Energy

Principal Faculty Members

One hundred years ago (1900), the world's first School of Petroleum was established at the University of Oklahoma. Since that time, the University has graduated many geologists, geophysicists and geochemists. These graduates have so successfully directed and contributed to petroleum exploration and development for governments and companies worldwide (some of which were directly founded by these alumni) that the School has inherited a reputation as a leader in the energy field. The reputation, however, is not just historical: today, our faculty continues to be recognized for their energy research using state-of-the-art technology. This part of the School's program is the most cross-disciplinary of our research and teaching programs. Funding for this research comes from private and government sectors. The School's faculty members serve as high-profile leaders in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) and Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and work as instructors, consultants, and advisors to energy oil companies and governments worldwide. Our graduate students continue to receive job offers from major and smaller oil and gas companies, and non-coincidentally, our school continues to draw students from around the world for advanced degrees in energy-related studies.

The School of Geology and Geophysics does not plan to take this historical precedent for granted. Instead we plan to nurture and continue the healthy development of energy research and education by:

• dynamically adapting our existing energy program to new socioeconomic climates (increasing importance of and sensitivity to global environment);
• recognizing macroeconomic trends (cycles of changing supply and demand of petroleum);
• using and developing new interdisciplinary applications of science and technology (basin analysis, reservoir characterization, etc.);
• and increasing our international exposure (both in education and technology transfer).

Several of the School's faculty members participate in the energy field (see above list). This blurring of lines with respect to an association with energy is not surprising, because, like other branches of economic geology & geophysics, professional practice in the energy field must be interdisciplinary. To study the complexities of the petroleum system, geoscientists must deal with rocks from the basement up, through geological time, and which must be analyzed geologically, geochemically, geophysically and petrophysically. Moreover, the large majority of our graduate students who desire an energy emphasis will cross-train in more than one discipline to round out their energy education.

In service, this core of energy-related faculty members are especially visible both professionally and internationally, an extraordinary plus in maintaining the worldwide energy reputation of the School of Geology & Geophysics.

For the past decade, Paul Philp, Joe and Robert Klabzuba Chair in Geology and Geophysics, has taught industry courses in geochemistry for companies worldwide and has maintained active research with scholars and graduate students from Algeria, China, Columbia, England, Hungary, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. His research funding has exceeded $2M in this effort.

James Forgotson, Kerr McGee Centennial Professor in Geology and Geophysics and past AAPG Vice-President, is active in several research areas and is interacting with the Sarkeys Energy Center.

John Pigott has directed a highly visible course in Basin Analysis and Seismic Stratigraphy for countries of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and South America. In addition, Pigott teaches advanced industry courses and consults worldwide for companies and governments.

Roger Slatt, Lew and Myra Ward Chair in Reservoir Characterization, teaches courses on the Petroleum Geology of Deepwater Depositional Systems and on Applied Reservoir Characterization for worldwide industry and AAPG, in addition to the School. He is also Director of the Institute for Reservoir Characterization in the Sarkeys Energy Center. He has co-authored books on the geology of shale, petroleum geology of deepwater depositional systems, and is author of a new book on reservoir characterization. He has published more than 100 papers on deepwater depositional systems and their petroleum potential, sequence stratigraphy, shale geology, petroleum geology, reservoir characterization, sedimentary geochemistry, and Pleistocene geology. In addition to his 22 years in academia, he spent 14 years in the oil and gas industry.

Shankar Mitra holds the Monnett Chair and Profesorship in Energy Resources, and conducts an active research program on the application of structural geology to hydrocarbon exploration and production. The program includes the development and application of new methods for structural interpretation, such as 3-D structural depth modeling and balanced structural interpretations. The program also examines the effects of fracturing and on reservoir properties. He also teaches and consults worldwide for petroleum companies and governments, in areas of both exploration and production.

Younane Abousleiman holds the Larry W. Brummett/ONEOK Chair and Professor in Poromechanics, in related oil and gas industry research funds he was instrumental in bringing in to the university more than $10M over the past 8 years. His expertise lies in fluid mechanics coupled with solid mechanics in deep rock formations. He retains two consortia, the GeoGenome Industry Consortium and the Rock Mechanics Consortium, sponsoring his geomechanics research, emphasizing industry field application through technology transfer and micro-structural aspects of shales related to drilling and reservoir characterization problems.

Slatt, Mitra, and Abousleiman all hold joint appointments with the Sarkeys Energy Center, an interdisciplinary facility for energy research.

Also, Dr. Larry Gillot, Dean of the College of Earth and Energy and Director of the Sarkeys Energy Center, brings a 30 year petroleum career experience with Phillips Petroleum, where he held several research and operations technical and managerial positions.

Connections with international entities have led to government support for faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students from numerous countries. Overall, the energy-related faculty and the graduate students they supervise and support (over half of the graduate students in the School) bring considerable intangible benefits to the School as worldwide recognition in the petroleum industry, and tangible benefits of funding, publication, and presentation of professional papers.

In conducting research that promotes the energy sector, we vitally require new technology. Therefore, one particularly outstanding component of this core faculty is that, without exception, they incorporate advanced technology that is largely unavailable, because of expense, in the academic environment elsewhere. Philp pursues organic geochemistry by collaborating with scientists in the petroleum (e.g. evaporite geologists), and in the environmental field (botany and microbiologists), and has one of the world's largest and best-equipped organic geochemistry laboratories for conducting the work which he largely pioneered -- biomarker analysis. Pigott conducts integrated studies of basin analysis and seismic stratigraphy, which define the interrelationships between petroleum systems and tectonics from seismic sequence analysis in the Far East, Middle East, and South America. Pigott collaborates with international colleagues and incorporates such powerful software as BMT of Norway for basin modeling, Western Omega for seismic processing, and GXII for seismic modeling on the powerful Sun Ultra-2 workstations. Slatt focuses much of his research on quantifying outcrop characteristics of clastic depositional systems for application to subsurface reservoir analogs, particularly at the sub-seismic scale, which is the scale which exerts major control on reservoir performance.

The undergraduate curriculum provides the well rounded background necessary for students to enter a strong graduate program emphasizing the exploration for and exploitation of oil and gas. The current graduate program offers both the core geology courses and the technology- or application-oriented courses in both geology and geophysics that are necessary for professional employment in the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry routinely requires new hires to be able to collaborate between geology, geophysics, rock mechanics, drilling technology, reservoir evaluation and petrophysics, so selected courses are interdisciplinary in nature.

The industry also requires familiarization with a variety of computer applications, as well as instrumentation. Our school has responded by incorporating state-of-the-art software for petroleum geoscience applications using both PC and workstation platforms, into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. The Texaco Reservoir Characterization Lab, the petroleum geology lab, the Shell Crustal Imaging facility, and the Seismic Stratigraphy Laboratory combined have software valued at more than $3M through donations by Landmark, Geoquest, SMT and other vendors. The capabilities include well log analysis, correlation, mapping, well data base, basin modeling, economic evaluation, structural modeling, 2 & 3-D seismic processing, seismic interpretation, seismic modeling, reservoir model building, reservoir simulation and 3-D visualization.