sipes-houston chapter · iography john anderson is the maurice ewing pro-fessor of oceanography at...
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SIPES-HOUSTON CHAPTER NEWSLETTER
SEPTEMBER 2016
When TX Was at the Bottom of the Sea
Dr. John Anderson
How To Be A Successful Independent
Italy’s Earthquake and the Economy
Apache Finds 3 Billion BO
Pop Quiz
SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
Sipes Houston Chapter 5535 Memorial Drive
Suite F 654 Houston, Texas 77007
Tel: 713-651-1639 Fax: 713-951-9659
www.sipeshouston.org email: [email protected]
Chapter Officers 2016
Chapter Chair James Mertz (281) 205-8140 [email protected]
Chair Elect Russell Hamman (713) 526-7417 [email protected]
Past Chair Jay Moffitt (713) -750-9485 x 104 [email protected]
Secretary Barry Rava (713) 621-7282 [email protected]
Treasurer David Wood (281) 549-2376x101 [email protected]
Website Chair Danny Matranga (512) 484-6385 [email protected] Technical Program Chair Michael Steed (281) 404-9490 [email protected]
Continuing Education Chair Bill Bippus (281) 364-1881 [email protected] Hospitality Chair Chris Atherton (713) 861-1866 [email protected]
Public Relations Chair Jeff Lund (713) 275-1664 [email protected]
Membership Chair(s) Chip Betz (713) 658-8096 x 17 [email protected] Newsletter Chair Jeff Allen (713) 302-5131 [email protected]
Deal Buyers List Chair Bill Smith (713) 650-3060 [email protected]
Political Affairs Chair Ross Davis (713) 658-3131 [email protected]
Sponsor Coordinator Christine Milliner (562) 881-6326 [email protected]
National Directors Ralph Daigle (National Presi-dent) (281) 292-6859 [email protected] Mike Jones (713) 654-0080 [email protected]
Office Manager B. K. Buongiorno (713) 651-1639 [email protected]
In This Issue Letter From The Editor 1 Jeff Allen
September Luncheon 2
When TX was at the Bottom of the Sea 3
SIPES CES 4
Calendar 5
OK Quake and Fracking 6
Oil Price Update 6
SIPES Independents’ Day Party 7 Barry Rava
July Luncheon Review 9 Barry Rava
Apache finds 3 Billion BO 10
Pop Quiz 10
Italy’s Quake Shakes Economy 11
GCS SPEM 12
SIPES Oil Price Prediction 13
Must Read Articles 13
New Members 14 Chip Betz
SIPES Houston Book Recommendation 14
On the cover: Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan, the highest peak in Texas. Photo by Bryan Schutmaat, published for Smithsonian Magazine. See page 5 For the full story about this photo. Email your cover photos to: [email protected]
1 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
I have said this many times, but allow me to repeat myself; the wisdom
and volumes of experience in the room of a SIPES event is invaluable.
As a young independent geologist, I find the conversations I have with
you more wise members to be the greatest gift of my SIPES member-
ship. I had the opportunity to spend time at the Independents’ Party
talking with many of the accomplished geoscientists that make up our
valued membership. The industry, especially in a low like this, seems
daunting and impossible at times. However, hearing how you all made
it through the previous slumps gives myself and other “first-timers”
hope. Please continue to talk to the younger generations at events, it
means a lot to us to hear your story, and take heed to the lessons you
learned. Thank you SIPES, for these opportunities that will help shape
my future and the future of the industry as a whole.
The SIPES Houston Independents’ Party, on August 18th, was a smash-
ing success. A large turnout, great food and drinks, and the best spon-
sors a party could ask for helped push optimism into the rest of the
year. If you didn’t make it this year, consider next year, or make it to a
monthly SIPES Luncheon if you can’t wait that long.
The Continued Education Seminar on November 3rd (page 4) focuses
on how to be an independent. The Independents’ Party is a gathering
of independent oil men and women from around Houston celebrating
our unique industry. Both of these events are good options for net-
working, especially if you are recently independent.
Let’s finish out the rest of the year with a bang,
Jeff Allen
IMPORTANT: the Petroleum Club has a new rule concerning food – if
you don’t specify your special-needs meal before the luncheon you will
be charged an extra $20. We don’t want anyone to be charged extra so
please take the time to contact BK for your special meal needs well
ahead of time.
