Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Explore or Optimize? Interview with Erica Dalman

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Explore or Optimize? Interview with Erica Dalman · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Chris, Christopher, Christopher, Christopher.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: How's the stump grinding business?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Chris's stumps.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: For now, it's done.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're not doing it anymore.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody, nobody contacted me.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody reached out and said our listeners did not reach out and request my services.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: You made such a compelling case for it, too.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: All you gotta do is fly me there, provide me accommodation, and provide me free beer, and I'll just do it for you.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how compelling was that?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, come on.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: I don't understand, but for now, my stump grinding has come to a halt.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I will I I will restart my skills coming up in the fall and winter this year because we're gonna cut down a bunch more trees, and so I'll have to get them out of there too.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, we have we have a lot more work to do.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: 2024 version of Chris's stump grinding is gonna be much more successful, I think, because you you have honed your skills.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: I continue to get better.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, that is correct.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, excellent.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how about you?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: What's new with you?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, what's going on?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we we're in the throes of the semester getting getting things going here.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we're back at it, back at it here in Pennsylvania.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we are here in Michigan.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: We are in full swing also, and uh it feels good.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's good.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's a good time.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Fall is beautiful.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I do I do love the when it starts to it gets it gets um, especially in eastern Pennsylvania, it gets brutally hot in the month of August, and so it's nice to have a little cooler, uh, cooler temperatures.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's something about the smell of fall.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: I I love it.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Fall's one of my favorites.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the sulfur in uh Yellowstone.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: You go outside and go, ah, I'm home.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: Except this I think everybody can agree this one smells good.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Fall, the crisp, I don't know.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's a combination between like you get the you get the bite of the air a little bit, you get the smell of the leaves, you get apples all over the place.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't know.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's just uh it's a good thing.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good okay.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh nice uh some stumps, some ground stump smell.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, today uh is is sort of part two in our series of an unknown length about sort of talking to people in industry, geoscientists in industry.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we got the opportunity to talk to Erica Dahlman, who is again, Chris, a former student of yours.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: And Erica, I think she said she graduated a couple years after I did.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Am I remembering that correctly?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: She says she graduated in 2008 from high school.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So yes.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: So Erica Dahlman is a geologist, she's a senior geologist, a reservoir geologist at Conical Phillips, has worked for Conical Phillips for several years now.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: She got her undergrad degree from Grand Valley State University, a master's in neotectonics, as she she spoke about at the University of Kansas, and uh has also did a really cool government affairs internship with the American Geoscience Institute during college or slightly after.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so has kind of worked in the hydrocarbon industry for a while.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And this was a really I learned a lot, Chris, about sort of what geologists do in oil and gas exploration companies and production companies.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was really uh I gained a lot of insight, I thought, here.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: I agree a hundred percent.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: I can't wait to take this back actually to my students because I learned a ton about the difference between exploration and development, what the job itself looks like.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: She did a very good job of painting that picture.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's an exciting field to be in.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: It is a career that is strife with ups and downs, and she talks about this in the interview.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: But I was so impressed with uh what people like this do on a day-to-day basis, and and actually the application of geology to their job.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: I found that to be a very interesting dynamical.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's right.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: We also we kind of have this um, I don't know, maybe potentially snobby uh sort of attitude by default.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you're not exploring oh, the coolest wonders of the earth as a geologist, you're kind of doing something wrong or doing something different.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like applied geology is is somehow less than, and that's certainly not the case, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and applying the geological style of thinking and and the sort of geological skill sets to industry questions and problems is just as interesting and if not more important than some of the random rocks that we study in my research group, you know.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, it it's a it's a she was extremely well spoken and and explained things, I thought, very, very well.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just super interesting perspective on the geosciences in the oil and gas industry, both present and future.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_03: I cannot believe that Jenny, my wife, did not come down and interrupt us during the interview because she loves Erica.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, is that right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: And when she said, yeah, she said she was gonna come down and to say hello, and and I said, you know, feel free, come on in, interrupt us, it doesn't matter.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: But she didn't do it, but she she really, really likes Erica and has ever since Erica was a young student in 2007, going on summer science.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: That was really when Jenny first met her.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's awesome.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I can I can see why.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, if you like our podcast, you can always learn more the basics of geoscience at geodotcampcourses.com.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: All of our content is there.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: We also have all of our past episodes uploaded to our Camp Geo app.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can download them there.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can also head over to our podcast website, planetgeocast.com.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: There you can send us an email, you can subscribe, you can follow us, you can support us.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: We really appreciate that, and listen to all of our past episodes.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, Chris, with that, let's get to Erica Dalman.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_03: Coming your way?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: So, Erica, we're just gonna go ahead and jump right in then.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, we always start off whenever we do an interview.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_03: This is our first question.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell us a little bit about your path into geology, how you decided on this career path?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: And was there some sort of aha moment?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_03: Was there something special that happened that you saw it and it directed you along this path?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so as a kid, I really liked science.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think I could trace that back to like fourth grade, um, where we got to go to the gypsum mines, actually, there in West Michigan.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I still have some of those samples, I think, somewhere in my parents' attic.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um gypsum mines.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't remember doing that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think I did, I know I did it, but I don't remember doing that.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was was that in uh were you at Hudsonville at that point in the Hudsonville Public School?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at Albert Elementary.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I came one year out at Almer.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, gotcha.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: They don't allow groups down there anymore, so I can't take my geology class down there anymore.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's too bad.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: That is too bad.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: Anyway, continue, Erica.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry to interrupt.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that was probably my you know my first field experience as a little fourth grader.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I remember actually really wanting to be an astronaut.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, I just kind of kept that interest in science.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then it wasn't until freshman year that I had you, Chris, as a earth science teacher that really geology kind of came to the forefront and then had the opportunity to have two more classes with you, the Summer Science Institute, and then the junior senior level geology class.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time, I also still really liked architecture and drafting.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'd taken some of the classes like that and was even thinking business.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't really remember an aha moment, but just thinking I really liked geology when I got into the program at Grand Valley, and I remember thinking, okay, if this doesn't pan out or if I decide to switch majors, like that's okay, but I'm just gonna kind of take it one step at a time.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And just cool opportunities kept arising.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: So through my undergraduate degree, being able to do some research, attend conferences.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was also invited to participate and applied for a program that was at the time sponsored by Exxon Mobil and GSA, the Geological Society of America.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a week-long trip out to the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I did an internship with the American Geosciences Institute, a science policy internship in DC.