september sipes houston newsletter · 2017. 9. 9. · charity navigator all hands volunteers we all...
TRANSCRIPT
SIPES HOUSTON
NEWSLETTER
SEPTEMBER 2017
N. Korean War
CLINT MOORE
WTI BREAKOUT
JAMES MERTZ
SAUDI ARAMCO IPO
SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
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 2017
Chapter Chair Russell Hamman (713) 526-7417 [email protected] Chair Elect Bill Bippus (281) 364-1881 [email protected]
Past Chair James Mertz [email protected]
Secretary Coerte Voorhies (713) 397-5059 [email protected]
Treasurer Bruce Blake (713) 459-7508 [email protected]
Website Chair Danny Matranga (512) 484-6385 [email protected] Technical Program Chair Linda Sternbach (832) 567-7337 [email protected]
Continuing Education Chair Barry Rava (281) 235-7507 [email protected] Hospitality Chair Walter Light (713) 823-8288 [email protected]
Public Relations Chair Jeff Lund (713) 275-1664 [email protected]
Membership Chair 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 Heidi Epstein (281) 415-1154 [email protected] National Directors Barry Rava (713) 621-7282 [email protected] Jeff Allen (713) 302-5131 [email protected] Office Manager B. K. Buongiorno (713) 651-1639 [email protected]
In This Issue Letter From The Editor 1 Jeff Allen
Clint Moore 2
Next Gen Independent Award 3
Why Houston Floods 4
Event Calendar 5
Houston Port Back Up 6
Venezuela Negotiates OPEC 7
July Luncheon Review 9 Coerte Voorhies
Can WTI Break $40 10
Pop Quiz 10
N. Korean War 11
2017 SIPES Advertising 12
Saudi Aramco IPO 13
Luncheon Menu 14
Recommended Podcast 14
On the cover: Herman Park, Houston, TX
1 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
Hurricane Harvey has devastated the city of Houston. At SIPES Houston, our hearts go out to those affected. Some people still can not get to their houses, some roads are still underwater, everyone is still coming to terms and fighting to get back to normalcy. Please take a look at these organiza-tions if you can help. Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund Charity Navigator All Hands Volunteers We all thank you for any help you have committed, whether it be lending a hand to a neighbor, providing a place to stay, passing out food and drinks, or donating supplies and mon-ey. It all helps. I am proud to see how our community has come together in this dire situation. This year SIPES Houston will start the new Next Genera-tion Independent Award. This award will be given out in the middle of the year to a young independent that exemplifies the qualities of SIPES and has shown recent success in the industry and leadership within SIPES. James Mertz, of Mertz Energy, is the first recipient of this special award.
See you at the luncheon on September 21st, Jeff Allen
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Dwight “Clint” Moore is a Co-Founder & Vice-President, as well as Officer & Chief Administrative Executive (CAE) of GulfSlope Energy, Inc. (OTC: GSPE - www.gulfslope.com), a Houston-based Off-shore Gulf of Mexico (OGOM) petroleum exploration & development company. GulfSlope now owns 13 exploratory leases on the outer Louisiana OCS targeting the resurging “Outer Shelf Subsalt Miocene & Lower Pliocene Oil Play”.
Prior to GulfSlope’s formation, he formerly served for over 5 years (2008-13) as Vice President of Corporate Development for ION Geophysical Corporation, helping launch and advance their revolutionary and pioneering subsalt Reverse Time Migration (RTM) depth imaging seismic technology. Before ION, he was Manager of Offshore GOM Business Development at Murphy Oil Corporation, helping advance Murphy’s exploration and drilling program in the deepwater OGOM.
Clint has worked most all of his nearly 40 years in the OGOM, starting as a staff geol-ogist in Houston in 1978 for Diamond Shamrock (DSC) for 9 years, then another year as Senior Business Analyst in Corpo-rate Planning & Development at Diamond’s HQ office in Dallas. In that role, he was a key team member that successfully defend-ed DSC from an aggressive takeover at-tempt by Boone Pickens, from which Max-us Energy was created. He resigned in De-cember 1987 to join Anadarko Petroleum (APC) back in Houston as OGOM Senior Staff Geologist, and served Anadarko for over 15 years rising to the position of Divi-sion Geologist, where he initiated and then led their subsalt exploration geology effort for nearly 10 years (1987-97). He then served as Exploration Supervisor of their Offshore North America exploration team, soon focused on offshore Eastern Canada plays and license rounds. Before leaving Anadarko in 2003 to run for US Congress, he also served as Project Geologist for Busi-ness Intelligence in the OGOM.
