LESLIE F. BERRY CPG
Exploration Consultant
Telephone (903) 882-8813
Fax (903) 882-8813
P. O. Box 1825
Lindale, Texas 75771
July 18,1996
MUSINGS OF LOSINGS, WINNINGS AND HOLDINGS
Taking a stern look at the East Texas Basin (it really doesn't matter which basin
you choose), one is brought up short when realizing the characteristics of the oil and gas
fields found in the last 20-25 years. The following are the significant fields and some
things that are common to the group.
FIELD PROD. ZONE TYPE TRAP COMPANY
Alabama Ferry Glen Rose Strat Baxter/Houston
Aventura Ranch James Reef Strat Palmer/S'p't
Branton Haynesville Reef Strat TXO/Tyler
Brookeland Fractured Austin Strat Maersk/Norway
Cheneyboro Cotton Valley Lime Strat McCormick/Houston
Clarksville LouArk Strat Santa Fe/Houston
Eileen Sullivan Glen Rose Strat W'baker/Tyler
Gladewater Haynesville Strat McBee/Dallas
Ingram Trinity Glen Rose Strat Getty/Houston
Lane Chapel Paluxy Strat Palrich/Denver
Neuhoff Woodbine, Buda Reef Salt Overhang Talbert/Dallas
(Pearwood) Haynesville Reef Strat Penn Res./Dallas
1. 85% are stratigraphic traps. (Read: 3-D is a specialized tool.....)
2. 15% are ultra-deep/highly complex structural traps. (Read: EXPENSIVE.)
3. All are without precedent as to type trapping mechanism and/or zone productive.
(Read: if you want to find significant oil, look for and expect something different.... )
4. Nearly all are carbonate reservoirs.(Read; The sands are yet to come into their own.)
5. Nearly all of the fields were found by out-of-town folk. (Read; "A prophet is
without honor in his own town"...Also read; conventional wisdom is nearly always wrong)
6. Greater than 75% are found by either first-generation oil companies or by first-generation managers.
This has little to do with anything, but I wonder if the ones who discovered these fields
were first-, second-, or third-generation oil companies ?? Read; All oil companies
are risk-takers, but only certain ones are the right kind of risk-takers; i.e., some take
risk on prospects fraught with conventional wisdom, status-quo thinking, and a mind-
set of precedent reasoning; others take risk on prospects with unique and/or different
characteristics, and thus wind up winning instead of just holding....)
Thirty plus years of experience in this business has resulted in originating, assembling, drilling and completing wells in a number of “it’ll never work” prospects, including two 21,000’ wells. Having read of the audacious giant killers of days past, it is clearly obvious that discoveries are rarely in obeisance to the status quo opinions, whether by academia or by oil company intelligentsia. The elementary conclusion one draws is that nearly everyone except the discovering company did not think the field was there in the first place; even the discovering company usually had a different idea than what actually drilled out.
Discoveries are far and away found by intrepid minds who refuse to accept status quo reasoning. For that matter, every significant invention, like discoveries, also do not have precedents. Electricity, light bulbs, Rubic’s cubes, cotton gins, Alaska Purchases, computer operating systems and the like all found their success in the fact that by their very nature, they are antithetical to accepted knowledge at the time.
Conventional wisdom rarely finds anything of value; certainly not oil and gas discoveries, which, like inventions that change society and create wealth, have as their basic premises an antithesis to what most think at the time.
Indeed, if one were to think about it honestly, discoveries are made by the audacious few because the overly wise majority does not have the courage of their convictions, nor do they even think it is there in the first place. Else, they would have drilled it themselves !
Success in the exploration business, tongue-in cheek aside, comes to the few because of the following facts:
- The preponderance of geologic evidence indicates the presence of
- Hydrocarbons (from most surrounding wells).
- Trap (subsurface mapping, seismic closure, surface readings.)
- Source (regional stratigraphy, mudlog shows, DSTs).
- The idea transcends majority opinion (antithetical).
- The inability to answer all questions.
- The reward to risk ratio is sufficient to overcome any reasons not to drill a well.
- Trying not to be too smart. (80% of the time, significant discoveries are from the unexpected; analogues are political crutches)