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: So just opportunity, cool opportunities kept kind of popping up through my undergraduate degree, and then decided to take the next step and to to do my master's and ultimately start a career in the geoscience industry.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: So when you went to Grand Valley right out of high school, did you know that you were going into geology then?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_03: Like you didn't you didn't mess around with degree changes or anything like that?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I yeah, I declared geology as my as my major, and then you know, still thinking maybe open to switch, but then I I never looked back and switch it.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean you listed a lot of reasons why you should have been turned off by geology, you know, Chris with taking three classes from Chris Bullheis.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when when did you become excited by it?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, no, I'm kidding.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Were you always interested in industry?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because you kind of like, okay, you you got a master's degree, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you you did this very interesting policy.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: When was that?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Was that at your policy internship?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Was that uh that was when I was in an undergrad.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: During your undergrad or after undergrad?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now I can't remember if it was the summer of my junior year or after.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe uh yeah, maybe.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it was a summer, like a summer internship thing.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it was a summer internship, yeah.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, those are kind of three, or uh at least on the surface, three different things, like sort of academic pursuits, uh policy pursuits, and then like now you're in industry.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So did you always have an eye towards industry, or is that something you became more interested in or were sort of practically interested in any way?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So um there was the professor Patty Vedetic, she actually had worked at when it was just Kaniko um way back in the day as a carbonate research.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And she was probably the, I think, one of the only professors that kind of had an oil and gas focus of some of her classes.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So some exposure still through undergrad, but no, I think I just kind of kept it in the in the possibilities.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I remember looking also at programs for volcanology.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think I was kind of at the undergrad level still pretty open, but did have some exposure to the oil and gas industry.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that definitely was one of the options that I had kept in my mind.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then really, as I was looking for graduate programs, that's where I did really focus in on okay, I wanted to look for programs that did have an existing tie to the oil and gas industry to at least give myself a greater chance of getting a job through that industry.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I want to kind of uh focus in on that because we get a lot of questions, both in our professional, like st our personal students and then people who listen to this podcast, ask a thought of kind of these sort of career-y style questions, like, hey, I'm interested in geology, I super love volcanoes, but there's not that many practicing volcanologists in the world.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, can you get a volcanology master's and then go work in industry?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the questions that are kind of nuanced and detailed like that.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you struggled or or you asked yourself those questions.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, how when you're applying to graduate school, like what were the options, what were your thinking, and how did that eventually play out?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can you can you go into that a little bit more detail, your thought process there and the decisions available to you?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I certainly was struggling with with those questions.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And especially, you know, I didn't have too many people within my family or kind of close circle that had been geologists, and so I was, you know, certainly relying on my teachers and professors during undergrad.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I really wanted the international experience too, and the opportunity to travel.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that was kind of a pull towards volcanology.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: There was a program, I don't know if it still exists at Michigan Tech University that I think at the time was doing almost like a Peace Corps type rotation, I think, through geoscience.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so kind of that international and travel experience was what drew me to that.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But then the other options really were through either universities that had existing recruiting from oil and gas industry or ties or specific advisors at universities.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at that point I really was looking more towards okay, what are and really relying on guidance from the advisors, potential advisors that I was talking to and their students if they had gotten internships with the oil and gas industry or oil and gas companies and kind of their own.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so Erica, how did you end up where okay, where did you go for your graduate studies?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_03: Let's talk about that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: And were they tailored to this interest in petroleum or exploration geology?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I did my master's at the University of Kansas and I found that program.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember if it was through the GSA conference, probably.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it was the AAPG conference, which is the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was through GSA.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: My particular master's wasn't hyper-focused, I would say, in oil and gas.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think there's lots of other specialties within the master's that you could get, but it was certainly related.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I did my master's in neotectonics looking at the quaternary deformation, so recent deformation in the Colombian Andes and the in the frontal most thrust.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we were trying to quantify the slip rates.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there is some oil and gas activity.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: The research was funded by Echo Patrol, which is a Colombian national oil company.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: But my specific advisor wasn't really uh historically very involved in the in the oil and gas industry, like it was very structural geology tectonics focused.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this was kind of you know tied to it, but wasn't there's definitely some very oil and gas focused researchers and and programs.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest tie from the University of Kansas at the time was their carbonate department.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that was they had a big consortium with industry, but I wasn't one of the carbonate students.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's interesting.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: I did not know that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: So did your master's degree was that helpful in the job that you currently have?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: In a broad sense, yes.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it definitely gave me both starting from my undergrad and then the types of courses that we did at um at my master's level, you know, understanding plate tectonics, um, orogenic formation thrust belts.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, strong focus on on tectonics.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And those principles are very important in oil and gas, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: We need to understand the geologic history.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I learned a lot on the job.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there was still a lot of the tools and the type of data that I use in my day-to-day, I didn't have a lot of exposure to that in my master's.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a broad sense, it did.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was at least, you know, within the realm of the of the geology that that's applicable to oil and gas.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so, because my program, I guess, wasn't as specifically tied to oil and gas, I tried to do other things to kind of show that interest and and learn more.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a student chapter of AAPG that I was involved in.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would have different speakers that would come in, or you know, and we would attend the conferences, or right, there's always student chapter activities.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was also the Imperial Barrel Award competition.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you were you did that.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, cool.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I did.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_03: Can you talk about that a second, Erica?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's a it's a pretty short, I want to say like eight to ten week project.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so you have teams of, I think it's max up to five students from each university, and you basically do a mini project of oil exploration.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so the students are given a data set from anywhere in the world.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: We had a data set from Alaska, typically where our data is public, right?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's certain countries or states where data is more available from the oil and gas industry, and so you're given some wells, some seismic data, and you need to kind of paint the picture.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there prospectivity here for the oil and gas or not?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, pretty comprehensive workflow, really, within that eight-week period, and then you give a presentation at the regional chapter, and then from that they select winners, and you kind of go up all the way to international level at the APG conference where you give a presentation and and they select the the winners.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: So, how did your team do?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we came in second at uh regionals.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: With this was the first, I want to say this was the first or second year that KU had been had participated in in the competition.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we were definitely going up against OU, which is a big oil oil school.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we felt very proud about uh coming in kind of as the underdogs and almost taking their name to fame.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_03: What a cool experience.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: What's it called again?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Imperial Barrel well, a competition or award IBA.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like a beer.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Who so who uh who won that those awards?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: What did you do it one year or two years, Herca?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because the uh University of Alberta at the time you were only allowed to do it one year.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay, gotcha.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: I when I was a grad student in Alberta, it was uh you know, big oil and gas university and department as well.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so the the barrel award competition was always it was like really competitive to get on the barrel team in the department.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then also they were always uh they were unhappy with third place, let's put it that way.