Early Petroleum Exploration in PNG

I went to PNG with Continental Oil Company in 1969, working on seismic exploration surveys in the Sepik and Ramu valleys. In 1970/1, I worked on the seismic survey by the Emarex in the Fly and Strickland rivers and Lake Murray, both the operations and the interpretation.

During the work in the Sepik, I became interested in the history of an oil well, called Marienberg-1 or Ormildah-1, drilled in the 1920s near the mission settlement of Marienberg.  The results of that first and (then) only well in the basin were important to us, the more so because one of our survey lines went through the well location, but virtually nothing was known  

Previous efforts by others to locate information by researching the exploration company, Ormildah Oil, had been unsuccessful, so I began investigating the life of Harold Jensen, who was mentioned in a short Government report as the geologist who mapped the wellsite and analyzed the results. When we finally located his extensive personal papers at the John Oxley Library in Brisbane, Queensland, we found all the answers, including maps, photographs and well logs. Later, we found the well samples in a backroom cupboard at the (then) Bureau of Mineral Resources, Canberra.   

I wrote a long Conoco report on the search and results, and summarized that in a paper for the 1990 PNG Symposium. Photographs of the rig and Jensen’s field work as well as photos I took in 1969/70 of the well site and old drilling equipment at Marienberg are available here in the Marienberg-1 and Dr H. Jensen galleries. 

In the course of that research I came across other material about other early oil exploration efforts in PNG, such as the Barum River Oil Company, and I have made it available here because it might be useful to others interested in the history of the search for oil in PNG.

Attachments

Preliminary Notes on the Barum River Oil Company Limited. — 1.2 MB PDF File Download
Marienberg-1, Sepik Basin. — 929.5 KB PDF File Download