George Martin Lees

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George Martin Lees
Born(1898-04-16)16 April 1898
St. Andrew's College
Known formapping of oil fields in the middle east and Britain
SpouseHilda Frances Andrews
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsGeology

George Martin Lees MC DFC FRS[2] (16 April 1898 – 5 January 1955) was a British soldier, geologist and leading authority on the geology of the Middle East.[3]

Early life and military service

Lees was born on 16 April 1898 at

Southern Kurdistan, which had been established as a buffer state between Persians and Arabs under British control to prevent future wars. In the summer of 1919 Lees acted as an advisor to the local ruler, Sheikh Mahmoud, who betrayed the British and attempted to set up his own kingdom; Lees was besieged in his house by hundreds of armed men, and only escaped through trickery.[4] He had to beat a hasty retreat on horseback to Khanaquin. When he returned to the area in 1930, he drank tea with the local headman who claimed he had his "fingers on the trigger" when Lees had ridden past 10 years before.[5]

Geological work

Persia

Lees returned to England in 1921, and handed in his resignation. Following studies at the

British Association in 1928.[8]

Oman

From 1925 to 1926 Lees surveyed Oman with K. Washington Gray, the resulting papers (given to the

Arabian plate.[13]

Bahrain

Immediately following his Oman expedition, in early 1926, Lees was posted to Bahrain. While accepting that there were oil prospects in Cretaceous or older rocks, he gave it a distinctly low rating in comparison with the numerous Asmari Limestone prospects available in the region generally, most of them in Persia or Iraq. Lees' views at that time were greatly influenced by De Böckh, who considered Bahrain unlikely to yield oil in comparable quantity with structures in the Zagros foothills and had doubts whether any important amount would be found where the Asmari Limestone is missing (which it was in Bahrain). Lister James, who had been favourably impressed with Bahrain several years earlier, was still chief geologist for Anglo-Persian but De Böckh had been retained as the company's chief geological adviser for several years, and his opinion, supplemented by the report of Lees, prevailed with the management.[14] At a lecture he delivered a few months before the discovery of oil in Bahrain, Lees summed up the evidence for and against finding oil in commercial quantities in Bahrain as an even chance. Lees came down on the side of the doubters, famously declaring that he would "drink any commercial oil found in Bahrain".[15]

Qatar

After his assignment to Bahrain, Lees proceeded to Qatar to fend off the interest of Major Frank Holmes who had approached the sheikh for an oil concession. Lees visited Doha and made a one-day trip to a few outcrops of Qatar, which he rightly identified as Eocene limestone exposed on the crest of a gently-dipping anticline. Before leaving, Lees also obtained permission from the sheikh to explore the sheikhdom for the following two years.[16] He did not visit the most promising oil prospect, Jebel Dukhan, and his prediction of finding oil was generally pessimistic, although he qualified this with the statement that "if…Bahrain be drilled and proved successful, similar conditions may apply at Qatar."[17] The concession was allowed to lapse but, when oil was indeed stuck on Bahrain in 1933, Anglo-Persian began serious negotiations for an oil concession for Qatar, which they obtained in 1935. Then, on account of the Red Line Agreement, the company transferred the concession to the Qatar Petroleum Company, an associate company of the Iraq Petroleum Company.

Appointment as Chief Geologist, Anglo-Persian Oil Company

From 1928 to 1930, Lees examined the company organisation and oil prospects in Germany, Canada, Egypt and the United States, as well as surveying fields in Kermanshah and Iraqi Kurdistan. On 1 November 1930, at the age of 32, he was appointed Chief Geologist of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. During the 1930s, although the international spread of exploration was reduced, he was responsible for mapping the company's entire concessionary area and selecting the most promising 100,000 square miles (260,000 km2) in accordance with the concession agreement of 1933. It was the earliest comprehensive survey of Persia, and the foundation of all subsequent knowledge. One aspect of this work was the increasing use of geophysicists, which Lees welcomed, but it caused some friction between traditional geologists and modern geophysicists.[18]

United Kingdom

In the late 1930s Lees initiated the search for oil in the United Kingdom. Although his efforts were not rewarded by conspicuous commercial results during his lifetime, limited success was achieved at Eakring in Nottinghamshire where the first British oilfield provided useful supplies during World War II. This work also helped to discover new coal fields.