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think if if they took second or first was the goal, and they didn't really like to lose to like Calgary or you know these other universities that were close competitors, so it was a quite you know competitive thing.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that that's really cool.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I maybe we can touch on like the the value of different degree types in your job and in your profession.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So it sounds like you kind of were maybe uh without this sounding bad, a little bit strategic about what you chose to work on.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't necessarily like, oh, I love volcanoes or I love metamorphic rocks, so I'm gonna do a master's in that.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: You were a little bit more like career strategic, which is great.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's like a really would that be an an accurate uh description, Erica?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Is that okay?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: Erica, can you please tell us just describe what your job is, what you do in a broad sense, and maybe a little bit about what you do day to day.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: And then I'd like to move into college degrees and how that plays into the job that you do.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So my work right now, I would probably be described as uh what's called development geologist.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so, in contrast to exploration geologists, which I've done a little bit of that before, but right now we're in the life cycle of production or where we're just drilling a lot of wells.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: There is still some exploration or trying to understand what we call the play or where the oil and gas is coming from, but we're definitely a little bit farther along, so it's kind of in the in the development still.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Can I interrupt to the question on that, Erica?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is out because I always get confused by these terms.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Could you give an example of like could you set the stage like geologically?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is a basin?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: What is a play?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where are exploration geologists and developmental geologists like in that life cycle of a of a discovery?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I guess can you kind of like give a hypothetical or a real example of that?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I always get confused.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is a play?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: What is a basin?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Which one's bigger?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do these things interact?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like how the the the just the terms we're using here.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think that would be really helpful.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be interested in the answer because I don't know.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Basin is the is the bigger thing geologically, right?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I work right now in the Permian Basin, and even within that, there's sub-basin.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the Midland Basin, and that goes up to the Central Basin platform and the Delaware Basin.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: So those are two smaller sub-basins, which are in the Permian Basin, which is the it is tied to the geologic era or time period, right?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Of of the Permian.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: And this is all in West Texas or Yes.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's all West Texas.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like the Permian Basin is.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: The Permian Basin would just be considered in West Texas.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a discrete uh defined.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then within that are the different plays.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So those are whether it's the individual formation that is getting developed, or if it's a combination, right?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: But but the play would be a unique set of components that make up that hydrocarbon system.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, a a shale layer that's a producer within the basin or something like that.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, or a domal structure that's like a trap could be a play or something.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Will there be multiple companies all going after the same play, or is like Conico Phillips has one play and another company has another play?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, so it's it's mostly land driven, and so you have rights to most of the subsurface.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely exceptions where where your ownership is depth severance, they call it.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: So someone might have the ability to just drill some of the shallower, and another company might have stuff to the deeper.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I didn't know that.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: That it gets subdivided vertically like that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So someone might own the land, but then they lease to oil companies their ability to drill in the subsurface.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's a whole world within the gas industry, is managing all that.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um the leases and the interest and the royalties, there's all that hope component before even getting to producing oil.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, interesting.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when we look at oil or when we're looking at uh hydrocarbon provinces or a play, there's five elements that we talk about.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the source rock, where did the hydrocarbons come from?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And those, so that's an organic rich, typically a shale, but an organic rich rock.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: The reservoir, so those hydrocarbons moved into a reservoir.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's typically a sandstone, but it can be carbonate, something that's porous and permeable.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's source rock, reservoir, hydrocarbon, migration, generation, and timing.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: So did that organic rich formation, did that actually generate hydrocarbons, right?
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Did it go through the geologic processes needed to generate hydrocarbons?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And really right at the sweet spot, right?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't want it to go too hot and too deep for it to be kind of overcooked, we call it.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: So there's that component.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And did that occur in a geologic time frame that the reservoir was already deposited, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So really it's this very intricate dance of all these things had to line up that there was a source rock that was generated and migrated at a certain time, that the reservoir was already there.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then was there some To trap it in that reservoir.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's the so then there's a trap in the seal.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the trap can be a stratigraphic trap.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it went from the porosity changes from sandstone to a shale.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: So then that shale is trapping that in the porous sand.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: It can be structural trap.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then a top seal and side seal, right?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: You need to kind of now keep it all in within the geologic time scale.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that typically then another tight, non-permeable source rock.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So from an exploration geologist, you don't know if all those elements are working.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you're trying to understand where are basins or where are areas where this all lines up.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there's kind of you know complete what they call wildcat or new ventures where there might only have been one or two where there really isn't been any exploration for oil and gas.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're trying to use your geologic principles of, okay, we know this was deposited in this environment to kind of piece together these five elements and see if there actually is oil and gas.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there might be some elements, there could be some seeps that have come up on the up on the surface, whether it's the sea seafloor or on land.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there's typically some clues that yes, we think this is a hydrocarbon-bearing basin, um, but but you really are trying to put the elements together compared to what I'm doing now and the permanent.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: Erica, can I interrupt a second?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I want to go back a second to the exploration side of it.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_03: So if they piece it all together, like you beautifully described, those L all those elements in play, do they have to pitch this then to the executives?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_03: Because drilling a well is expensive.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so do they have to pitch it and convince them?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, okay, they that paints a picture in my head of that's gotta be a lot of pressure.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is, and there's a lot of um if companies have uh an exploration program where they are really doing this new venture as wildcat, I mean you really need a whole breadth or whole portfolio of opportunities because you don't know which ones are gonna work.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, it definitely is.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's presentation to first and second level management.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if if there seems to be some likes to it, then that gets up right, and it's a company level up to CEO level of yes, we are gonna make significant investment in this opportunity, whether it's to acquire more data, so that's the next step of not as much capital, not as much money to spend, right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: To is there more seismic we can acquire?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: What other data is can we can we use to decrease the risk?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, these are these could be it's a lot of money to drill a well.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so yeah, this definitely would be conversation.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then not only so we paint the geologic picture, but then work closely with the reservoir engineer variety of people to say, okay, how much oil do we think can be can be there and is that economic and how much could we produce, right?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you really need to paint out the whole project that could come from that opportunity.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_03: So that's awesome.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_03: Let's move into the development stage then.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so then if it's in an area where it's proven and the Permian Basin has been drilling, producing oil for, I shouldn't know the exact time, but for sure hundreds of years.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we know that the petroleum system works and the Permian Basin is amazing in that it just has stacked pay.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it there's the source rocks, there's hybrid plays, there's the conventional sandstone and the source rock, and all different types of formation after formation that that's hydrocarbon bearing.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so now it's more about optimizing.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: What did you call that?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: A stacked play?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is that stacked pay we call it?