tribal sensitivities. The expedition, led by Norman Falcon FRS, formerly Chief Geologist with BP
, was regarded as one of the Society's most successful in recent times, although Falcon himself admitted that the terrain had made research difficult. The party included geologists, biologists, archaeologists, ethnographers and surveyors and resulted in the publication of a number of important papers about the region.
geologists to Oman and the United Arab Emirates
. He then undertook varied consulting advice before being employed by Marathon Oil
, Syria, in oil exploration. Between 1980-1, he advised the World Bank
in respect of oil prospectivity in Turkey, and he was involved in a survey of the Marib area of Yemen for Hunt Oil which ultimately resulted in the discovery of the first oil field in that country, the Asif field, in 1984.
in Powys, Wales. He died on 22 November 2003. His pioneering work in Oman, and that of his colleague, Don Sheridan, was commemorated in 2010 by the naming of fossils, Desmochitina mortoni and Euconochitina sheridani.
In 1959, on the basis of his own and others' field research, Morton published "The Geology of Oman", a major contribution the geological knowledge of that country. Morton was a significant figure in the debate about the origin of the Semail ophiolite on the Hajar mountains of Oman. George Martin Lees in 1926 had advanced the theory that the rocks had been pushed into place whereas Morton in 1959 argued that they had flowed into position. This debate was carried forward by prominent geologists such as Ken Glennie and Hugh Wilson.
In the latter stages of his career with the Iraq Petroleum Company
Iraq Petroleum Company
The Iraq Petroleum Company , until 1929 called Turkish Petroleum Company , was an oil company jointly owned by some of the world's largest oil companies, which had virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq from 1925 to 1961...
, Morton was head of the Geological Department of the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company at the time when the massive Bu Hasa field was discovered. He was deputy leader of the Royal Geographical Society expedition to the Musandam peninsula, the first Western expedition to that part of the world. He ended his career as a consultant and advised the Hunt Oil Company on their operations in Yemen, which led to the first commercial discovery at Arif in that country in July 1984, followed by eleven fields in the next eight years.
Because Morton worked across the full range of IPC concession areas he gained an extensive knowledge of the field geology of the Middle East. His work and that of colleague Don Sheridan in Oman was commemorated in 2010 by the naming of fossils in their honour.
Background and education
Morton was born in HuddersfieldHuddersfield
Huddersfield is a large market town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England, situated halfway between Leeds and Manchester. It lies north of London, and south of Bradford, the nearest city....
, England, on 11 July 1924. Despite the loss of her husband in 1931, his mother Lucy was able to support her family and see him through secondary education at Royds Hall School
Royds Hall School
Royds Hall High School is a comprehensive school in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.-About Royds Hall High School:Royds Hall High School is a successful and popular Specialist College for Science and Mathematics, which caters for approximately 825 students, aged 11–16, and with a national...
. Inspired by stories of his relatives John Morton and Sam Brighouse in the founding of Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
in the 19th century, Morton became interested in geology as a result of geography lessons at school and he went on to take a degree in the subject at the Huddersfield Technical College. He completed his studies at Leeds University and graduated in the summer of 1945. At this time, the Iraq Petroleum Company
Iraq Petroleum Company
The Iraq Petroleum Company , until 1929 called Turkish Petroleum Company , was an oil company jointly owned by some of the world's largest oil companies, which had virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq from 1925 to 1961...
(IPC) was looking to recruit geologists as part of recommencing of its oil exploration operations in the Middle East. Morton applied for the post of assistant geologist and was appointed in the autumn of that year to take up his duties in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
and Transjordan
Transjordan
The Emirate of Transjordan was a former Ottoman territory in the Southern Levant that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine...
.
Palestine, Transjordan and Syria
In November 1945 Morton joined a troop carrier ship travelling to the port of HaifaHaifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
in Palestine to pick up service personnel following the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Haifa was the site of an IPC oil refinery where oil was received via pipeline from the Kirkuk
Kirkuk
Kirkuk is a city in Iraq and the capital of Kirkuk Governorate.It is located in the Iraqi governorate of Kirkuk, north of the capital, Baghdad...
oil field in Iraq for transportation by sea to Europe and the United States of America.
