In the Heart of the Desert

The decision of the British Government in 1912 to convert its naval ships from coal to oil set in motion one of the greatest periods of exploration of the twentieth century, the search for oil in the Middle East. In 1945, after a lull caused by the Second World War, exploration was set to expand again and twenty-one year old Douglas Michael ("Mike") Morton embarked on an empty troop ship bound for Palestine to begin his career as a geologist with the Iraq Petroleum Company.

Arriving in Jerusalem, Mike soon found himself surrounded by the Arab-Jewish conflict which led to the bombing of the King David Hotel. Then moving to Iraq, Mike and his colleague René Wetzel unravelled the geology of many parts of nothern Iraq. Their field work in the 1940s and 1950s has never been repeated and is the foundation of our knowledge of Mesozoic outcrops. The results, incorporated in the Stratigraphic Lexicon of Iraq (Centre Nationale de Recherches Scientifique: 1959), continues to be used by geologists, geophysicists and students to this day.

Mike Morton and René Wetzel in 1948

During a series of ground-breaking expeditions in southern Arabia between 1947 and 1954, Mike travelled where the famous Arabian explorer, Wilfred Thesiger, had feared to tread: the mysterious Mahra country. Expedition leader Major Tony Altounyan was advised by "one very old and expert resident of Aden...to carry, hidden on my person, a small weapon or a phial of poison for use on myself to end the final agonies of torture!" Mike also visited other parts of the Aden Protectorates such as Shabwa, Beihan and the Bedouin well at Thamud.

Plane crash in the desert, 1955

In 1954, Mike was posted to Oman where the first attempts to explore for oil from the north were overtaken by the so-called "Buraimi Dispute". He took part in Operation DEF, the "invasion of a foreign land”, when the interior of Oman was opened up to the modern world and oil was eventually found at Jebel Fahud, the "Leopard Mountain". In 1959, Mike presented a paper entitled The Geology of Oman to the 5th World Petroleum Congress in New York. Recently, the pioneering work in Oman of Mike and his colleague, Don Sheridan, has been commemorated in the naming of fossils, Desmochitina mortoni and Euconochitina sheridani.

Spudding in Fahud Well No. 1, Oman, 1956

His story moved to Qatar, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi in the days before the oil boom. He was in charge of geological operations in Abu Dhabi when the massive Bu Hasa oilfield was discovered. In 1971, Mike was appointed deputy leader of a Royal Geographical Society expedition and travelled to one of the remotest parts of Arabia, the Musandam Peninsula. Finally, in 1984, working for the Hunt Oil Company, Mike helped to find the first commercial oil in Yemen.

In the Heart of the Desert is the biography of Mike Morton written by his son. It describes an extraordinary world and a rich parade of characters: autonomous sheikhs and their fiercely independent tribes, nomadic Bedouins, colourful ex-patriots and a group of intrepid geologists driven by an oil company’s search for oil. Mike struck a distinctive figure and, being red-haired with a sometimes fiery temper, the Bedouin called him Shaib al-Ahmar, “Angry Red Man”. The author in his book, In the Heart of the Desert, presents a detailed and thoroughly researched account of his father’s life which culminates in the story of his own journey to southern Arabia and a poignant meeting of the present with the past.

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Reviews

"Mr Morton has created a remarkable book that boasts more than 100 photographs. It will interest anyone who shares Mike's obvious passion for the Middle East, particularly the places off the beaten track." Jo Parfitt, The Telegraph

"This thoroughly researched book is a biography of Mike Morton, an exploration geologist, written by his son who has used his father's journals, correspondence, notes, sketches and photographs to give a fascinating account of the early days in the search for oil." Julian Paxton, The British-Yemeni Society Journal 2007

"An account of that [the Fahud] expedition, fraught with both peril and adventure, is detailed in an absorbing new book titled In the Heart of the Desert...it provides fascinating insights into the search for oil in Oman and the wider Middle East region." Oman Daily Observer

"[In the Heart of the Desert] is well illustrated throughout by Morton’s poems and sketches, together with numerous photographs of these early expeditions and early concession maps of the region. While the book is primarily aimed at the non-technical layman, it contains much that anyone interested in the early oil exploration of the Middle East will find fascinating." American Association of Petroleum Geologists' Bulletin

"Quentin Morton is to be congratulated on finding a way to describe his father's extraordinary life and to show how he came to love his work, the countries he worked in and the people of those countries and over all, the desert. [In the Heart of the Desert] is well illustrated with photographs and sketch maps and will enthral anyone with an interest in the countries it describes... It is highly recommended." The Journal of the Sultan's Armed Forces Association