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so pay is what has oil and gas.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's some basins where it's really just one interval that they're developing from.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there's others where it just it was a sweet spot geologically, and it has just formation after formation that that has oil and gas.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: In the US, I mean there's the Eagle Fern, which is another big play in Texas, the Willison Basin up in North Dakota, but the Permian Basin is is pretty unique in that it just has a lot of lot of hydrocarbon.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so now it's okay, we know we know that it's producing or that it has hydrocarbons.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's more okay, optimizing within that, which areas have have a little bit more, a little bit less, which ones are easier to drill, the types of fluids, right?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So within hydrocarbons, you can have from condensate oil to oil, heavy oil, and then gas, white gas.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: So now it's trying to understand, okay, within the the fluid types, what areas are better?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where a development where I'm not necessarily trying to figure out those five elements.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's just within what we call that play, where are the best areas?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And are there geologic reasons for the different performance that we say within the wells?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So if there's one area that is producing a lot better, is that geologically driven, or is that based on the engineering?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how the wells were drilled, how they were completed.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes a lot more like fine-scale optimization.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a good word.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it's like discovery versus optimization, these two different roles for geologists.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: That how so I have so many questions about this.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: This how are you in development now because you like the optimization side?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because you like it more, or was it like a play you discovered that you got into, or like does somebody discover a place and then follow it through and become a developmental geologist because they know it so well?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that last question, it depends.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think different companies are structured differently where, yeah, if you did um kind of work that early phase and you can get to the testing and continue on.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm currently in this role of because of the focus of the company.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this is now their biggest business unit or the most jobs are, most activity where they're investing the most money.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really the main driver for why I'm in this.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also a very interesting play.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like we do have some activity in in other areas.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, right now my focus why I'm here is because that's where most of the company is investing the most of its of its money.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: As uh hydrocarbon companies, you know, stop investment in exploration or or are forced to in various ways or are deincentivized to explore for hydrocarbons, it becomes more optimization.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, interesting.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's super interesting.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is uh I remember um one of the professors in my undergrad had worked, I think, for Exxon for a while, and then you know, came back to be a professor after maybe 10 years.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I I can't remember the number he said, but he was an exploration geologist, and he said that like a successful percentage of like successful wells.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember what it was, but it was something like baseball.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was like super low batting average to be successful.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, I don't know if it was one in ten or one in five or something like that, but it felt shockingly low.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: One in ten, is that right?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a good ratio.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know if that's true across uh there's probably a real answer, but ballpark, yeah, one in ten.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd have to, yeah, for ten wells you'd you'd drill only one, you might actually find find hydrocarbons at at that early exploration phase.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: I find that a very surprising stat.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like yeah.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I I I guess I I envision hot shots walking around that are you know batting, you know, 120 instead of a hundred, you know.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right, right, right, exactly.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then you got the bottom feeders that are that are, you know, they're they're like eight out of or point oh eight.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 0.08.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, Erica.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: So I still want to come back to the degrees because I think this is absolutely fascinating, first of all.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've learned um actually a ton so far in this conversation.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: But what does your day-to-day look like in your job?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so my day-to-day, a lot of computer work.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I rarely go out to the field um to look at rocks or try to, you know, are at the at the well.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely office-based.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Me too, unfortunately.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: But so I work closely with the reservoir engineer and we evaluate new wells that that are being drilled.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so the group that I'm in is a little bit unique in that we're evaluating wells that aren't operated by Conical Phillips by the company we work for.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so we might have an interest, so whether that's as well as one, five percent or up to 50% uh interest in that land.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so whoever is is gonna be an operator is proposing these wells, and then we choose whether or not we want to spend money and participate in in that well.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So make the investment to to pay for the wells, and then ultimately get the whole the profit from from that well.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Can you lay out real quick, Erica, who's on that team?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: That seems like a really interesting team to be on.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like who are the members of the team and what are their specialties?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: You said a reservoir engineer.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is that what you said you work closely with?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that the core of the of what we what they call the technical team.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that's more on the geology and engineering side.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely heavily um dominated by engineers.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's also a shift when you go from exploration into development.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: In the exploration world, the geologists are really spearheading that and make up the bulk of the teams as you move into development that becomes heavier focused on on the engineering side.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there's um some geologists, cover reservoir engineers, and that would be the technical team.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then associated with that is the what we what they call the land management team or land negotiator team.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: So everything I've described of how much who owns the leases, the minerals, you know, that's a toll, a whole shop, and then data support.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're drilling this well, just managing the amount of data that we come in, so that's another portion.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the finance team.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that would probably be the somewhat core that supports this area of the non-operated asset.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, interesting.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: You get to learn a lot day to day with working with all these very disparate expertise sets on on a single well or a single like proposed site.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds super interesting.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then in this particular group, I've gotten a lot more exposure to the commercial side of things to okay, how much okay, I can understand the geology, but then what's the economic value of this well?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then if it doesn't, you know, meet the the interest of this company to participate in, how can we sell this?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do we think the value is?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of the commercial aspect of do we trade this interest for another?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Does another company have something that we are interested in?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do we just outright sell it?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of exposure to the to the commercial side, which has been really interesting and and dynamic.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: I feel a lot of these questions from students, uh, from undergrads and grad students in our program too.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how how do they think about what degrees are valuable and what specializations are valuable?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So could you maybe like compare and contrast the bachelor's degree versus a master's versus maybe a PhD even?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like in Alberta when I was in grad school, there's a whole bunch of people who got PhDs in you know carbonate geochemistry or trace fossils that a lot of people worked up in the oil sands.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: So like looking at trace fossils and getting a PhD in that and then going and work in the hydrocarbon industry.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Especially the PhD MSc one, I think, is like a pretty well, I don't know.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Can you evaluate those three degrees or compare them to each other maybe?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because Erica, I th weren't you gonna go into and get your PhD from KU?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then you I think you transitioned and into a master's instead.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I kind of went, I was originally applying for master's programs, and then from my top two schools, uh one of which was KU, they offered me funding for a PhD, and then my other school was also PhD, and so I I you know I had kind of thought about it, but I was gonna start with master's, and then it's like, well, okay, I guess I'll try the PhD.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then starting so once I started my program and had gotten an internship with Conco Phillips, and and so then yeah, then I transitioned back to to master's.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I had started master's and was offered PhD and then.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, so you have an inch really interesting take on this question, then I'm I'm excited to hear your perspective on it.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I guess I'll start with if I look at my colleagues, most of us have master's degree, a smaller portion have PhD, and I, you know, I don't know what the numbers are now.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: If I had to guess maybe 20% or a quarter or something.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then very few that are doing the type of work that I do have a bachelor's degree.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that would master's, would you classify that as like the working degree?