While at APC, he was the discovery geolo-gist for the historic Mahogany Field, which was the first commercial subsalt discovery and development in the OGOM, and then led the geology effort to lease and then eventually discover more oil fields at Hicko-ry, Tanzanite, Tarantula. This included 3 additional sub-commercial discoveries at Teak, Monazite, and Agate prospects, all testing thru casing-perfs at over 3,000 bopd. Including Mahogany Field, all 4 subsalt pro-ducing fields have now produced over 125 million boe to date, and Mahogany is enjoy-ing a major deeper pool exploration and development program by its current opera-tor, in oil sands seen wet in early wells drilled on old PSDM data drilled in the seis-mically-driven wrong locations from the platform. When combined with Hess’s now famous subsalt Miocene oil field discovered in the play at Conger field (1998), which has alone produced a phenomenal 225+ million boe, the play has produced almost 400 mil-lion boe already, as new technology triggers its resurgence. Rather than being called a wildcat play, this is now an appraisal style play, as new fields are discovered to add to the existing fields.
Clint and Anadarko former CEO & Presi-dent John Seitz, along with former Ana-darko VP-Geoscience Ron Bain, formed GulfSlope Energy, Inc. in March 2013, to specifically pursue and target this Outer Shelf Subsalt Miocene & Pliocene Oil Play. This multi-giant field potential play, was discovered by the Mahogany discovery well in 1993, but then hampered by poor subsalt seismic pre-stack depth imaging (PSDM). Today, over 20 years later, PSDM has dra-matically been replaced by the greatly im-proved subsalt seismic reverse time migra-tion (RTM) depth imaging technology.
Mr. Moore has served as President of the Houston Geological Society, as Treasurer of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), Chairman of the Con-stitution & Bylaws Committee, and recently served as the Chairman of the AAPG In-
KEY TO FUTURE GOM DEEP SHELF O&G SIPES LUNCHEON
Luncheon registration deadline is Noon, Tuesday Sept 19th
Sign up online at www.sipeshouston.org.
Date: Thursday Sept 21st
Place: Petroleum Club
1201 Louisiana St.
Time: Social 11:15 Lunch 11:45
2 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
Clint Moore, GulfSlope Energy, INC
HOSPITALITY SPONSOR
NEXT GENERATION INDEPENDENT AWARD
3 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
James Mertz, of Mertz Energy, is the first recipient of the annual Next Generation Inde-pendent Award. James Mertz has also been active in SIPES being the past president of the Houston Chapter. James started his company a few short years ago and has quickly become a well known prospect generation company with recent discoveries. Mertz Energy is also look-ing for quality concepts, ideas, and prospects. Thank you, James, for taking the torch to con-tinue this great industry of independent exploration geoscientists.
Follow Kai Ryssdal at @kairyssdal.
WHY HOUSTON FLOODS
4 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
5 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
EVENTS
September 2017 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 SIPES
LUNCHEON
22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
6 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
HOUSTON PORT BACK UP
7 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
VENEZUELA NEGOTIATES OPEC DEAL
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 2017
Visit SIPESHOUSTON.ORG to join the next Luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Houston.
9 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
The July SIPES luncheon address was presented by Mr. William Fairhurst, President of Riverford Exploration. His presentation was: Creative, Critical and Strategic Thinking for Natural and Social Sciences Focused on the Oil Industry. Mr. Fairhurst began with a 1995 quote from Mr. Steve Jobs highlighting creativity and the creative process. The Apple Icon said that people who are creative have more experiences but “unfortunately those people are too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences.” Mr. Fairhurst discussed creative discovery thinking and proposed that it is more common in geolo-gists than the general population.
Mr. Fairhurst’s thesis is that the creative discovery thinking pro-cess must be taught in the oil and gas industry. Creative discovery thinking must be practical, commercial and strate-gic incorporating time frame thinking and planning. He said that no other thinking can exist without adding critical thinking. The accountability of critical thinking is lacking in our education system, young scientists, scientific socie-ties, industry and the general culture. He supported his thesis with data that suggests that colleges fail to improve critical thinking skills. However, he proposes that critical thinking skills may be improved with proper education and cited the successes of the smaller liberal arts universities. The speaker defined the educational and professional devel-opment necessary to improve the critical thinking skills to overcome the cognitive bias more common to scienc-es. He provided a link to an HGS webinar by Mr. Peter R. Rose, Cognitive Bias, the Elephant in the Living Room of Science and Professionalism, May 24, 2017 that supported this observation.