LE T T ER F R O M T H E ED I T O R
Abstract
The northern Gulf of Mexico provides an unparalleled natural laboratory for strati-graphic research. This talk summarizes over two decades of research focused on using the late Quaternary stratigraphic record of the northern Gulf of Mexico to better understand how variations in sea level, climate and other factors regulate sediment supply to the basin, how chang-es in sediment supply are manifest by stratigraphic architecture. Next, we will explore how stratigraphic architecture can be used to prospect for hydrocarbon reservoirs using a simple sequence strati-
graphic framework.
Biography
John Anderson is the Maurice Ewing Pro-fessor of Oceanography at Rice Universi-ty. His current research interests are in 1) the recent retreat history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and those factors that regulated ice sheet retreat, and 2) The evolution of the US Gulf Coast and re-sponse of coastal environments to global change. He has authored and co-authored 250 peer-reviewed publica-tions, edited 5 volumes and published two books, “Antarctic Marine Geolo-gy” (Cambridge University Press) and “Formation and Future of the Upper Tex-as Coast” (Texas A&M Press). He has led 24 scientific expeditions to Antarctica and countless field programs in the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal waters. John was the recipient of numerous professional, teaching and mentoring awards, includ-ing the 2007 Shepard Medal of the Socie-ty for Sedimentary Research, and is a Fel-low in the Geological Society of America.
MENU:
Seafood Gumbo
Lemon Butter Chicken
Ice Cream Pecan Ball
LATE QUATERNARY STRAT EVOLUTION: LIMITATIONS OF STRAT MODELS SEP TE MBER S IPES LUNCH EO N
Date: Thursday, Sept 15th
Place: Petroleum Club
1201 Louisiana St.
Time: Social 11:15
Lunch 11:45
Luncheon registration deadline
is Noon, Tuesday Sept 13th
$30 for Members and Affiliates
$35 for guests and non-
members
Additional $5 for walk-ups
No-shows will be billed.
Call, fax, or e-mail your reserva-
tion to the SIPES-Houston Office.
You can sign up online at
www.sipeshouston.org.
2 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
DR. JOHN ANDERSON
WHEN TX WAS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. BY OLIVIA JUDSON
3 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
It’s 12:30 on a November afternoon, and I’m sitting on top of Guadalupe Peak, the highest mountain in Texas (The photo on the cover of this Newsletter). The sun is bright, the sky without a cloud, and the view is huge. In front of me—I am facing roughly south—I am looking down on the jagged spine of El Capitan, a mountain that sits at the front of the range like the prow of a ship. Beyond it, I can see at least 70 miles across an arid plain sprinkled with rows of smaller hills. The road to El Paso and the border with Mexico is a gray scratch across the landscape. The rock beneath me, which looks almost white in the glare of the sun, is full of fossils. Zillions of them. Back when these life-forms were alive—265 million years ago or so—the Guadalupe Moun-tains were underwater, part of a flourishing reef that once stretched about 400 miles around the edge of a long-vanished sea.
Reefs are a fascinating fusion of biology and geology. They are, after all, made of stone—but built by life. Moreover, although the individual life-forms involved are
typically tiny, the results of their activities can be gigantic, resulting in a massive transformation of the landscape. As usual, Charles Darwin put it better than anyone. Writing about corals, he said: “We feel surprise when travelers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals!”
Mountains built by life. Literally. To give a couple of examples, the volume of coral built up on the Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Is-lands is around 250 cubic miles. This is equivalent to building the Great Pyramid of Giza more than 416,000 times. And that’s just one atoll: The Earth has scores. The Great Barrier Reef, which runs for more than 1,800 miles along the northeastern coast of Australia, comprises about 3,000 reefs and 900 islands. It is the largest struc-ture built by living beings in the modern world.
The Earth is littered with ancient reefs. Indeed, the pyramids were built mostly of limestone quarried from one. But the Guadalupe Mountains of west Texas and New Mexico are one of the best ex-amples of an ancient reef anywhere. In honor of this, they were made a national park in 1972. They even have a time interval named after them: “Guadalupian” refers to the epoch from 272 million to 260 million years ago, when the reef was being built. And so, as I made plans to go, I began to see the trip as a pilgrimage. I was going to commune with vanished life-forms, marvel at the edifice they built and contemplate immense spans of time.