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can have whatever level of career you want with a master's, whereas maybe a bachelor's, you're kind of restricted a little bit to you, you might not be able to move up as quickly.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, definitely a master's is the very rarely, and you know, that this is always changes, but when companies were doing a lot heavier recruiting uh at schools, you know, they might still interview some bachelor's students and maybe offer an internship, but I think typically it was with the view of okay, the next step would be that they would get their their master's degree as a geologist, now as a petrophysicist.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that can be there are some geologists that go into petrophysics or, but typically that's engineering, mostly background.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So there could still be into the what's called like the technical or petrotech career, that there could be some undergrad.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I do know some geologists that charted as as bachelor's and working in the office, but yeah, it it typically is masters.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: For clarity, can you define what a petrophysicist is for the listeners?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the petrophysicist.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: For the listener, right, Chris?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Quote unquote the listener.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: You like how I did that?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: You just called me out.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_03: That was not okay.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um, a petrophysicist is looking at the tools that we use in a well to try and understand the subsurface.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: So as geologists in the oil and gas industry, right?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is all on the subsurface.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: We can't see it.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can go to outcrops to kind of get an inference, but really we're just piecing together data and um making a lot of interpretations from that.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the best tools we have is when you drill a well, you acquire various data types.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the basic one would be a gamma array, whereas you've got a tool that's running down the whole well, and you're essentially measuring the radioactivity of the of the rocks, right?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So shale can often have uranium, thorium, and potassium, which are radioactive.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're measuring the difference in a sandstone, typically doesn't have that.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're the ones that are really in the details of, and there's a whole suite of logs that we call, so just different data types that we run down the hole and interpret off of that.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so the petrophysicist is really the first one to look at that data because we can acquire a lot of information about the about the rocks, but it still isn't directly this is what it is, right?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're also still making assumptions of okay, because this has high radioactivity, that must be a shale.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then this other log gives us information about the porosity.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the petrophysicist is is really involved in that in that process, and they're creating the models, the mathematical models with that data to then hand off to the to the geologist to to put that in its geologic context.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: So correctly.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of physics behind that, and what all that sort of thing is.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this sounds like and you kind of touched on it earlier that you got a lot of on-the-job training.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you did not come out of your master's uh in neotectonics, like ready to hit the ground running as a developmental geologist or something, right?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, how what advice would you give to students about what type of degree?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's all sorts of master's degrees.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: They could come work with me on geochronology.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: How amongst your colleagues are most people structural geologists by training uh in their degree program, or is there a whole a wide variety?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Probably most of them are um sentimentologists or stratigraphers.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: That tends to be a bigger focus.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and for this, the types of uh basins that that we're currently working in.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um there was a time where like carbonates, geologists were a big focus, and and that might still be for other companies, right, in different parts of the world that that you're looking at.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: There could be, there probably are a lot more variety of masters.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't, I mean, I don't know if a lot of people know that I did neotectonics, right?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't come in today, yeah, yeah.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Really in our in our day-to-day.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so unless it was a specialty that was directly applicable to that, and I, you know, and you were continuing in in that specialty, we kind of just get washed out as geologists, right?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where we get to now focus on petroleum geology and you're all lumped in as the people who look at their rocks.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: So this is Jesse's roundabout way of asking if he's employable in the petroleum.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Can I have a job?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds super fun.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there, I would say yes.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's probably unfortunately some bias of companies only looking for geologists that have, you know, research that's applicable to the oil and gas industry, which I think is a loss because there's a lot of smart geologists that are, you know, yeah, you might have a particular interest in an aspect of geology, but you're still dealing with uncertainty, you're still making a lot of interpretations based on data.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think there's definitely the skill set is there.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really interesting question.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this brings up a uh sort of a one-off question.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Chris, you're gonna give me a hard time about this question, I predict.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, Eric, if you don't have an answer for this, that's totally fine.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it makes me wonder how you view your skill set.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of think that the hydrocarbon industry is certainly changing in the future, it'll be different than it than it was the last 10 years, probably, right?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, how do you view your skill set?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: How transferable is your skill set to, I don't know, critical minerals stuff or harbon sequestration companies or hydrogen, you know, exploration companies.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you view your skill set in the future going forward, I guess?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's a really good question.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Chris.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I like it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm interested to I don't want to just throw you off, Erica, but I I'd be interested in, yeah, I don't know.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like what do you think?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts about that?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think the biggest and where I've seen colleagues make the change, the easiest, maybe I don't know if the easiest word, but into carbon carbon sequestration.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: So as I was describing before, that we want to look for uh like clay or areas where we can contain the hydrocarbon, right?
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we want that reservoir to be filled with hydrocarbons now when we're looking at carbon capture.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna inject carbon, like we still need it to be contained.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're just looking for now, maybe where there isn't oil and gas, right?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: But where is still reservoir?
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if we inject it, it's not gonna come out through a fault.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna, so there's still those skills are very transferable and it's in the subsurface, right?
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to still understand it's it's a lot of the similar data.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're not looking at seismic data or wells.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that is definitely where I see a lot of geologists that have either left from the um exploration and development standpoint and and going over to to carbon capture and sequestration.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: The mining and looking at critical minerals, like I said, in the in the broad sense, I think it would be transferable, but we probably run into a little bit more of, you know, if you're going up against someone that does have experience and looking at hard rocks and really a little bit more in depth at um mineral exploration, they're of course going to have a competitive edge.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I have seen, I have a colleague that did go into mining, but he had done a little bit of mining, I think, before his master's or through his master's, and then went into Maryland gas and back out to to mining.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I haven't yeah, actively tried to see um, I think there definitely are transferable skills, but it probably is just a little bit more of a stretch and kind of do a little bit more retooling and and education.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, I don't know enough about the hydrogen space to to know you know how transferable that would be.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: It might be easier than than others if at certain oil companies where they are kind of doing traditional oil and gas and other energy sources in the mix to kind of get some of that on-the-job training before really becoming uh cool.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, super interesting position to be in.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_03: Erica, I have not heard you mention, or maybe you did and I missed it, but I don't think so.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: Seismic data.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_03: How important is this in exploration and or development?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: Or do you just simply have enough raw data to go off from where that's not really used that much anymore?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: So in exploration, it's gold.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is is one of the primary data types that are used.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And especially because when you're on exploration, you might have one well, probably rarely just one well, but a handful of wells, right, depending on the area.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And geologic systems are complex.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happens between those 10 miles apart or however apart these wells are, a lot can change.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where seismic data, which is a lot cheaper to acquire than drilling a well, can really paint the picture and help um understand the geology, what's happening within those wells, or even in areas where we don't have wells, that really does you can understand the basin geometry.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: The seismic data gives you some information on the lithology of what types of rock, right?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the seismic data, which is requiring uh sound waves through the earth and and different rock proper different rock types reflect that data differently.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can really get an understanding of what types of rocks are there.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hydrocarbons can actually be identified on seismic data too, or conventional oil and gas trap.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can see often where the the oil and gas line is and where water is under underneath that.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: So in the exploration space, it's it's invaluable.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: In the development phase, it's also important, but less so.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some areas, especially here in the in the Permian Basin, where there's just so many wells that we don't use uh seismic data.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are still there's still a big portion where we utilize it, and and especially when you are drilling a well and you're trying to understand you want to stay within the target, and a few feet might make a difference, or 20 feet, 30 feet.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a small scale fault?
