If There’s Oil in Paris, This Elf Plans to Find It

The City of Light is a treasure trove of cultural, archeological and historical gems. Oil companies hope it also holds black gold.

Societe Nationale Elf Aquitaine plans to begin drilling an exploratory oil well today on the southern doorstep of Paris at Ivry-sur-Seine--the first of several wells in a program that also envisions exploring within the city itself.

“I don’t think Paris will ever be Houston,” said Jean Perrot, Elf’s assistant director of exploration in France. “But there is still oil to be found in the Paris Basin.”

The basin is a 50,000-square-mile expanse stretching eastward from Paris to the West German frontier.

Exploration surged in the basin after the discovery in April, 1983, of considerable oil deposits at the Chaunoy field, which is in a rural region about 50 miles south of the capital best known for its tender white Brie cheese.

The Ivry site, barely a mile outside the Paris city limits, is being explored under a permit awarded in December, 1985, to Elf, Total Compagnie Francaise des Petroles and British Petroleum. The 587 square miles covered by the permit includes the city of Paris, where limited seismic tests already have been carried out.

Millions Already Spent

It will take up to four weeks to determine whether Ivry contains marketable reserves, and whether they might extend inside the city. But, Perrot said, “it is quasi-certain that even with a total failure in Ivry, there will be other exploratory wells.”

Total said it definitely will drill an exploratory well, likely before the end of the year.

In their exploration campaign, the companies say they have already spent more than the 70 million francs--about $11.6 million--required under the five-year permit, mostly for seismic tests.

There are more than 1,000 exploratory wells in the Paris Basin, which produces nearly two-thirds of France’s modest oil output.

The Ivry well is the first to be drilled so close to Paris.