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First Break
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August 2002 - Issue 8 - Volume 20

Biography: The petroleum geologist who helped to map Agips oil and gas fortunes
This month we start what will hopefully be an occasional series by authors from different countries recalling personalities who played a significant part in shaping todays geoscience community, particularly in Europe. Franco di Cesare and Francesco Guidi begin the series with a tribute to Dante Jaboli (19161991), a petroleum geologist who led the exploration effort at Agip in the late sixties and seventies, and did much to put the company and the Italian oil and gas industry on the world map. A few years ago an article in First Break (March 1998) on the topic of Man and Technology expressed doubts about the duality between Man at one end, with his capability to explore the world of unknown geology and technology and, at the other end, all the new methods and technological innovations that seem to push Man into the role of a simple operator of very complex machinery (an immediate result with a single keyboard stroke!). In the eyes of the corporate executive, the petroleum geologist often seems to be like a meteorologist in the good old days, when weather forecasts were not very accurate, not to mention completely wrong. These thoughts came to mind recently when we were looking at photographs taken 42 years ago during a geological campaign made by a team of young geologists in the Libyan Desert, along the AgedabiaGiarabub route. Dante Jaboli, a geologist, was with us briefly during that expedition. In fact it could be said that he contributed importantly to the expansion of Agips exploration activities abroad, beyond the conventional Italian boundaries of interest. Without any doubt, the expansion of Agip started with him as a result of his understanding of the fundamentals of petroleum geology. Jaboli was certainly one of the main instigators of Agips foreign exploration expansion and growth. He started his working career at Agip in 1937, before his graduation in natural sciences, and retired from the company in 1976. Even after retirement he continued to share his wealth of experience and know-how with government agencies by assuming the position of expert consultant in the Hydrocarbon and Geothermal Technical Committee of the Italian Ministry of Industry. Although he was in some ways a difficult and intractable man, it was Jabolis tremendous driving personality and great ingenuity which made him the key player in Agips entry into the many countries which subsequently fuelled the companys growth. Under his guidance, Agip acquired petroleum concessions in Morocco, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, Congo, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Somalia and the North Sea. It was also the time when the Petroleum Law regulating Italys Offshore operations was approved by the Italian Parliament. This was the first law of its kind in Europe, and was later followed by other countries. The concept of oil and gas exploration activity deep offshore became a reality because of his vision and effort. Role of university professors At beginning of the 20th century, Italy and other European countries started to enter the international oil and gas business, but not very many geologists or explorers were available to the industry. The generation of oil finders grew up after many years of activity while developing careers in the shadow of the international oil companies. In Italy, there was no financial holding willing to invest risk capital in the hydrocarbon field. This made Italy a very vulnerable economy with respect to the countrys energy needs for economic expansion. In 1926, the Italian government decided to create a company devoted to exploration and production for oil and gas. That company was named Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), an entity with risk capital to be committed to domestic and foreign E&P activities and specifically to playing a fundamental role in the world energy arena. In the 1930s, Agip was able to attract many technical and skilled graduates who developed into industry experts as they worked in the drilling and production activities of those days. It was, however, difficult to find petroleum geologists, so it was necessary to find and borrow geological talents from the universities. Among the university professors involved with the Agip effort we must mention Guido Bonarelli, who had left academia at the beginning of the century and had worked abroad for over 20 years, with major oil companies in areas such as the Balkans, Borneo and Argentina. At the very beginning Agips exploration activity was co-ordinated and handled by university professors, who are credited for having identified the strategic elements of oil and gas exploration in Italy and abroad. In 1927, Bonarelli returned to Italy from Argentina to work with Agip on a permanent basis. Ramiro Fabiani and Michele Gortani were instrumental in igniting hydrocarbon exploration in Sicily and Eastern Africa, while Ardito Desio carried out exploration work in Libya from 1938 until 1941, before geological activities were interrupted by WWII. However, Agips goal was to create its own exploration