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's where size.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it can be utilized.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: But it definitely takes a back step compared to in the exploration world.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have a random question, Chris, that uh I'd like to reject, if you'll if with your permission.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I uh going back to this, we were at this conference, right, Erica?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this you know we were all celebrating Chris Bullheis, which was very nice, but I was feeling quite old at that conference.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I and I've been feeling kind of old for the last little while now and feeling bad for myself about that, but I was kind of shocked.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like the younger generation of Chris Bullheis students, like younger than us, maybe like five to I don't know, 10 years younger, um, definitely had a different Chris Bullheis experience in some way.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Did you get that feeling too?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Did did you do you feel like you're talking about?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I feel I don't know what you're doing right now.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I feel like the uh I feel like Eric and I got the the young and maybe spunky Chris Bullheis.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like the new, the you know, more recent students are getting uh a little bit maybe slightly more subdued or slightly you just like know how to do it a little bit better.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you were like a little bit more experimental when we were going through, maybe maybe we got an experimental version a little bit more because Chris, you had just started the geology class.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was not that old when we were going through, I suppose.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now you're a senior and very polished, you know what you're about, you know how to do it well, it's very clean and well put together.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that is 100% true.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think that you guys, you too are gonna find out the same thing within your career.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think everybody, as you move through your career, has to find a new motivation for doing what you do, you know, because when you're young and you start out, your reasons for wanting to be really good at what you do and your enthusiasm is different.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_03: And then as you progress through, you know, you're older, you're wiser, you just change a little bit, and and all of a sudden that motivation that you had when you were young isn't there anymore.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I think about this a lot with summer science.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_03: I took both of you on this when I was much younger, and my motivation, I'll tell you what, before we left for that trip, I didn't sleep.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was nervous, I was excited, I would all these other things going on.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: Now I sleep like a baby before we leave on this trip.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's like I don't have any nerves about anything, you know, and so my motivation has to change as I do this the same job for umpteen, you know, decades that I've done it.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: It has to change, or I'm gonna do it.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what so what is your new motivation, Chris?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then let's go around because I'm interested in this.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll give mine and then Eric, I want to hear yours too.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, because you've been doing it like a decade too, roundabout.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Chris, what is your new motivation?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: That's really interesting because when I realize when I realized this back in probably it was 10 years ago, that my excitement for doing the summer trip that I lead was not the same.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: And I actually was thinking about giving it up because it wasn't exciting anymore.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_03: And uh somebody somewhere said something and it stuck with me about changing your motivation.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, well, you know what, you're right.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think that a trip like this and uh these geology classes that take kids out into the field and into the wild and push them in different ways is so important.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that's my motivation now is that bringing students and connecting them to the planet that we live on and connecting them to these amazingly beautiful places is a really important job to have.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that's my motivation, is more of a steward now, I guess.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um less about you're excited to go hiking out in the in you're you're less excited to go hiking yourself, you're more excited to bring people along on the experience or something like that.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then sit back and watch the light go on in them and have them get excited about it.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_03: I I really like that, and so that's my motivation now.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I I definitely feel this, and I'll in many aspects of my career, I think.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: But one of them I'll I'll talk about like research.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: And because I used to be super excited about every new data set, and publishing a paper was amazing.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: The first publication, and the th, you know, even like the fourth or fifth was like so exciting.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I mean, we just published a paper a couple weeks ago.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, yeah, that's okay, done.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now what's you know, on to the next thing.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, you know, 10 different papers on my desk at any one time in different stages.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's less exciting to have a publication, and I'm I'm a little bit struggling for the motivation, like where the motivation of the next thing is.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's more like I'm interested in this critical minerals space and learning about that and maybe doing some research in that and sort of developing new kind of techniques for that because it's really applicable and understanding studying ancient rocks maybe doesn't really scratch the itch in the way that it used to.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to do some more applied stuff, stuff that's like more applied to society uh a little bit more.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think we talked about this over beer, Erica, when we were at the at the conference in May a little bit about this different or about this, you know, the the disconnect.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's my answer to it.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Erica, how how what do you think about this?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Motivation.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think this is you've given me some good uh thoughts and maybe brought some words to things that maybe I hadn't necessarily bought or that yeah, been um explicit about, but but it probably is going on.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, when I started out in the industry, you're learning, yeah, you're learning so much, there's all these new data types, new basins, new geology, and you know, you're you're viewed as new, right?
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: So so everyone's teaching you stuff, and now kind of getting at that point in my career where I'm not an expert, right?
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's people that are been doing this a lot longer, but I'm also not the newest one, newest kid on the block either.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think trying to, yeah, I think that's probably still some work that I'm doing though.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what is the motivation?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do I see my role now?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: On the one hand, it is exciting because okay, now I do have a little bit more expertise and feel like I can give recommendations and where we should be investing the company's money.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I, you know, do have a little bit more ownership now than than what you do when you're starting out.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, certainly at a time where now the oil and gas industry has through my career has gone through all kinds of ups and downs.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that probably is still kind of a constant search of okay, what is my motivation?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: And how have you experienced those ups and downs?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know it's it's an incredibly cyclical industry.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's like every seven years, there's uh I experienced one full cycle when I was in grad school in Alberta.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: And in Alberta, it's like West Texas, right?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oil dominates the entire economy.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so everybody experienced it from the random guys that played basketball, they were experiencing these cycles as well in their, I don't know what they're doing, drilling engineers or something.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: So what does that look like to be in a very cyclical industry for you?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it can be and it can be quite stressful at times.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I started out um in 2015.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: So price of oil was already starting to go down from its peak of 120, where oil companies were hiring geologists like crazy.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they couldn't fit enough people in an office, right?
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: You'd have like four or five geologists in your office to then going way down to$20 price of oil.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was one of the last few really that got in kind of in that in that wave before they stopped hiring for for a little bit.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the first thing that it taught me was okay, we're paid well, but I don't know how long it's gonna last, right?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think for anyone getting into a a cyclical industry where the booms can be really good, but then you also need to be able to withstand the the down cycles.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was a just a very personal learning where okay, I'm starting out getting paid well from from my masters, but I don't know how long this is this is gonna last.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so living well below your means and and then I think, yeah, always looking for what can I be learning, what are the new tools coming out, right?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_00: Always kind of trying to stay on the on the forefront of the changes.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: But then also, you know, it is just luck too, right?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: So there are a lot of good people that were hired, and then because the company's hired too many and activity fell, we're we're laid off.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: So through my career, I think we've been the company had gone through seven layoffs out of a nine-year career, which is and then I was laid off once and then and then just rehired two years ago now, a year and a half ago.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's uh it can be quite stressful.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: And some people through that similar to my story, they wanted from their masters going to oil and gas, and then after seeing that for a couple of years, decided, you know what, this isn't for me.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go do something else.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it definitely is a very personal decision whether you're uh wanna want to stay stay with it.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: But it can be really fun.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as a geoscientist, we get to work with a lot of cool data and see the fruit of it and you know, test new ideas.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think this area is gonna produce better, but well, maybe it's something else, and so it can be a really fun and dynamic career, but certainly has that kind of downside of cyclicity.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: Erica, this up and down kind of thing and recently being laid off.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_03: Are you gonna just weather the storm, do you think, for the rest of your career in terms of just give into this, or or are you looking for maybe moving in a different direction in the future?