Irrespective of its title, IPC operations were not confined to Iraq and through a number of associate companies included all parts of the Middle East within the limits of the defunct Ottoman Empire, according to the Red Line Agreement
Red Line Agreement
The Red Line Agreement is the name given to an agreement signed by partners in the Turkish Petroleum Company on July 31, 1928. The aim of the agreement was to formalize the corporate structure of TPC and bind all partners to a self-denial clause that prohibited any of its shareholders from...
of 1928. Therefore, over the next 26 years, Morton would find himself posted to many different areas of the Middle East. As a consortium created from five different groups, IPC was able to draw staff from its partner companies such as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company
Anglo-Persian Oil Company
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was founded in 1908 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Iran. It was the first company to extract petroleum from the Middle East...
(later Anglo Iranian, then BP), Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Socony-Vacuum. This gave the company’s geological department a remarkable range and depth of talent in its exploration programmes. As a result, during his time in the company, Morton worked with distinguished geologists such as Jim McGinty, Sami Nasr, Louis Dubertret, Leo Damesin, R.G.S. Hudson, H.V. Dunnington, F.E. Wellings and Norval Baker.
Morton's first posting was to Jerusalem, where operations were concentrated over two countries, Palestine and Transjordan. The primary role of the geologists was to survey the terrain by mapping and plane tabling
Plane Table
Plane Table is a distinctive ice free mesa in the north part of the Asgard Range, Victoria Land. This flattish feature surmounts the area between Nibelungen Valley and the Sykes Glacier and commands an extensive view of Wright Valley...
exposed rock formations. Field parties would venture from the main field camps, Kurnub (Palestine) and Mafraq (Trans-Jordan), setting up smaller tented camps, known as "fly camps" in the desert terrain. During this period, Morton became fluent in Arabic, which was essential for exploring the remoter regions of the Middle East.
The search for oil in Transjordan was unsuccessful. The most promising signs of oil were at Mezra’a, where the geologists found bitumen-soaked rocks with a powerful oily smell. On the eastern shore of the Dead Sea between Zerqa Main and Mezra’a (Lisan) there were several oil seepages in the Wadi Mojil, and in the sea itself, and also gas seepages. After the last earthquake there in 1927
huge blocks of bitumen had been found floating on the sea, which also was a strong indication of oil. This, however, did not guarantee a large reservoir of oil in the ground. As a result of the rift and surrounding faults, the rock faces on either side of the Jordan Valley had been exposed, thus allowing any accumulations of oil to escape.
Morton was in Jerusalem at a time when the British mandate of Palestine was coming under increasing pressure. While staying in the YMCA, opposite the King David Hotel
King David Hotel
The King David Hotel is a 5-star hotel in Jerusalem, Israel. Opened in 1931, the hotel was built with locally quarried pink limestone and was founded by Ezra Mosseri, a wealthy Egyptian Jewish Banker. To this day the hotel remains one of the most prominent and prestigious hotels in Israel, and...
, he witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of the hotel by the militant Zionist group the Irgun
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
on July 22, 1946 in which 91 people died and 45 people were injured. Although the company started drilling a test well near Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
in 1947, drilling was suspended in February 1948 when political disturbances made it difficult and dangerous to carry on.
In 1948, Morton was posted to Syria and, based in Aleppo, he took charge of a field party in the north-west of the country. The party included new geologist Ziad Beydoun
Ziad Rafiq Beydoun
Ziad Rafiq Beydoun was a petroleum geologist, leading authority on the geology of the Middle East and Emeritus Professor at the American University of Beirut .-Background and education:...
. "The most striking result of the work,’ wrote the geologist E. J. Daniel, ‘was to establish the occurrence of Jurassic limestone in the region … the application of this work is more towards an understanding of the general geology of north-west Syria; and some useful information regarding the origin of the basic igneous rocks of the district, and also in respect of faulting, has been collected."
IPC eventually abandoned oil exploration in Palestine, Transjordan and Syria without making any commercial discoveries.
