More thoughts on the "Ten Habits"

Our popular April 2012 blog entry, "The Ten Habits of Highly Successful Oil Finders" has received some positive press lately.  As the basis of a talk, the habits were presented at the AAPG Playmaker Forum in Houston this past January, and were also covered in the Houston Chronicle. Now, we are honored to report that the habits, as conceived by Dan Tearpock and colleague Bob Shoup, are featured in the March 2013 edition of the AAPG Explorer.

In the article, SCA Founder and Chairman Emeritus Dan Tearpock delves further into the value and importance of what is also referred to as a "philosophical doctrine" guiding his and his company's professional activities.  We invite you to review some excerpts (please see the full article here):

"Developing a successful product, i.e. good prospect, is only part of the value of the 10 habits; they can be used in both directions. 

'If you drill a dry hole, the company asks what went wrong and they may hire an expert to come in and reverse engineer the prospect, tear it apart to find where the mistakes were to cause a dry hole,' Tearpock noted.'We call this step forensic geology. 

'They may find you didn’t use the 10 habits correctly, so you made a mistake in interpretation and drilled a dry hole. 

'That’s the marvelous aspect of this philosophical doctrine and the habits in it,” he said. “It can be used both ways. 

'What some people do is when they drill successful wells, they tear them apart and see what the team did to drill this successful well,” Tearpock said. 'They use the habits again to go in and see what they did and then find they pretty much followed a philosophy similar to these habits – and that’s why they had success.'

Tearpock is quick to note that this philosophical doctrine is not exclusive to SCA. 

'Some people have come up with these habits on their own,” he said, “and I don’t know how many.'

He also cites a real-world example from his own experience leading SCA:

"SCA sent out three teams for four months and evaluated a hundred proposed prospects, along with some of the dry holes from earlier. They determined what the explorationists were doing wrong. 

'For the most part they weren’t using the habits at all, except for the European division working the North Sea, which was running at an 85 percent success rate on exploration prospects,” Tearpock said. 

'This group had a 150-page manual that was literally like taking our 10 habits and expanding on them to a great degree. 

'We found that the VP of exploration and several other explorationists there had come from the company that originally conducted the study of why certain people and teams are more successful than others,' he said. 

'They brought that knowledge with them to their new company, put it into practice and showed the success it can provide' Tearpock noted."

We are pleased that the Ten Habits continue to inspire discussion. Are there examples you can share of when the application of the habits or philosophical doctrine has contributed to exploration success in your professional life? Or alternatively, when neglecting the habits has resulted in dry holes or less successful results?

SCA Training Instructor John W. Snedden, Ph.D., featured in the AAPG Explorer

Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC, (SCA) is pleased to announce that John W. Snedden, Ph.D., project leader of the Gulf of Mexico Basin Depositional Synthesis Project conducted by the Institute for Geophysics at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin (UTIG), has recently joined SCA’s training faculty.  Dr. Snedden’s first scheduled course for SCA, “Depositional Evolution of the Gulf of Mexico Sedimentary Basin”, will take place at SCA’s Houston training facility August 6-7, 2012.

Dr. Snedden has over 25 years of industry experience with Mobil and ExxonMobil, and his specialties include sequence and seismic stratigraphy, sedimentology, reservoir characterization, reservoir connectivity analysis, and unconventional resource evaluation.  Observations drawn from his experience working on the GBDS project are featured in the May 2012 edition of the AAPG Explorer.  

The Ten Habits of Highly Successful Oil Finders

by Dan Tearpock and Bob Shoup

SCA's CEO Dan Tearpock is fond of saying that it is highly trained people, not workstations, who find oil and gas. But what specific knowledge and habits do those successful oil finders possess?  Bob Shoup, who recently joined SCA's Consulting Division, has put together a list of the Ten Habits of Highly Successful Oil Finders.  We'll be going into more in-depth discussions of the "Habits" over the next few months, but in the meantime, here is the full list to start your wheels turning. After you have a look, please return to the following questions:

If you had to choose one as being more important, which would it be and why?

Can you recall a real life situation where any of these habits informed a business-critical decision?

The Ten Habits of Highly Successful Oil Finders 

Successful Oil Finders: 

1. Ensure that their interpretations are geologically and geometrically valid in three dimensions. 

2. Have a strong background in geology, and a thorough knowledge of the tectonic setting and depositional environments for the area in which they are working. 

3. Plan their time and work in order to ensure accurate interpretations and maps. 

4. Use all of the data to ensure that they have a reasonable and accurate subsurface interpretation. 

5. Ensure that their seismic and well correlations are accurate and loop-tied. 

6. Know which methods, tools, and techniques are needed to define and understand the subsurface.

7. Map all relevant geological surfaces. 

8. Map multiple horizons to develop reasonably correct, three-dimensional interpretations.

9. Document their work. 

10. Seek out mentors and experienced individuals with knowledge and expertise; and serve as mentors to those seeking experience. 

Update 3/8/13 - for more thoughts on the Ten Habits, see our recent follow-up blog post. 