department in association with distinguished university professors. At the end of the 1930s, Agip employed a group of young geologists with degrees in natural sciences, because a faculty of geology was not yet in existence in Italian academic programmes. It is interesting to recall the names of those young professionals who embarked on the profession of petroleum geologist: Luigi Prosdocimo, Leonida Coggi, Renzo Di Nasso, Giovanni Flores, Ottavio Binetti, Giancarlo Facca, Lido Lucchetti and Dante Jaboli. Tiziano Rocco, a brilliant geophysicist, convinced the Italian authorities to import from the USA a seismic crew from Western Geophysical. This opened the door to discoveries of rich gas fields in the Po Valley. Rocco was named Agips general director of exploration from 1951 to 1968. At the end of the WWII, Agips exploration department was strengthened under the vigorous leadership of Enrico Mattei, who elected to guide the company with its own international strategy and structure. During Agips initial growth phase, the strong personality and technical capabilities of Dante Jaboli allowed him to shine. He guided the exploration division during the period from 1968 to 1976 by expanding the company asset portfolio with very positive results and leasing of new prospective acreage. Jabolis formative years Born in Bologna on 28 February 1916, Jaboli completed his studies in that city and graduated in natural sciences in 1940 under Professor Michele Gortani. At that time, he developed a great relationship with Professor Carlo Migliorini (KuenenMigliorini, theory of composed wedges) who taught at the Bologna University and was a part time geological consultant with Agip. In 1936, Migliorini left Italy for East Africa to head an Agip field campaign. Jaboli had the opportunity to participate, having been assigned to the project as a technical assistant (even though he had not yet graduated from the university). The objective of the campaign was to conduct geological surveys in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Jaboli considered the experience as one of the most important of his life, one that he liked to recall from time to time. The geological campaign involved surveying in Dancalia (Eritrea), considered to be one of the most desolate deserts in the world, and in the Ethiopias Harar plateau. Jaboli returned to Italy in 1938, graduated in 1940 and was assigned to Agips exploration department under the guidance of Professor Carlo Migliorini.

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7/4/13

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A few months later he had to stop work as he was called up for army duty. The Armistice of 8 September 1943 found Jaboli in Dalmatia, where he was captured by the Germans and deported to Germany because he refused to join the Italian Social Republic. He was liberated by the Allies in May 1945 from the prison camp of Wietgendorf, located inside the Bremen-Hamburg-Hannover triangle. As soon as he returned to Italy, he resumed his exploration work for Agip. Post-war exploration push Following his return, Jaboli found Agip completely dismantled by the events of the war. Nevertheless the post-war president Enrico Mattei was rebuilding the company, having set the focus of its activity on the Caviaga gas field, which was the first large gas field to be discovered in Western Europe. At that time, the structural organization of Agip was still somewhat chaotic and there was no centralised headquarters. In fact, some departments were located in Milan, and others in the cities of the Po valley. The exploration department was located in the town of Ossago, near Lodi, where Jaboli had been assigned, together with other geologists who would leave their mark on Italian petroleum exploration. In 1953 Jaboli started his activity focused on the acquisition of acreage and, as technical advisor to the president, this was when he registered some of his best accomplishments. In 1956 he organised the World Gas Congress in Milan where he illustrated how Italy had become the first producing country in Western Europe. In fact, this gas production had reached a peak of 5 billion m3, compared with 100 million m3 in 1947. Foreign exploration In 1957, Jaboli was appointed director of foreign exploration. These were years of intense activity and growth and he travelled continuously abroad, especially in key areas such as Iran where he initiated tremendous activity. He was instrumental in acquiring the Persian Gulf and Zagros permits, where important oil fields were discovered: these were his personal successes. The main oilfields were Barghan Sar and Endijan, offshore and Rig and Doudrou in the Zagros mountains, at an elevation of more than 3000 m, a world record in those days. In 1961, Jaboli was appointed to head the new venture exploration activity and he evaluated all the world sedimentary basins with a team of young and brilliant geologists. This resulted in multiple permit acquisitions, the most significant of which were in Tunisia, Nigeria, Congo, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Egypt, Iran, Libya and Somalia. Another significant achievement was Agips entry into the North Sea before oil and gas had been discovered. In 1965, Jabolis intuition led to a participation agreement trade with Phillips