South-western Arabia
It was during this time that he worked with René Wetzel, a French geologist employed by IPC, and together they carried out many surveys together, including a series of ground-breaking expeditions to south-western Arabia (the Aden ProtectorateAden Protectorate
The Aden Protectorate was a British protectorate in southern Arabia which evolved in the hinterland of Aden following the acquisition of that port by Britain in 1839 as an anti-piracy station, and it continued until the 1960s. For administrative purposes it was divided into the Western...
and Dhofar
Dhofar
The Dhofar region lies in Southern Oman, on the eastern border with Yemen. Its mountainous area covers and has a population of 215,960 as of the 2003 census. The largest town in the region is Salalah. Historically, it was the chief source of frankincense in the world. However, its frankincense...
) between 1947 and 1953. At the start of their first expedition, in November 1947, they met the explorer Wilfred Thesiger
Wilfred Thesiger
Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, CBE, DSO, FRAS, FRGS was a British explorer and travel writer born in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.-Family:...
who was about the commence his second crossing of the Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter). The subsequent expedition to the Mahra
Mahra
Mahra may refer to:* Mahra a Jat clan found in Pakistani Punjab* Al Mahrah Governorate* Mahra, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a town in Pakistan* Mahra Sultanate* The Mehri language* Meheri people...
country (today's Yemen) was hazardous. The rugged terrain ruled out motor transport and the survey party had to travel by camel and dhow. Tribal tensions delayed their progress in Al Ghaydah
Al Ghaydah
Al Ghaydah is the capital city of Al Mahrah Governorate in southeastern Yemen. It is located at around ....
as Morton and the expedition doctor were briefly held prisoner. Morton and Wetzel, together with IPC liaison officer, Major Tony Altounyan, went on to carry out a survey of Dhofar province, a province of the Sultan of Oman, Said bin Taimur. The expedition was funded by the oil company with the result that the survey party of three had an escort of 76 camel-borne tribesmen. The resulting survey was completed in March, 1948 and, on their recommendation, IPC abandoned the Dhofar concession in 1950.
In 1949, they returned to the Aden Protectorates to carry out a survey of the territory around Shabwa and Beihan.In the autumn of 1953, Morton led a geological field party to the bedouin well at Thamud, in the Eastern Aden Protectorate.
Iraq
Between 1947 and 1953, while not being employed in southern Arabia, Morton and Wetzel worked together in Iraq, carrying out extensive field work and mapping the MesozoicMesozoic
The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...
outcrops. This work was later incorporated in the Stratigraphic Lexicon of Iraq which remains a key reference.
Pre-war geological investigations in Iraq had been suspended as a result of civil disturbances, and were not resumed until 1946 when ‘a planned campaign of stratigraphic research was set afoot’. Under the overall charge of Colonel Henson, the project involved a vast amount of fieldwork and laboratory studies. René Wetzel directed most of the work in Kurdistan, the Sinjar and the western desert, assisted by Morton and a number of other geologists such as Dr R.G.S. Hudson (‘Doc’), Charles André, Harold Dunnington and Henry Hotchkiss over a period of six years. Deeper wells were drilled to locate older deposits: this resulted in oil being discovered in the Middle Cretaceous at Ain Zalah, Kirkuk and Bai Hasan.
Morton and Wetzel ran a number of photographic, stratigraphic and structural sections, and surveys, in various parts of Kurdistan,
in order to define the attitude and composition of the strata within the concession areas. The information from these and measured sections led to a number of prospective oil-reservoir rocks being defined.
Oman
In 1948, Morton was posted to Qatar and then to Oman. IPC was particularly interested in opening up a mountain pass through the Wadi Jizzi. The strategic importance of this pass was explained by the Chief Geologist of the company in the following terms: "The transportation of development materials through Wadi Jizzi to Hafit or other favourable structure (which some day may be drilled), with the possibility of shipping oil out (if found) would eliminate a long haul around the tip of the Oman Peninsula where living conditions are better (though not good) and political security is greater." In February 1949, Morton took part in an expedition led by IPC Liaison Officer Edward Firth HendersonEdward Firth Henderson
Edward Firth Henderson CMG was a British diplomat who was a prominent figure in the Persian Gulf region, where he spent most of his life furthering Britain's relations with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain.After serving in the Middle East during World War II, "a switch from the...
through the Wadi Jizzi which resulted in a shooting incident but no casualties. This, together with the occupation of the village of Hamasa in the Buraimi Oasis by a Saudi Arabian contingent in 1952, led to IPC operations in central Oman being shelved.