The presentation progressed to the complexity of natural and social sciences and charts were pre-sented that illustrated this point. Increase of knowledge and time frame of significant ad-vancement affects the complexity of the scienc-es. More complex sciences require more integra-tion of multiple diverse sources. People in com-plex sciences are less able to accomplish signifi-cant accomplishments in their 20’s than in their 40’s and 50’s. The age of development of inno-vative ideas requires a person with abundant ex-periences in the complex sciences. Blooms Tax-onomy of Learning Domains was presented and utilized by the speaker to highlight that the pro-gression to the creative thinking ability at the top of the Bloom’s learning pyramid starts with un-derstanding and remembering at the pyramid base and rises through evaluating, analyzing and ap-plying to achieve creative thinking. The progres-sion it is not a continuum ― it is a leap to achieve the apex of creative thinking. Mr. Fair-
hurst provided insight into the time frame strategic thinking and related the ability to a geology career. Geology is a complex science because a geologist must work with numerous disciplines and/or sciences and a geologist must work in the social sciences with landmen, engineers and accountants. Mr. Fairhurst said that geologists understand time frames that most do not understand. Mr. Fairhurst divided the time frame thinking ability into an operational plan which is a one-year time frame and a strategic plan which he divided into near future, normal term and long-term time frames spanning three to twenty years.
Russell Hamman with Michael Steed
Linda Sternbach and Russell Hamman (right) with speaker William Fairhurst
CAN WTI BREAK OUT OF $40? POP QUIZ
10 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
The most likely case is that WTI will remain stuck in the upper $40 to lower $50 range through December 2017.
Comparative inventories have fallen dramatically since mid-February yet oil prices languish in the mid-to-upper $40 range. But what will it take for oil prices to break out of the $45 to $55 range?
WTI prices increased from below $45 to almost $55 per barrel based on expectation that OPEC cuts would quickly balance international oil markets and result in near-term higher oil prices. While that ex-pectation lasted, prices remained near $55 from late November 2016 until early March 2017.
Rising rig counts in U.S. tight oil plays have been the most important factor constraining oil prices. Inves-tors fear that resulting increased output will prevent the market from reaching balance.
Rig counts in the Permian basin, Bakken and Eagle Ford plays began increasing after WTI fell below $30 per barrel in early 2016. Since OPEC first suggested the possibility for a production cut in August 2016, tight oil rig counts have more than doubled.
Lower net imports of petroleum products is the main reason for this reduction in C.I. Refinery intakes are at record levels as refiners produce and sell refined products in the U.S. and abroad. As I pointed out last month, this trend is only sustainable if de-mand for U.S. refined products persists.
While exporting products helps reduce U.S. stocks, it aggravates the global over-supply of liquids. Higher net imports in recent months suggest that this trend may be weakening or ending.
Oil prices collapsed in 2014 because of excess sup-ply from over-production. Low prices and the contan-go term structure of forward curves encouraged put-ting large volumes of crude oil and refined products into storage.
By Art Berman for Oilprice.com
Please email your answer to the editor, [email protected]
Name the top three reasons Houston will continue to flood.
1)
2)
3)
Notable Oil-market News:
• Norway goes to the polls to decide its
Oil future
• Libya’s largest field back online
• Frackers ignore rising well decline rates
• $2 Billion Permian pipeline
11 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
WAR WITH N. KOREA COULD SEND PRICES SKYROCKETING
An open military conflict in Northern Asia would disrupt more than a third of global seaborne crude oil trade, Wood Mackenzie warned last week amid yet another escalation between North Ko-rea, its neighbors, and the U.S.
Such a conflict would cripple North Asia’s production and refining capacity, the consultancy said. Some 65 percent of Asia’s crude oil refining capacity is located in China, Japan, and South Ko-
rea, so the effects of an open war would be far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. The most pressing ques-tion, then, is how likely such an open conflict is.
Pyongyang seems determined to expand its military capabilities with intercontinental ballistic missiles that can carry a nuclear head. State media claim that the nuclear head is a fact, releasing a photo featuring the coun-try’s leader Kim Jong Un inspecting said weapon. After a quick succession of ballistic missile tests over the last couple of months that put South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. on red alert, more nuclear talk from Pyong-yang is exactly what the world does not need. Yet it is what we are getting.
