March 2008 Editor's Letter

It's Midnight- Do You Know Where Your Geologist Is?
by Steve Earle
One of the unwritten rules of drilling operations states: All logging operations shall commence between midnight and 05:00 hours, preferably on the weekend.
So it is that I cancel my planned Saturday activities and hop a plane to New Orleans, drive an hour and a half to the Tidewater dock outside of beautiful Golden Meadows and catch a boat to Hercules Rig 29. We actually start into the hole with the logging tool at 12:30 a.m.
During my 34 years in the exploration business, I have done field work in Nevada; run seismic crews in Texas, Wyoming and Alaska; processed seismic data from all over the world; correlated thousands of well logs; and picked maybe a million line miles of seismic (it adds up real fast working 3D data). I have mapped prospects using surface geology, well logs, core data, 2D and 3D seismic, gravity and magnetics, geochemistry and some rather quaint modeling routines. I imagine that I am hardly unique in all this.
It is hard to think of a more varied and exciting career than that of a petroleum geologist. Part scientist, part detective, part artist and part salesman, a good explorationist is a true virtuoso.
So why is it so hard to get younger people interested in this as a career? I've alluded to several issues in previous columns. The petroleum industry is viewed as less than stable; indeed, we have seen wild swings in fortune. The bigger problem is that the public is conflicted about its use of oil. No one wants to give up his or her vehicle, but the environmental costs, price spikes and talk of shortages have taken their toll. A few spectacular oil spills seal the deal.
If you attended Legends Night, T. Boone Pickens offered some interesting thoughts about US energy policy, by which he means fuel and electric power. Pickens is betting on increased wind power as the answer. A recent article in Scientific American(1) claims that we could become energy self-sufficient through solar power. Nuclear could make a come-back and there has been new life in the previously moribund uranium exploration industry as stockpiles have now been drawn down. The rub here is that Yucca Mountain looks to be another government program heading off the tracks and we have no "Plan B." Finally, coal has had a long history in the power mix here. How this plays out in the future depends on how the global climate change debate turns and on the success of programs such as FutureGen. Bill Rizer is back this month to update us on climate issues, and FutureGen is off to a rough start as politics have played havoc with the selection process. The stakes are high for the coal industry.
 
All this talk about alternative energy sources does not mean there won't be an oil and gas industry. Oil and gas exploration and production will continue to thrive for many years, but we should expect to see the downstream business change as higher costs push petroleum usage toward higher value products. Strong prices mean we can afford to pursue new reserves for many years. Like our drilling program for Hercules 29; seeing pay on the logs made this trip all worthwhile.
1 Zweibel, Ken, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis, "A Solar Grand Plan," Scientific American, vol. 298, No.1, January, 2008, pp. 64-73.