In February 1954 IPC renewed its efforts to explore central Oman with its "Operation DEF", a plan to land a party of oil company personnel and troops at Duqm
Duqm
Duqm is a port town on the Arabian Sea, in central-eastern Oman.Duqm was a small fishing settlement of the Janubah tribe on the coast of southern Oman where a party of soldiers of the Muscat and Oman Field Force and geologists of Petroleum Development Oman was landed in February 1954 to begin the...
on the southern coast. Morton, having been appointed to lead the geological field party from Duqm to Jebel Fahud
Fahud
Fahud is a permanent oil camp and oil field in the middle of the central plain area of Oman, named after the nearby Jebel Fahud believed to mean "Leopard Mountain" from the time when wild leopards used to roam the area...
in Oman, handed over the Thamud expedition to his colleague, Ziad Beydoun, in order to join the Duqm landings. The field party reached Jebel Fahud in October of that year. During the next two years, while IPC drilled for oil at Fahud, Morton and his team of geologists and a surveyor, Nick Fallon, mapped the central areas of Oman. Although IPC's attempts to find oil in Oman were unsuccessful, Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...
as the major partner in the reconstituted company, Petroleum Development of Oman, subsequently located a major oilfield at Fahud which extended to within a few hundred metres of the original well. In November 1955, a few days after the expulsion of the Saudi Arabian contingent from Hamasa, Morton and his field party reached Al Buraimi
Al Buraimi
Al Buraimi is the newest governorate of Oman which was split from the Ad Dhahirah region.Until October, 2006, the area was part of Ad Dhahirah region. At this time, the new governorate was created from the wilayats Al Buraymi and Mahdah...
.
In 1957, Morton was appointed Senior Geologist, Persian Gulf. In 1959, he attended the 5th World Petroleum Congress and delivered a paper entitled ‘’The Geology of Oman’’ which became a standard reference for those studying the geology of Arabia. This was described by the Chief Geologist of IPC, N.E. Baker as follows: “The factual geological data represent a vast amount of arduous field work by himself and his colleagues. This is a major contribution to the geology of southern Arabia, ranking along with Lees’ (George Martin Lees
George Martin Lees
George Martin Lees Military Cross DFC FRS was a British soldier, geologist and leading authority on the geology of the Middle East.-Early life and military service:...
) early work on the geology of Oman. The present contribution embraces knowledge gained from photo-geology, surface examinations, geophysical surveys, and subsurface studies of the results of eight deep wells drilled in the area. Hence, it constitutes a solid foundation for future regional studies.”
Qatar and Abu Dhabi
Morton first went to Qatar in December 1948 in order to work on Jebel Dukhan, the oil-bearing structure of that country. In 1962, he became head of the geological department of the IPC asscoate companies, the Qatar Petroleum Company (QPC) and the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Companies (ADPC). During this time the massive Bu Hasa oil field was discovered in Abu Dhabi. He moved to Abu Dhabi with his family in 1966, continuing in ADPC as review geologist, Persian Gulf, until his retirement from the company in 1971.Musandam expedition
Later in 1971, Morton was appointed deputy leader of the Royal Geographical SocietyRoyal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...
(RGS) expedition to the Musandam
Musandam
Musandam Governorate is a governorate of Oman.Geographically, the Musandam peninsula juts into the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entry into the Persian Gulf, from the Arabian Peninsula. The Musandam peninsula is an exclave of Oman, separated from the rest of the country by the United Arab Emirates...
Peninsula in Oman. This followed the lifting of a 50-year ban on foreigners being allowed to visit the area on account of tribal sensitivities. The expedition, led by Norman Falcon FRS, formerly Chief Geologist with BP
BP
BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...
, was regarded as one of the Society's most successful in recent times, although Falcon himself admitted that the terrain had made research difficult. The party included geologists, biologists, archaeologists, ethnographers and surveyors and resulted in the publication of a number of important papers about the region.