Talk is not enough to tip the region into a war—possibly even a nuclear war—but it serves to heighten the pressure, and decisions made under pressure are seldom the wisest. Analysts seem to be divided as to the most probable course the events would take.
A recent analysis by SBS News’ Kelsey Munro looks into the two basic scenarios: accept a nuclear North Ko-rea, or prevent it from becoming nuclear as soon as possible. Geopolitics experts seem to be split on which scenario is the more sensible one to follow. On the one hand, Munro notes, some researchers believe that accepting North Korea’s nuclear capability would prevent a war that would result in hundreds of thousands of casualties and disrupt the Asian economy. This would be a conventional war, since the chances of success for a tactical nuclear strike seem to be too slim to be comfortable with.
On the other hand, acceptance of a nuclear Pyongyang will in all probability lead to other countries in the re-gion going nuclear, ultimately pushing the world closer to a nuclear war as it would be that much harder to ex-ercise any pressure on North Korea after it has solidified its second-strike capability. Last month, the UN approved a new round of sanctions against North Korea that would see a third of its an-nual exports, some US$1 billion, erased. So far, sanctions have failed to have any effect on Pyongyang’s mis-sile development plans. Notable as it may be that Russia and China supported this round, its effects are doubtful – will Kim return to the negotiations table and agree to suspend his nuclear program? It’s hard to be-lieve that is a possibility, so all options remain on the table while China continues to stock up on crude.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
12 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
SIPES 2017 SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
□ Platinum Sponsor - $5,000 Full-page ad for 12 months in SIPES newsletter and recognition on the SIPES website.
□ Gold Sponsor - $2500
Half- page ad for 6 months in SIPES newsletter and recognition on the SIPES website.
□ Silver Sponsor - $1500 1/4 page ad for 3 months in SIPES newsletter and recognition on the SIPES website.
□ Bronze Sponsor - $500
Business card ad for 6 months in SIPES newsletter and recognition on the SIPES website. Restricted to SIPES members only
-- The deadline for having company logos included in early event promotion is the 15th of the month pri-
or to advertising initiation. Logos will be included in subsequent ads as received, and print deadline permitting.
-- Logo files and ads should be sent to Jeff Allen at [email protected] -- Logos should be in high-resolution vector format (.eps, .ai, or .pdf) -- Ads should be in high-resolution vector format (.eps, .ai) or high-resolution format at 300 DPI or greater (.jpg or .tiff) -- All sponsors are welcome to display brochures and company marketing materials on site the day of the event.
SIPES 2017 HOSPITALITY SPONSORSHIP
Hospitality sponsors receive recognition at monthly SIPES luncheons in the form of a spoken announce-ment, projection of company logo onto presentation screen before speakers begin, the right to place mar-keting materials on tables, and the opportunity to give a brief overview of the company’s offerings. Giv-en the high level of individual recognition, hospitality sponsors do not receive the additional benefit of advertising space online or in the newsletter. □ Member Sponsors, Non-Member Sponsors and Corporate Sponsors
$800 per monthly sponsorship
Please indicate level of sponsorship desired and send a check payable to SIPES to 5535 Memorial Drive, Suite F654/ Houston, Texas 77007
Name of Business/Organization:_________________________________________________________ Contact Person: ______________________________________________________________________ Phone: _____________________________________________________________________________ Address: ___________________________________________________________________________ Company Web Site/URL_______________________________________________________________ Email ______________________________________________________________________________ SIPES Representative ____________________________ Sponsorship Amount $_______________
13 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
SAUDI ARAMCO LARGEST IPO IN HISTORY
14 SIPES-Houston Newsletter | September 2017
SEPTEMBER LUNCHEON MENU LISTEN Planet Money, and NPR podcast, has a unique look inside the chain of supply in the oil industry. Two men purchase some oil from a producer in Kansas and follow its path downstream. This is a fun five part series.
Listen to it here.
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 any-one to be charged extra so please take the time to contact BK for your special meal needs well ahead of time. *Presentation of food may differ.
Gumbo
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]
* * *
Dan Smith, Gary Weir, and Jim Tucker
Pin Lin with her Poster on Jurassic Oceanic Crustal Structure, Eastern Gulf of Mexico