Well Log Data By Satellite

Everyone is soon to be painfully aware of the rising cost and reduced availability of oil. Those of us whose occupation it is to look for oil know why. It is becoming harder to find and more inaccessible when found. In the quest for new oil it has become necessary to apply both more effort and improved technology in every activity associated with finding oil, from offshore drilling platforms to well completion on the sea floor from transportation, to communication. Communications, which is the subject for this paper, provides the link between the decision makers and distant operations, transmitting data of all types concerning every facet of those operations. The oil community has a reputation for being some of the most loquacious users of the air waves, but it is increasingly obvious that more efficient methods than lengthy conversations on congested and noisy radio channels are urgently needed. For those who are used to a telephone or teletype at every elbow, it is perhaps hard to believe that whenever one steps away from major population centers, the quality of communication rapidly degenerates to the smoke signal level. The familiarity with television programs being beamed across the world by satellite obscures the fact that this technology is barely available to an individual or group in an inaccessible location and then only at a very high price. The more conventional techniques of land line, VHF and UHF radio and microwave are only applicable in particular and special cases. For instance, to use a microwave link from an offshore platform to a shore base requires a tower for a repeator approximately every 25 miles of the distance separating the platform from the shore. So, as our need for communications in remote areas increases we must reluctantly turn to satellite methods; reluctantly because of the expense and when all more traditional methods are inappropriate. During the last two years several domestic satellites have been launched. They are called"domestic" because their intended coverage is the continental U. S. A. They are, in fact, in synchronous stationary orbit above the equator approximately 22,500 miles from any earth station within the U. S. A. beaming signals to or from the satellite.