Max Steineke

Max Steineke 1938

Max Steineke ( March 1898 in Brookings , Oregon ; † April 1952 in Los Altos , California ) was an American petroleum geologist who, as chief geologist of Saudi Aramco and its predecessor Casoc, found the first large, commercially rich oil deposits in Saudi Arabia .

Early years

Steineke was one of nine children of a German immigrant. He left home when he was 12 to work in a sawmill in Crescent City , California. A teacher he met there encouraged him to continue his education and he studied geology from 1917 at Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in 1921. He then worked as a petroleum geologist in California, Alaska, Canada, Columbia and New Zealand.

Work for Saudi Aramco

In 1934 he came to Saudi Arabia as a geologist for the recently founded Saudi Aramco and became chief geologist there in 1936. In the spring of 1937 he led a motorized prospecting trip for oil through Saudi Arabia, and the geographical and geological knowledge he gained formed the basis for all further explorations (which ultimately led to the discoveries of the enormous oil fields of Ghawar , Abqaiq , Qatif). Previously, drilling began in 1934 in the area of the small fishing village of Dammam , which geologists Schuyler "Krug" Henry, Robert "Bert" Miller and JW "Soak" Hoover explored in 1933 and selected for test drilling. After initial failures, at Steineke's insistence, the drilling was done deeper (deeper than expected from experience from the oil discoveries in nearby Bahrain ) and in one last attempt (Steineke had recently had trouble in San Francisco to get the board of directors of Saudi Aramco to continue searching in Saudi Arabia move) was encountered on March 3, 1938 at a depth of 1,400 m (4,727 feet) in well No. 7 (of a total of 10 previously unsuccessful holes) on a productive oil field, which alone in No. 7 at the end of the month 3,000 barrels per day delivered. In 1939 five more wells were drilled in the Dammam field and in 1940 another seven were started, so that in 1940 of 11 wells supplied oil and four gas. There were also setbacks, for example Dammam No. 12 exploded in July 1939. In the same year, Steineke made another find 45 miles south and opened up the Abqaiq oil field. Headquarters was in Dhahran . On May 1, 1939, the Saudi King visited Dhahran when the first tanker picked up his cargo of oil.

The exploratory drilling methods he developed were also very successful in other prospections, for example the discovery of the largest oil field in Saudi Arabia and worldwide, Ghawar . In 1951 he received the Sidney Powers Memorial Medal from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists .

Steineke continued his work for Saudi Aramco in World War II (as the only remaining geologist besides Robert Bramkamp and Thomas C. Barger) - however, the exploration was stopped during this time in order to secure production. In 1944 the company was renamed from California Arabic Standard Oil Company (Casoc), a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California (Socal), to Aramco (Arabian American Oil Company). He stayed in Saudi Arabia until 1950 when a chronic illness that began in 1948 forced him to withdraw. He moved to Los Altos, California. His successor as chief geologist was the paleontologist Robert Bramkamp.

An endowed professorship at Stanford University is named after him.

Web links

Obituary from Aramco 1952, Aramco Expats
Thomas C. Barger, The birth of a dream, Saudi Aramco World, May / June 1984
Early history of the Saudi Aramco ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (English, PDF; 10 MB); Chapter 1 from: Thomas A. Pledge: Saudi Aramco and its people: a history of training . Ed .: Ali M. Dialdin, Muhammad A. Tahlawi. Saudi Arabian Oil Company, 1998, ISBN 0-9601164-4-3 .

Individual evidence

↑ Only Jerry Harriss and Walt Hoag remained of the original geologists (who had fallen out among each other and did not speak to each other) and Thomas C. Barger was added at the end of 1937
↑ In October 1940 the Italians bombed Dhahran.
↑ Both had previously worked closely together at the same level, but there were always arguments. While Steineke didn’t mind being corrected later, even at the risk of being able to deliver his reports quickly without a thorough study of the literature, which was not possible on site at the time, Bramkamp was reluctant to do so.

personal data
SURNAME	Steineke, Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American geologist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH	Brookings , Oregon
DATE OF DEATH	April 1952
Place of death	Los Altos , California

[1] Only Jerry Harriss and Walt Hoag remained of the original geologists (who had fallen out among each other and did not speak to each other) and Thomas C. Barger was added at the end of 1937

[2] In October 1940 the Italians bombed Dhahran.

[3] Both had previously worked closely together at the same level, but there were always arguments. While Steineke didn’t mind being corrected later, even at the risk of being able to deliver his reports quickly without a thorough study of the literature, which was not possible on site at the time, Bramkamp was reluctant to do so.