By noon, I had arrived at the top of Texas, as Guadalupe Peak is affectionately known. All 8,751 feet of it. Eating my lunch, I was sitting on rocks composed of the shells of heaps upon heaps of large forams about the length of my little finger. I ran my hands over the stone, feeling the ridges and whorls of life from 265 million years ago. Two hundred sixty-five million years. Easy to say. Hard to imagine. Think of it this way: Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, but when this reef was built, they had not yet come into being. Back then, there were no birds, and no birdsong. No ants or bees. No mammals. No flowers, no fruits, no grasses. The shores of this ancient lagoon had no coconut palms.
Which isn’t to say the Earth was barren: It would have been full of plants and animals. Some would have been recognizable—lichens, mosses, ferns, monkey-puzzle trees. Dragonflies would have flitted around. There would have been plenty of cockroaches. Something like a grasshop-per might have been singing. But other life-forms would have seemed strange to us—such as amphibians several feet long. In the sea, the tri-lobites were shortly to vanish, their astonishing 300 million-year tenure on the stage of life about to come to a close.
Two hundred sixty-five million years ago, the continents were smashed together into one giant landmass, Pangea, surrounded by a global ocean, Panthalassa. The bit of Texas I’m sitting on was down near the Equator: Its current position is the result of a long, slow drift. The sea that allowed the reef to form was an inland sea, connected to Panthalassa by a narrow channel. This channel was soon to be cut off; the sea would evaporate; the reef would be covered by sediments. In another 150 million years or so, another sea would come; but this too would disappear. Then there were upheavals: Although much of the original reef still lies buried, tectonic forces pushed the rocks bearing this piece of it upwards. Softer sediments washed away, exposing the harder limestone. Exposing the edifice built by living beings long, long ago. READ THE FULL STORY HERE
SIPES CES 2016
4 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
A One-Day Symposium
How to be a Successful Independent
Thursday, November 3rd, 2016 8 am – 5 pm
Topics:
- Legal Considerations, Contracts and Agreements for Independents
- Accounting and Financial Considerations for Independents
- Financing Your Independent Operations
- Case Histories of Successful Independents
- Closing the Deal and Developing an Acquisition
Location:
Live Oak Auditorium, Suite 125
1990 Post Oak Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77056
(Post Oak 3, Galleria Area)
Seating is limited, early registration advised to guarantee enrollment.
Call B. K. (713-651-1639) or email [email protected] for reservations.
Certificate of Attendance, Networking Lunch, Continental Breakfast, Coffee and Break refreshments are includ-ed in the Registration price.
MORE INFORMATION TO COME NEXT MONTH
5 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
EVENTS
September 2016 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 Where do
we go from
here? O&G In-
dustry.
15 SIPES
LUNCHEON
16 17
18 19 20 Maya Ritual
Secrets Re-
vealed
21 22 23 24
25 26 27 The Gettys-
burg Event
28 29 30
Oklahoma registered one of its biggest earthquakes Saturday even after state regulators have beefed up limits on disposing oilfield waste and the rate of tremors had started to slow somewhat from unprecedented levels last year.
The tremor in central Oklahoma was felt from Texas to Illinois, measuring 5.6 in magnitude and tying a state record set in 2011, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The number of earth-quakes measuring 3.0 or higher reached 890 last year, followed by 375 this year through June 22. At that rate, the number of earth-quakes would fall to less than 800 this year, still a far cry from only two in 2008.
As oil production surged in the state, with the Scoop and Stack areas among the most coveted new plays in the country, so too did the disposal of wastewater from fracked fields that scientists have tied to earthquake activity. Several producers, and now the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, are facing lawsuits because of seismic activity allegedly linked to oilfield wastewater disposal in Oklahoma and other states.
“Without studying the specifics of the wastewater injection and oil and gas production in this area, the USGS cannot currently con-clude whether or not this particular earthquake was caused by industrial-related, human activities,” the agency said Saturday in a statement. “However, we do know that many earthquakes in Okla-homa have been triggered by wastewater fluid injection.”
Oklahoma, a region previously not known for intense seismic activ-ity, began having a significant number of earthquakes in 2009, the same year area oil companies began using fracking to shatter deep rock layers to extract oil and gas. Fracked wells produce large quantities of wastewater, which drilling companies inject into ultra-deep disposal wells. Oil and gas explorers that injected wastewater in the state include SandRidge Energy Inc., Chesa-peake Energy Corp. and Range Resources Corp.
