HGS Legends Night featuring Richard Stoneburner

HGS Legends Night

"Keys To a Successful Career in Oil And Gas Exploration: Opportunism, Perseverance and Relationships (and Some Luck!)" By speaker Richard Stoneburner

Date: Monday, 12 January 2026

Time: 5:30 – 8:30

Location: Perry’s, 9827 Katy Fwy, Houston, TX 77024

Cost: $65 Members, $75 Non-members, $40 Students

Details: Includes plated dinner and two drink tickets

Abstract

Looking back on the almost 50 years since I began my first job as a Petroleum Geologist in January 1977, there are so many learnings, both positive ones and negative, that it is hard to begin trying to provide whatever wisdom I have gained from all the experiences.

Humility clearly is something that every Petroleum Geologist must learn to practice given that we are humbled every time our prospect fails to live up to the dreams that we had for it. We also need to practice humility when we experience the thrill of a discovery knowing that around the corner there could be, and most likely will be, another disappointing failure. 

After considerable thought around what I believe have been keys to my success in the upstream oil and gas industry I have landed on three foundational characteristics that I believe have guided my success.

The first key to success is opportunism.  I am sure we all have faced a situation when success was only going to be achieved if you made a sound, but timely, decision.  Failing to make that sound and timely decision could result in the opportunity no longer being available. The decision to act does not necessarily result in success but success will never be achieved when opportunities are lost.  As it is said in sports, you miss every shot you don’t take.

The second key to success is perseverance.  This can manifest itself in several ways.  It might mean giving up on a prospect because it lacks peer support even though you are convinced of its merits.  It could mean not making the financial commitment necessary to allow a project to succeed even though you are convinced that it has a real chance to be a financial success.  There are many other ways that you one can fail to persevere when doing so might have made a dramatic difference in your career.

The third characteristic is taking advantage of positive relationships and, just as importantly, avoiding negative ones.  This might be the most difficult of the characteristics to control. We have all come across people who were either a mentor or a leader that we decided to listen to, relate to, and be affected by.  Those people quite often helped open doors to your career that would never have been opened without that positive relationship.  It can be even more difficult to make the correct judgment to not be influenced by those negative relationships. If we choose to be involved with people who are not looking after your best interest it can often end with incredibly damaging results.

Lastly, and this is clearly not a controllable characteristic, but every successful Petroleum Geologist has encountered his or her share of luck along the way.  While it is generally out of your hands, I do believe that there is something to the phrase “he or she made the most of their luck”.

With that as a backdrop, I will offer some examples of each of these characteristics and how they helped shape my career.

Bio

Mr. Stoneburner has over 48 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He currently is owner of Stoneburner Consulting Services.  He served as Senior Advisor and Partner with Pine Brook Partners from April 2013 thru December 2022. He served as president of the North America Shale Production Division for BHP Billiton Petroleum from 2011 to 2012. From 2009 to 2011, Mr. Stoneburner served as president and chief operating officer of Petrohawk Energy Corporation. He was the company’s chief operating officer from 2007 to 2009 and led their exploration activities as executive vice president of exploration from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Stoneburner began his career as a geologist in 1977 and held positions at Texas Oil and Gas Corp., Weber Energy Corp., Hugoton Energy Corp. and 3TEC Energy Corp.

Mr. Stoneburner is non-Executive chairman and Interim CEO for Tamboran Resources (Private/ASX/NYSE 2016-2025).  He is also a director for the private upstream companies Pursuit Oil and Gas and Elevation Resources.   He is an advisor to Ayata, a private company developing AI.  He also serves on the advisory council of The Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, on the visiting committee of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin and is a board member of Switch Energy Alliance.  He was formerly a board member of Newfield Exploration (NYSE: 2012-14), Yuma Exploration (NYSE: 2014-2020), Brigham Minerals (NYSE; 2018-2022) and Sitio Royalties (NYSE: 2022-2025). He is also a former board member for Memorial Assistance Ministries and past president and former board member of the Houston Producers Forum.

Mr. Stoneburner holds a B.S. in Geological Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.S. in Geological Sciences from Wichita State University. He was a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologist's Distinguished Lecturer Series in 2012-2013, was awarded the Norman Foster Outstanding Explorer of the Year award by the AAPG in 2016 and was awarded The Colonel Edwin L. Drake Legendary Oilman Award by the Petroleum History Institute in 2025.

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