A report of the first year's work on the American Petroleum Institute's research project on the "origin and environment of possible source beds of petroleum." In order to obtain a measure of the organic content of recent deposits from a number of different types of environments, so that possibly some one area may be found where possible "source beds" are actually accumulating today, the dried sediment is distilled in the same manner that oil shales are assayed. Of the forty-five samples that have been distilled to date, all types of sediment, ranging from sand to clay, yielded small amounts of oil. Recent deposits extracted with organic solvents gave but very small yields. Analyses of several different recent sediments show that the organic content in general varies direc ly with the fineness of grain, being low in sands and high in clays. Material from the bottoms of depressions in the sea floor of the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles and the Gulf of Maine seems to be richer in organic content than the adjacent shallower regions.