“Evidence linking oil and gas activity to earthquakes is mounting, along with legal and policy challenges,” Peter Pulikkan and Rob Barnett, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote last month in a report. READ THE FULL STORY HERE
6 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
OKLAHOMA QUAKE AND FRACKING OIL PRICE UPDATE
In the past week, the industry used 14.5 million barrels in storage, largely from the East Coast and Gulf Coast, according to government data. Analysts blamed wind and rough seas resulting from Gaston, Hermine and other storms that have impeded ships with cargoes headed for U.S. refineries. As a result, there was also a sharp decline of 1.8 million barrels a day in U.S. imports — oil that comes from places like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Gasoline stocks also fell by 4.2 million barrels. While the storms threatened the Gulf of Mexico, 12 percent of U.S. oil drilling in the Gulf was temporarily shut in. Oil prices jumped on the weekly Energy Information Administration report, adding to gains made late Wednesday on similar data from the American Petroleum Institute. West Texas Intermediate futures for October settled at $47.62 per barrel, a gain of more than 4.6 percent. "I suspect over the next few weeks we're going to see inventories re-cover to a certain extent, as the imports catch up," said Lipow. "There's still plenty of oil out there. What we're seeing is the result of storm impacts on vessel shipping at the same time we still see mem-bers of OPEC to increase their oil production."
The cartel meets at the end of the month in Algeria with Russia and other producers. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting, and the two countries issued a statement of cooperation which also helped lift prices this week. "I think we'll see more volatile trading ahead of the OPEC meeting," said McGillian.
7 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
SIPES INDEPENDENTS PARTY, AUGUST 18TH, 2016 The ever-popular Cadillac Bar and Grill was the venue for the Independents Day gathering this past August 18TH. The event was sponsored by six of our own members seen in Photo 2: Ralph Daigle/Petrus Energy, Ross Davis/Davis Brothers, Mark Gregg/Kiwi Energy, Barry Rava/Icarus O&G, Dan Smith, and Bill Smith/Wilcox O&G. The weather allowed for a great turnout of 118, in-cluding 10 ‘walk-ins’. There were officially 136 reser-vations, which means that 24 people missed a great networking opportunity. The best part of the evening is that 36 potential members were in attendance as guests. Hopefully a good portion of those guests were so impressed with the high-quality of the membership that they will want to join. The winning raffle ticket was held by Ms. Daigle seen in Photo 1. Even in this hard time of our industry, we Inde-
pendents had some drinks, a lot of laughs, and supported one another. See you next year!
Photo 1
Photo 2: President, James Mertz, with our sponsors
SIPESHOUSTON.ORG If you are not yet registered as a member on the site
please do so ASAP. You can now pay your national and local dues online. If
you have not paid them please do so ASAP. For events and announcements please visit the website.
Attendance confirmation and payment for luncheons can be done through the website.
Many growing pains with the website have now been
resolved and will continue to be fixed. Any questions or issues with the website can be directed
8 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
9 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
JULY LUNCHEON REVIEW BY BARRY RAVA
The July luncheon lecture was by John W. Snedden, Senior Re-search Scientist and Director of the Gulf Basin Depositional Sys-tems research project at the University of Texas at Austin. He spoke about Mesozoic plays in a lecture entitled “Rejuvenation of the Mesozoic Plays of the Gulf of Mexico Basin: Onshore to Off-shore.” The talk was a tour-de-force of research methodologies and the evolution of the Gulf basin ultimately applied to consider new play concepts. Research was conducted by ten staff mem-bers including other researchers, undergraduate and graduate students and support staff.
Data employed in the research of several types, including zircon geochemistry, on-bottom-seismic refraction (OBC; yes, refraction) data, existing 2-D and 3-D seismic data and paleographic maps in GIS format which were provided by the study’s outside spon-sors. Over 2,000 wells with biostratigraphy were also integrated into the study.
The refraction data facilitated interpretation down to picking the ‘Top of the Mantel’. The OBC data, zircon geochemistry and bio-stratigraphy combined to facilitate the reconstruction of paleo-depositional models for the Gulf Basin for several stages in its development from pre-opening to present.
Several diagrams were presented detailing these depositional systems. Of note was tracing through geological history various depositional sources and continental drainage divides from east to west and south to north. These models are based on the chemical composition and mineralogy of the host rocks and the various oils available for analysis.