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think um depending on the day, I might have a different different answer, right?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think um to some extent, yeah, weathering the storm and and right now, you know, well, I think it's about uh$80.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think companies have learned a lot from the last downturn of okay, we don't need to every increase now hire a bunch of people to then lay them back off, right?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's hopefully some learnings from companies of okay, let's be a little bit more strategic about our workforce because to not keep like whipping people around.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know, yeah.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some days I also think about doing something totally different outside of geoscience.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, so far I I'm so liking what I'm doing, and and it's compelling and interesting enough.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I think definitely through the layoff and just through you know the years of of the ups and downs, I think I hold my job a little more loosely, right?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not try to have my identity be so tied to to that and say, okay, yes, this could be taken away at any time, or I can also maybe have the opportunity to get back in.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I try to at least kind of hold that a little bit more loosely than I did probably when I when I was starting out.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a really I like the way you phrase that.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um keep it less of your identity.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean that's a hard thing for geologists.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like the geoscience field, we're all very passionate.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you go into geology, at least many people of our generation went into geology because it's cool and you like it and it's exciting, and then you figure out a career after that.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think maybe that might be changing with geoscience being super relevant to society in a new kind of way.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: People might be going into it because of its relevance, not because it's cool.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: But we I think geologists on average kind of are defined by as being geologists.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: I know I am, I define myself as that in many ways.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I like the way you phrase that though, to hold it a little bit loosely.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: That that was uh nicely put.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Erica, kind of along the same line, do you do you find the area that you're in to be a very mi male-dominated profession?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think maybe the industry average is 30% female to male at the probably entry level, maybe some companies less, 20%, and depending on kind of where within the the life cycle of the oil and gas industry, whether that's what I'm doing versus kind of the downstream and refinery and more field-based, right?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: It varies, but I think if you look at the oil and gas industry at a whole, it's probably between 25 and 30 percent.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been, you know, I try to also put that in perspective that it probably is true for a lot of STEM industries still, unfortunately.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been also very lucky to work for a larger company and has an international um component too.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so that has, I think, really enriched my experience to have a lot of really good role models, female role models in the geoscience or in the business aspect of the company.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: So then some regard I would like to see, you know, continued progress and representation.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, you know, that 30% each level up through management kind of keeps decreasing.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you look at the CEO across the board, the CEOs of of oil and gas companies, it is certainly much less diverse.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is definitely something that a lot of good people are still trying to improve and and kind of bring that awareness to the industry.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_03: I know that this is really an important topic for you, Erica, because you do you remember sending me a book a number of years ago?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: Do you remember that?
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, it's so funny because every once in a while, Erica, I get random packages from you.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Once I got a package with a rock from Iceland and some ash in the thing, and you I think and you sent me a nice little card and you said now you have a rock that belongs to two continents at the same time, and I love that rock.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: I use it all the time.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, the book that you sent me was a book about women in geoscience.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: So I know that this is a really important thing to you.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have thoughts on what can be done to increase representation, I guess, in the geosciences?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think, you know, from the geoscience side as a whole, well, I think, yeah, it starts as as girls, right?
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: And getting when young kids just getting exposure to sciences and you know, supporting the public education system and really just having programs for for girls.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think oftentimes, I was listening to something like this recently where I was saying that girls want everything to be oftentimes like need to be perfect in their solutions and what they do.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: And science is so much about just testing things, and you're probably gonna be wrong more often than than you're right.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think evaluating how, as we as adults, how we respond to kids when they fail at something, right?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think subconsciously we probably have some biases of we respond differently to when a boy does it to a girl.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think early on, probably just instilling the bravery and taking risks, and we might not have all the answers, right?
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we're testing different things.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: That is an unbelievable statement, uh, because I find that to be true, Erica.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_03: So that is so true with the girls that I have in class.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: They do they're perfectionists.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_03: So you're saying that they that it needs to be encouraged that science doesn't work that way, and that's okay.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_03: Very, very insightful.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh especially that transition between I mean, this is something that this is the we have these conversations about increasing the diversity of the geosciences every every month, every week in our position at Penn State, right?
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a big, a big um, a big problem and a big a big thing that we want to tackle.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I think you're exactly right.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like on average, there are uh some differences in the the sort of approaches and then whether those are like social differences that are instilled at a early starting age.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: But because you see people who get really good grades, and maybe you experience this, uh Erica, going to graduate school.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's not just more school.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be uncomfortable not knowing the answer.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: In geology, especially, is this really we're not doing like, you know, very hypothesis-driven tests all the time.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot more like artistic.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: You see some data, and how could we interpret it?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's the simplest of five potential interpretations?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's uncomfortable for people who are very engineering-minded, like equations and like sort of a really solid answer all the time.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: It can be uncomfortable.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that the way you phrase that's really well put, I think.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Being uncomfortable with some uncertainty and some risk or some, I don't know what the phrase is, but um, those aspects might be important too.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot to be done on hiring practices and anti-bias training too.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like all that plays in here too.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'd be curious your thoughts about those initiatives.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, for sure.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we've seen, I think, some, you know, greater uptick in the, and I guess speaking just oil and gas industry of okay, having these conversations of, yeah, what does it mean to have these bias interrupters?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we're at a point where there's so much data around this, right?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many studies where if you send a resume with the name Bob and it's that same resume, and then you send it with the name Jane, right?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bob is gonna get a lot more callbacks than than Jane by no other merit, other than we just once we read that name, right?
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like our thinking kind of starts to to shift.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's enough data and people doing this work in and out of trying to okay, how can we objectify things more, remove our biases?
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: And men and women have that biases, right?
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um we all have those biases, and so I think really embracing that and and and leaning with curiosity that okay, I I want to think that I can objectively look at something, but the reality is I can't, right?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what are ways that I can try and stop those biases?
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so whether that's ensuring that we have a diverse pool from the beginning.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there are a lot of women in in geoscience.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: We just need to find them, right?
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you're only recruiting from a certain school or from a certain advisor, their pool, right?
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be more limited.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think being really pointed on that.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the big what the the biggest challenge that I've seen, I think that entry level, we're still pretty good about having a diverse pool, you know, representative of what the what the mix is at the at the university level.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, we're getting that mix into industry.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's really kind of that early progression where things kind of start to to separate.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I've leaned heavily on the work McKenzie and Company does an annual report, women in the workplace every year across all industries.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so this isn't really just for for oil and gas, but really those initial promotions, whether that's not necessarily into management, but just kind of career progressions.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think the the latest statistic was that for every hundred men that are promoted into the next level of management, um, 87 women are, and then that's even less for women of color, right?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it really is that initial, and it's not because of lack of ambition or or competency, right?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of those biases still come to play.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we often will men tend to be promoted or or given the benefit of the doubt on potential, right?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that person has that guy's great potential, whereas women need to kind of prove themselves that they've done it before getting the the next step.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there's also, you know, just kind of almost little things of women tend to be interrupted more often in in meetings than men, or they might say, I have a great idea, and then the man in the room repeats it, and that's who we remember or said it, right?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all these little things that if you don't stop and think about it and look at the data, you know, you don't think that's happening, right?
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh no, like I try think of myself as a very logical person.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to evaluate what the best idea is or who had the best proposal for certain things.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: But there's enough data and research now, and we see that play out that there are other things going on, other subtleties in our daily interactions in the workplace that unfortunately don't equate to equal progression.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think companies like oil and gas companies, but really across all industries, corporate America, education, medicine, really understanding, okay, what is the data telling us?