Consultancy work
In the 1972–73 season, Morton led an eight man team of MobilMobil
Mobil, previously known as the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, was a major American oil company which merged with Exxon in 1999 to form ExxonMobil. Today Mobil continues as a major brand name within the combined company, as well as still being a gas station sometimes paired with their own store or On...
geologists to Oman and the United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...
. He then undertook varied consulting advice before being employed by Marathon Oil
Marathon Oil
Marathon Oil Corporation is a United States-based oil and natural gas exploration and production company. Principal exploration activities are in the United States, Norway, Equatorial Guinea, Angola and Canada. Principal development activities are in the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway,...
, Syria, in oil exploration. Between 1980-1, he advised the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
in respect of oil prospectivity in Turkey, and he was involved in a survey of the Marib area of Yemen for Hunt Oil which ultimately resulted in the discovery of the first oil field in that country, the Asif field, in 1984.
The geology of Oman
Morton’s 1959 paper touched on one of the most intriguing aspects of the geology of Oman: how oceanic crust, known as Semail ophiolite, came to occur all around the Hajar mountains and Jebel Akhdar, the "Green Mountain". The theory supported by Morton and others - Tschopp (1967) and Wilson (1969)) - was that these igneous rocks had essentially flowed into position. Lees (1928) had earlier proposed a huge thrust sheet, the Semail Nappe, based on his observations in the Oman Mountains, and on his knowledge of the Alps and of the Zagros. As evidence of plate tectonics grew, a development of Lees' theory (Glennie (1974)) emerged. This postulated that, as the continents moved together, a slab of ocean crust from the ancient Tethys Ocean had been pushed over the continental margin for hundreds of kilometres about 87-76 million years ago. However, a leading proponent of the ‘in-situ’ theory, Hugh Wilson, observed that the major displacement surfaces were not prominent in the field and that he had seen more evidence of extension than compression in the Oman Mountains. Glennie (2001) remains a spirited critique of most of Wilson’s arguments. Almost all later authors interpret the Semail ophiolite as thrust, or obducted, probably due to a short period of subduction close to the margin of the Arabian plate.Retirement
Morton retired from the oil business in 1984 and lived in the village of Llansantffraid-ym-MechainLlansantffraid-ym-Mechain
Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain is a village and community in Powys, Mid-Wales, close to the border with Shropshire, about south west of Oswestry....
in Powys, Wales. He died on 22 November 2003. His pioneering work in Oman, and that of his colleague, Don Sheridan, was commemorated in 2010 by the naming of fossils, Desmochitina mortoni and Euconochitina sheridani.
Publications
- Hudson R. G. S., McGuican A., Morton D. M. (1954), "The Structure of the Jebel Hagab area, Trucial Oman", Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London (1954) 110:121–152.
- Morton, D.M. and Wetzel, R., "Expedition to Southern Arabia", IPC magazine, Vol. 5, Nos. 1–4, August—November 1955.
- Wetzel, R. and Morton, D. M. 1959, "Contributions a la Geologie de la Transjordanie" (1959), Mém. Moyen-Orient T. VII; pp. 95–191.
- Van Bellen R.C, Dunnington H.V., R. Wetzel, Morton D.M., Stratigraphic Lexicon of Iraq (France: 1959).http://www.gulfpetrolink.net/spIraqvanbellen/spIraqvanbellenidx.htm
- Morton, D.M., “The Geology of Oman”, 5th World Petroleum Congress, New York.http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/servlet/onepetropreview?id=WPC-8014&soc=WPC&speAppNameCookie=ONEPETRO
External links
- In the Heart of the Desert, Aylesford (2006) ISBN 095522120X the biography of Mike Morton; and Black Gold and Frankincense (2010) ISBN 9789948050797, photographs of southern Arabia by the early oil explorers 1945-71.http://www.greenmountainpress.co.uk
- Obituary: H. Hugh Wilson, “Still Challenging Myths?”, Dr. A. Heward, Al Hajar (journal of the Geological Society of Oman), March 2009, pp. 4–7.http://www.geologyoman.com/gso/Haj%28Mar09%29.pdf