Within the Gulf Basin predictions are made for an increase in deeper discoveries on shore, on the shelf and in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico.
In summary, the results are interesting enough that the GCS-SEPM is convening a special meeting entitled “Mesozoic of the Gulf Rim and Beyond.” The meeting will be held December 8-9, 2016 and will take place in Houston. For additional information visit the GCS-SEPM website: www.gcssepm.org
AP A C H E F I N D S 3 B I L L I O N BO POP QUIZ !
10 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
The Houston oil exploration company Apache has made one of the biggest U.S. oil and gas discoveries in years, finding the equivalent of more than 15 billion barrels of oil in a relatively unknown quadrant of West Texas's Permian Basin, the company said Wednesday.
The discovery could rank among the top finds of the last decade, including the Marcellus shale in the Northeast, which has recovera-ble natural gas reserves estimated at the equivalent of 47 billion barrels of oil, the Eagle Ford in South Texas, with recoverable crude estimated at 23 billion barrels of oil equivalent, and Wolfcamp, also in the Permian, with recoverable crude and gas estimated at 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent, according to the research firm IHS Markit. Drillers have flocked to Permian shale since the oil crash, scooping up land in the Midland Basin, another subsection of the Permian, and, more recently, the Delaware, where reserves are considered accessible at costs that would make drilling profitable with oil prices hovering around $45 a barrel "We put it together slowly and quietly," Christmann said. "Folks down in that area knew that we were picking something up, but it was off the beaten path. It's a little farther out on the horizon than where a lot of people thought the fairway was." Apache then began methodically piecing together 307,000 contiguous acres in the area over two years. It said it paid $1,300 per acre on average. "The dog-ma, the industry perspective, was just not right," Christmann said. "A lot of folks knew we were down there. They just thought we were off on a wild Easter egg hunt." "Today's announcement is the culmination of more than two years of hard work by the Apache team. These efforts have resulted in the identification of an immense resource that we believe will deliver significant value for our shareholders for many years." Christmann said in a statement.
Please email your answer to the editor,
Quiz
Who is considered the father of Geology and what was his landmark theory?
Winner of the August Pop Quiz is Jim Tucker, having won multiple Pop Quiz’s, he is in a league of his own. His an-swer is below:
Subsidence in the area has at least two causes:
1) Ground water withdrawal, which cannot be recov-ered as the water-rich clay lenses mechanically de-water, and so cannot be “reinflated”. Petroleum with-drawal, such as in the Baytown area of the Ship Cha-nel, and Long Beach Field in the 1930’s has also caused subsidence in the some areas.
2) Houston has active seismic growth faults, some all the way to the surface, like the Long Point Fault run-ning generally east-west along I-10. These lower the land surface on the downthrown sides.
11 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
ITALY’S GEOLOGY SHAKES THE ECONOMY, ANDRE TARTAR, BLOOMBERG Last month's earthquake that wiped an entire medieval hilltop village is the third major tremor of its kind to shake Italy in about seven years. The combination of fragile architecture and a stagnant economy makes it that much harder to pick up the pieces. The death toll stands at 292, ten times the fatalities of the quake that struck the richer Emilia-Romagna region in 2012 and just shy of the 309 killed in L'Aquila in 2009. A still mourning nation must now turn to reconstruction and how to house the thousands of displaced residents.
The latest area affected was rural and less-populated, meaning the economic cost may eventually be around half the dam-age inflicted by the two previous disasters, according to a 5-billion euro ($5.6 billion) estimate by Lorenzo Codogno, found-er and chief economist of LC Macro Advisors. Other esti-mates put the range of losses anywhere from $1 billion to $11 billion.
"Clearly it's not a negligible amount, but given the size of the economy and the numbers we are talking about here, it proba-bly can be absorbed," Codogno, a former chief economist of Italy's Treasury Department, said in an interview. He said the government's likely response will be to refinance an existing tax break for related renovations. "Other than that I wouldn't ex-pect any additional initiative, as it would be too expensive to make earthquake-safe all these areas." That's because 70 per-cent of buildings are not earthquake-proof, say members of Ita-ly's National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology. A recent UN assessment suggests Italy should brace for more acute seis-
mic pain ahead: to the tune of $9.8 billion a year. But it might just be impossible, in practical terms, to protect the country's myr-iad treasures.