World War II

During the war, Lees was seconded to the Petroleum Division of the Ministry of Fuel and Power. He accompanied the American geologist Everette Lee DeGolyer to Persia in 1944 when De Golyer was assessing the reserves of the Middle East. De Golyer made the memorable prediction that the centre of gravity of world oil production was shifting from the Gulf Caribbean area to the Middle East.[18]

Awards and achievements

For his exploration work in Britain and the Middle East, Lees was awarded the Bigsby Medal in 1943, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1948.[19] From 1951 to 1952 he served as president of the Geological Society of London, the first industrial geologist to be so honoured. In 1951, he addressed the World Petroleum Congress on the oilfields of the Middle East, giving one of the earliest lectures illustrated with slides. In 1954, he received the Sidney Powers Memorial Medal from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the highest American geological medal, never before conferred on a non-American.[20]

In the Second Presidential Address to members of the Geological Society in 1953, Lees described his vision of the wonders of geology: "I have sat in contemplation on the Kerry rocks of south-western Ireland and seen the great Hercynian ranges warping downwards through a magnificent fiord phase of drowned valleys into the water of the Atlantic; I have observed with awe and wonder the inspiring view of the Armorican ranges confidently striking into the turbulent Atlantic at the Point du Raz, Finistère, and I have seen the great Atlas Mountains with their component subdivisions heading strongly seaward; I have seen the Arabian and Indian coasts, made a complete circuit of Australia and traversed the Pacific; I have seen the Californian edge of the American continent and the great drowned valleys of the British Columbian coasts; I have seen the bevelled stumps of the one time mountains of Nova Scotia striking freely into the Atlantic and I have traversed the eastern seaboard of the United States to the point of Florida and the Antilles loop to Trinidad and into Venezuela."[18]

Personal

Martin Lees married Hilda Andrews in London in 1931:[21] the marriage produced one recorded son, born in 1933.[22]

Retirement and death

Lees' health suffered with the demands of all his activities, and he retired to Essex in 1953. Although he had apparently recovered, he died in London on 25 January 1955.[20][23][24]

References

  1. ^ Degolyer, E. (July 1954). "George Martin Lees, Powers Memorial medalist". AAPG Bulletin. 38 (7): 1627–1630.
  2. ^
    doi:10.1098/rsbm.1955.0012
    .
  3. ^ Portraits of George Martin Lees at the National Portrait Gallery, London
  4. ^ Arkell (1955) p.163
  5. ^ F.E. Wellings, note to Trek of the Oil Finders by E.W. Owen, pp. 1285, 1288.
  6. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/34473. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  7. ^ Conversation of Dr. R.W. Ferrier and N.L. Falcon on 3 February 1973, File 135500, BP Archive, Warwick University.
  8. ^ Arkell (1955) p.164
  9. ^ Arkell (1955) p.165
  10. ^ Lees, G.M.,"The Geology and tectonics of Oman and of parts of south-eastern Arabia", The Quarterly Journal of the Geographical Society, 1928, 336, pp. 585–670.
  11. ISBN 0-901360-35-X
    .
  12. ^ "The Age of the Hawasina and Other Problems of Oman Mountain Geology, Journal of Petroleum Geology, 2001, discussion by Glennie, 24, 477–484.
  13. doi:10.1130/0016-7606(1999)111<0104:TSOAOO>2.3.CO;2
    .
  14. ^ Trek of the Oil Finders, E.W. Owen, (1975), p. 1324.
  15. ^ Archibald H.T. Chisholm, The First Kuwait Oil Concession Agreement: A Record of the Negotiations, 1911–34, (London, 1975), p. 162, note 59.
  16. ^ "Qatar Oil Discoveries", Rasoul Sorkhabi, Geo Expro, No. 1 of 2010, p. 42-47.[1] Archived 12 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  17. ^ Report of G.M. Lees of 21 March 1926, file 135500, BP Archive, Warwick University.
  18. ^ a b c "George Martin Lees", file 135500, BP Archive.
  19. ^ Arkell (1955) p.166
  20. ^ a b Arkell (1955) p.169
  21. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
  22. ^ "Person Page".
  23. ^ "George Martin Lees", file 135500, BP Archive
  24. ^ "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 11 August 2014.
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