SCA Welcomes Bob Shoup

(From left to right) Dan Tearpock & Bob Shoup
in Thailand, 2009

Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC (SCA) welcomes Robert “Bob” Shoup to its consulting division, in addition to his existing role as a member of SCA's training faculty. Bob is a Board Certified Petroleum Geologist with over 30 years experience in basin analysis, regional studies, new play generation, prospect evaluation, field studies and development planning, drilling operations, and project management.

  
Bob and SCA’s CEO Dan Tearpock, longtime friends and colleagues, plan to leverage their combined expertise and Bob’s extensive network in Southeast Asia to grow SCA’s presence in that region.

Bob began his career at Shell Oil in 1980, followed by four years working for private oil companies before becoming an independent consultant in 2003; consulting in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and New Zealand. Bob is a proven oil finder with a 46% exploration success rate and over 100 MMBOE discovered resources.

Bob is a recognized expert in clastic depositional environments, rift basins, and syndepositional structural systems. He has served in leadership capacities and on numerous committees with the AAPG and is a past president of the Division of Professional Affairs, organizations from which he has also received multiple awards and professional distinctions. Not only does he excel in the oil and gas industry, he is also a recognized author: in 1994 Bob was a nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in drama for his play, Second Alarm.

In March, Bob presented SCA’s first ever “Applied Problems in Interpreting Clastic Depositional Systems” course to much success at SCA's Houston, TX training facility. The course is scheduled to be repeated in Perth, Australia this coming December 10-14, and is available to bring in-house on demand. Bob is also slated to teach upcoming sessions of one of SCA’s most popular courses: Applied Subsurface Geological Mapping. See SCA's 2012 Training Calendar for more details. 

Dan Tearpock honored with DPA Heritage Award

Daniel J. Tearpock, Chairman/CEO of Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC (SCA), was recently honored by the AAPG Division of Professional Affairs as the latest recipient of the Heritage Award.  The announcement was made at an awards luncheon on February 29, 2012 at Del Frisco’s Restaurant in Houston, Texas.  The DPA Heritage Award honors an individual in the oil and gas industry who is generally known for substantial industry contributions, including significant discoveries, business accomplishments, and/or work in academia and publishing. Award recipients are selected based on having built a reputation for success in the industry, and having taken a proactive role in passing on their knowledge and experiences to the next generation.

The Heritage Award was first given to Michael T. Halbouty (deceased) in 2004. Other past recipients include such industry luminaries as Robert D. Gunn (2005), William L. Fisher (2006), M. Ray Thomasson (2008), and John J. Amoruso (2009). This year’s award was based in large part on the achievements of the company founded by Mr. Tearpock in 1988, Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC (SCA). SCA’s record of industry success includes consulting assignments with over 350 companies across the world resulting in the discovery and/or development of over six billion barrels of oil equivalent. SCA has also trained tens of thousands of students in a wide variety of upstream course offerings. Further signaling his commitment to training and education, Mr. Tearpock’s numerous articles and published works, including Applied Subsurface Geological Mapping (1991), Applied Subsurface Geological Mapping with Structural Methods (2003), and Quick Look Techniques for Prospect Evaluation (1994), are widely-used and respected industry references.

From left to right: Daniel J. Tearpock and Marty Hewitt

Upon bestowing the 2012 Heritage Award, current DPA President Marty Hewitt remarked, “Your business not only with SCA, but your leadership with the DPA and AAPG has taken this award to a whole new level.”

Reflecting on this honor, Mr. Tearpock commented to the assembly, “One of my goals was to do something significant for the world.  At first I thought I could find that billion barrel field, or find some new energy technology to help people…It ended up being training and consulting.  We’re now at over 23,000 people that we’ve trained, and the people we’ve trained are all over the world finding oil and gas.  Our consulting company has helped people find and develop over 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent.  So in a roundabout way, I was able to accomplish what I set out to accomplish in life…I could not find a better group of friends and associates than I have found working in the oil and gas industry.”

More about Daniel J. Tearpock:

As a working geoscientist, Mr. Tearpock has generated numerous exploration and exploitation prospects, either as the sole generator or as part of an organized multidisciplinary team. Mr. Tearpock was a finalist in 1996 and 1998 for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year program and in 1998 received the Distinguished Service Award from Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geology from Bloomsburg University, 1970; and a Masters in Geology from Temple University, 1977. He is a (AAPG/DPA) Certified Petroleum Geologist No. 4114, State of Texas Licensed Geologist No. 2660 and (SIPES) Certified Earth Scientist No. 3015.

Mr. Tearpock is a member of numerous associations including the AAPG, SPE, SIPES, SEG, GSA, HGS, EAGE, NOGS, LGS, IPA, SEAPEX & PESGB. He is the past President of the AAPG’s Division of Professional Affairs (2011-2012). He is a founding member and current Chairman (2011-2012) of the intersociety “Joint Committee on Reserves Evaluator Training” (JCORET). The member societies represented on JCORET include the AAPG, SPE, SPEE, SEG and WPC.

About SCA

Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC (SCA) provides superior upstream consulting, direct hire recruitment, and geoscience and engineering training to stakeholders in the oil and gas industry.   Find out more at www.scacompanies.com

To view a video of the DPA Heritage award presentation, please visit SCA’s Upstream Petroleum YouTube Channel.