Italy holds a record 51 UNESCO World Heritage sites. Almost half are within a 100-mile radius of the epicenters of the past three major quakes. That includes all of Rome and the Vatican, as well as Pisa with its leaning tower and Verona, the setting of Romeo
and Juliet, with its famous balco-nies.
The only other countries in Europe with anything close to Italy's cata-log of earthquakes are Greece, where most tremors happened out to sea, and sparsely-populated Ice-land.
As Italy emerges from the rubble of yet another catastrophe, the odds are it won't be long before the earth trembles again.
12 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
13 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2016
SIPES OIL PRICE PREDICTION MUST READ ARTICLES THIS MONTH Attention SIPES members!
You will have until September 29th to email your pre-diction for the price of WTI Oil at the end of the year (Dec 31st).
Email: [email protected]
What do you think the price of WTI will be on Dec.
31st?
There is a lot of news in the industry right now. Only so much can fit within the newsletter. Please click on the links below to stay informed on some major topics our industry will come to terms with. Global Markets, Like Nigeria, fall-ing apart; the fight over Fossil Fuel future; the upcoming presidential outcome; and the upcoming OPEC meeting.
Nigeria Risks Total Disaster
The $8 Trillion Fight Over How to Rid the U.S. of Fossil Fuels
How Will The Next President Handle Energy and Climate Change?
Four Possible Outcomes of the OPEC Meeting
14 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | August 2016
NEW MEMBER APPLICANTS, CHIP BETZ SIPES HOUSTON RECOMMENDED BOOOK
Click on the above image to purchase a book that
describes the amazing tale of how the science of
Geology was born. A book like this will help grow
appreciation for our science and the world around
us.
Applicants: There is one candidate for Full Membership and one candidate for Chapter Affiliate Full Membership Applications
Richard “Dick” Willingham is a Geophysical Consultant with both a BA degree in Geology and a MS degree in Geophysics from the University of California Riverside. He has worked as an Associate Professor of Geophys-ics at the Santa Barbara City Col-lege and later as a Geophysical Consultant managing Geophysi-cal Applications for Pacific Gas and Electric nuclear plants. He founded and was the CEO of
ExploraMetrics a consulting firm doing quantitative inter-pretation and inversion work and later as CR Willingham and Associates consulted for Mobil Permian Basin Gas Di-vision, Devon Energy Offshore and Century Exploration. Dick is a Lifetime Emeritus member of the American Geo-physical Union, Emeritus Member of both Society of Ex-ploration Geophysicists and Geophysical Society of Hou-ston and is a registered Geophysicist in Texas. He has published Geophysical Abstracts and Articles for SEG, AAPG, GSA and AGU. Chapter Affiliate
Tanyia Chuites holds a BA
degree from Rice University
and is presently holds the
position of Vice President of
Business Development Assets
and Divestures for the Oil
and Gas Asset Clearinghouse.
She has previously worked
for PLS Inc. as VP Sales and
Marketing A&D and at Ray-
mond James and Albrecht &
Associates as Marketing Director A&D.
SIPES Houston Chapter, 5535 Memorial Drive, Suite F654, Houston, Texas 77007 Tel: 713-651-1639 Fax: 713-951-9659 www.sipeshouston.org e-mail: [email protected]
* * *
GEOSCIENTISTS AROUND THE WORLD
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics is very transparent in their labor counts by industry and occu-pation, which allows for AGI to prepare a realistic estimation of the size of the geoscience workforce in the U.S. Most other countries either do not provide the detail or transparency comparable to the U.S., leading to both data availability and definitional problems. Most countries provide data in a highly aggre-gated form by industry, and only three industries where geoscientists work were in common across most countries: agriculture, mining/oil and gas, and professional science and technology. However, South Af-rica and Indonesia do not report on professional science and technology industries, so geoscience intensi-ty was estimated based on U.S. percentages of geoscientists in each of these industries. It is important to note, that the U.S. estimation for these three industries is a less than half of the total geoscientists in the U.S. because it does not account for other major industries and occupations like federal, state, and local government or management. China is colored differently because the definition used to identify geosci-entist by the Chinese reporting agencies is extremely broad and extends well beyond the scope of what the rest of the world defines as geoscientists. Reliable sources in China estimate the number of geoscien-tists as defined in the rest of the world is about 10% of the reported number.