I looked at prices for oil and gas this morning (2/29/2016), and saw that oil was selling for about $34/barrel and natural gas was at $1.71/MCF.  Not encouraging at all unless you look back to mid-January and a couple of weeks ago when oil prices dropped below $30/barrel.  We all have friends and acquaintances who have lost their jobs and hear weekly of some company having mass layoffs or going into some sort of bankruptcy.  Hopes for a quick turnaround seem to be fading with every passing day and each new rumor or news article we read.  It’s hard to look past these unpleasant realities and focus on what we as geologists should be doing – generating ideas based on what we observe, developing models, iterating on, and refining those models with evidence, and developing prospects.  We can’t change what is going on: It’s out of our hands. But what we can do is stick to the science and keep prospecting. 

Most of you who know me have probably heard me refer to myself as a “Seismic Geologist”.  I began my career as a data processor for Western Geophysical and learned not to fear the “wiggle trace”.  In 1980 the industry was ravenous for young geologists and geophysicists and, as I have said (facetiously), I could spell “geophysicist” so Conoco made me one.  It really wasn’t that easy, but that was the beginning of my career in Exploration.  Conoco had a wonderful perspective for explorers.  They didn’t care so much what your title was but expected you to be able to work with whatever tools (well log data, seismic, gravity, magnetics, …) existed in the area to which you were assigned.  That paradigm became the basis for how I approached my career from that point until now.  Being able to integrate both the “geology” and “geophysics” gives the Explorer a more complete perspective of the basins/rocks we deal with and increases our ability to do what we are supposed to do – come up with exploration ideas and identify and mitigate the risks of any prospect.

2015 has been an eventful year – to say the least – both for the industry and for me personally. Everyone is painfully aware of the precipitous fall in the price of oil and gas, and the effect that is having on all of us. While we started the year with the hope that the downturn would be short term, these prices are starting to look like the new normal. However, there are so many uncertainties out there in the market and geopolitics that, as I’ve said before, trying to predict timing is a “fool’s errand”.

The one thing of which we can be certain is that 2016 will be full of uncertainty, which is pretty common. We all try to maintain a degree of certainty, but that is pretty much an illusion. Exploration geoscientists are familiar with uncertainty – otherwise known as risk, and it is our job as geoscientists to identify and try to quantify that risk. What is often unknown is the thing or things we can’t or don’t identify that effect the risk (uncertainty) of our prospect – be it exploration or development.