Petroleum. The trade allowed Phillips to participate in Agips Niger Delta blocks while Agip gained participation in Phillips North Sea UK blocks. Shortly after this, Agip and Phillips jointly acquired acreage in the Norwegian North Sea sector. At the time of the death of the president Mattei (27 October 1962) the oil market was very depressed and many companies were choosing to purchase oil rather than embark on the exploration-to-production cycle. The new president seemed inclined to reduce Agips exploration and production activities abroad. Jaboli found himself embroiled in a very difficult task: he had to convince public opinion that the search for oil was a difficult but necessary task. The small oil fields discovered in Sicily and Abruzzi prompted the media to assume that Italy was in fact floating over a sea of oil. The result of his work was summarized in the so called White Paper, produced in 1963, where he explained the differences between Italy and the main producing countries of that period, both in technical and in legal terms. He demonstrated the necessity for Agip to continue its exploration activity, especially because the discoveries of the time were a worthwhile achievement but were not generating tangible oil production. The document gave rise to lengthy discussion at both government and corporate levels. Jaboli was successful, and when oil prices started to rise, Agip and Italy had the opportunity to play a rewarding role in the complex world of petroleum. Brilliance in Nigeria Forty years ago, some young geologists had the luck to work under the direct guidance of Jaboli when he was evaluating the blocks relinquished by Shell in Nigeria. In 19601961 the Anglo-Dutch had to relinquish 50% of the oil prospecting licences they held in Nigeria. Agip had decided to apply for the relinquished areas. This was a difficult task because no geological information was available on the sedimentary basin and tectonic shape of the subsurface. Jaboli had available only a few scanty pieces of information. In terms of technical data Agip had only the AAPG Bulletin drilling statistics published in those years in the July issue. The first step was to prepare a map of isototal depth of the wells as derived from the AAPG drilling statistics. The isobaths gave a glimpse of the underground structures and they perfectly matched the information derived from the orientations of the areas retained by Shell as well as with the bonuses requested by the Nigerian Government. It was a brilliant speculative process crowned by success: those were days when many sedimentary basins in the world were not yet explored and the key of success was to arrive there first. Jaboli had the intuition that in many sedimentary basins most of the oil is accumulated in the big structural traps. So it was essential to position the company early in the exploration phase of a given area to make discoveries and achieve economic success. And thats exactly what he did. Offshore law One of Jabolis main achievements was his contribution to the 1967 Italian law which regulated the research and production of hydrocarbons on the continental platform. He worked for almost two years on the project and added immense value to the legislation which would later be considered a model for other European countries. Actually the first offshore well in Western Europe was drilled by Agip in 1957 in Sicily, offshore Gela and few months later in the Adriatic Sea, close to Ravenna. The Adriatic Sea turned out to be a great gas producing basin where discoveries were made almost 10 years before gas was found in the UK North Sea. Head of exploration On 1 March, 1968, Jaboli was appointed general director for exploration, replacing Tiziano Rocco, and until 1976 he headed Agips exploration efforts achieving remarkable successes. He was assisted by Oreste DAgostino, who would take over his position upon his retirement. Jabolis role gave a vital impulse to Agips world wide exposure and expansion and, among his visions, he had the merit of foreseeing offshore exploration in water depth greater than 300 m, which seemed to be a technological limit in the 1960s. In the early 1970s Jaboli was the promoter of the Seagap Project, a four companies joint venture (Agip, Phillips, Getty and Hispanoil) committed to build a drilling ship, named Seven Seas Discoverer, suitable for drilling in water depths up to 1500 m. The joint venture drilled a dozen wells, all of them in water depths of more than 1000 m in different countries, gaining invaluable geological information and operational experience. The world record was reached in 1976, offshore Congo, with the Sanga 1 well drilled in almost 1500 m. The Seagap experience gave Agip its own deep water operational know-how which turned out to be rather useful in the development of the Aquila oil field in Adriatic Sea, offshore Brindisi, in water depth of 850 m. Jaboli left Agip in October 1976, having reached retirement age. In the following 12 years he continued to be active as a member of the Hydrocarbon and Geothermic Committee which was an advising body to the Ministry of Industry on Italian upstream decisions. He died in Bologna on 13 May, 1991 on a nice and clear day: the sun was shining on his achievements. Back
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