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what can we do to mitigate that?
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we really need to have a concerted effort, right?
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not just saying, oh, well, if the pace of change, if we just let things roll on how they're going, I think I don't know what the latest statistic is, but it's like 300 years to achieve equality in the workplace and both pay and representation.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can't just let time do its thing, right?
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think companies really need to be concerted and and trying to get it's in their best interest, right?
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in our best interest to try to get the most diverse pool to get the best ideas, right?
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a complex world.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: The oil and gas industry is changing as we talked about, everything, right?
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_00: The world is changing and and we need the best and brightest minds to to solve the the complex issues.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I like that.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's really well very, very well thought out answer.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um my mind was going again a thousand miles an hour, listening to what you're saying.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_03: And and Jesse, I have a question for you, because you I imagine you do a lot of this kind of the these are discussions that your department has or your university has, right, Jesse?
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of this kind of all the time.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's still work to be done everywhere, but I think we'd we'd consider ourselves at Penn State certainly working on them actively in in many ways, both gender bias and racial biases and things like that.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's definitely something that we take, you know, pretty seriously.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: And comes up in uh hiring decisions, when we're writing CVs, you know, things like uh looking at grad student applications.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's make rubrics.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: Rubrics are really good for trying to fight these biases where you like, you know, put numbers to these things, which kind of help fight the implicit bias type thing.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I mean, there it's it's definitely in the uh in the met in the in the frontal lobe of the department, I guess.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're actively thinking about it and doing things.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's interesting to hear your perspective, Eric, on on sort of the hiring practices as well.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: Or the promotion practices, I guess, more importantly, it sounds like than the hiring practices.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: As far as interrupting it, so I mean, Chris interrupts everybody, myself, and so I don't I don't he know he's not biased in his interruptions, he's just always trying to get a word in.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: So even though he's interrupted you a couple times today, he he he you know, he interrupts everybody.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_03: So come on now.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: Come on.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_03: That that was an unfair shot, Jesse.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was shots crossed the bow.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_03: Jesse, on that note, why don't you go ahead and uh throw out the last question then?
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I mean, Erica, really thanks for all of your time.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: This has been great to have you here, but we have to end with our normal last question, which is what has been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Man, um probably defending my master's thesis.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think that was very fulfilling.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, a lot of hard work that went into it and high pressure, kind of high stakes environment as well.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think very satisfactory finishing that and then probably the next can you real quick before we move on to that.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Can you like paint a picture for what this looks like for some people who don't maybe don't know what the the high pressure situation like can you kind of give us what what it was like, what your feelings were like, and what the what it was like in the room when you did this?
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think a lot of people know what defending a thesis, you know, actually entails.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, kind of the the lead up to it was was the most um intense, right?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the actual did your finishing your research, you know, in the beginning, it's like, okay, I can start all this data, do all this analysis, but then at some point, like, okay, you really need to put this all together.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: What are the key learnings?
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_00: What are you, you know, I can't think of the word in English, but what are you contributed?
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what are you contributing to the science?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so really that that lead up of getting this on paper, writing uh it was the longest, you know, document I'd ever written, paper, and then very form at the time, kind of a formal presentation, and it was in in person, so getting all the slides together and really not knowing what kind of questions you're gonna get from the professors, right?
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got your main advisor and then the committee that's associated with that.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think at that point, the actual presentation was since this was a master's, I think it was 25 minutes.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's what ours are for masters.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: And was it public?
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like could anybody join it, or was it private just your committee?
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_01: You in a room with your community?
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone could join the presentation and then it was private for the for the QA afterwards.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then how long was the QA like a couple hours or something like that?
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, an hour or two, maybe.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think I think probably 30 minutes, maybe an hour for masters, yeah.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so certainly would be different, yeah, for defending your your PhD thesis.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, being in like not knowing what kind of questions you're gonna ask, how well did I really understand what I what I did, and that you know, hanging your degree on that, right?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you were talking earlier, once you get into graduate school, it's not just okay, did I complete this course and pass the test?
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is a lot more critical thinking and and putting piecing things together.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, a little bit higher, higher pressure.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting thing because I always everybody who's gone through it, like you, probably on the other side of it, you probably tell people you're stressing yourself out too much about it, maybe like about the defense.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a very stressful thing to go in and you defend is the right word.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: You have to defend what you wrote in your thesis, right?
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: And people are gonna ask you questions and kind of press you on it.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's easy on the other side to say, oh, it's not that big of a deal.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry about it.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're a great student, you're doing fine.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is you know, my students are all very good.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm like, Oh, you're you're good, you're gonna be okay.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be stressful, but you're gonna be okay.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't click that they're gonna be okay until you're okay.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of these weird things, like until you're on the other side of it, it's super stressful.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you just but then I remember after I defended it as sort of this big, it was a big relief.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought a week later I was like, Oh yeah, I was worked up about something.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like I really I was overly worked up about it.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I was why was I so stressed?
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know if you had the same sort of feeling about that, but what everybody told me was true, it wasn't.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think now the more removed I am from my experience in in academia, like I don't know.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it also is like, is that the the best model too, right?
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, does it need to be so pressure on like okay, this one presentation, and if you've done all the work and you've written the paper or whatever, right?
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there might be other ways to to do things too.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I I agree that okay.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: Once I went, once I was over it, I was like, okay, no, like I didn't know what I was doing, this was a great presentation.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_03: And well, Jesse, perhaps calling it defense is not maybe the right way if you want to alleviate some pressure.
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the word alone.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I I agree and I agree it's not a lot that there's uh better ways to to do things, but I think you know, back to your point about what the value of a degree is, there is something to um there is something to writing something and defending why you wrote that, having somebody ask you, why did you say this?
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why did you interpret it this way, and you having the ability to articulate that to them, there is value in that skill set.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you it does not need to be with like four professors in a room under super high pressure situation, right?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, we can change that aspect, but but keeping some of the aspects of um some of the things that come out of that or some of the the skill sets that you develop in preparation for that are really valuable.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even just like testing yourself about why did I write this.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have to defend it.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to think through it and you work through it when you're writing.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Just having the defense hanging there forces you to do that internally a bit, which is valuable.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I agree it could be modified.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't it sucks, but I don't have a great like alternative helps to alleviate some of these problems.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of it, depending on, you know, the type of person, the type of professors uh that you have there, right?
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's some that are very, I am like the only person that knows about this, right?
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It can be academic and be a very like I am the expert in this.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as a student, like that's very high pressure.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're coming up against the whole scientific community, right?
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Versus coming from a perspective like you, Jesse, of okay, yes, I want to see my students like test their knowledge in kind of more of a safe environment, really, right?
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: A scientifically safe environment versus those like huge power.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody who's trying to like cut you down because they don't like your advisor or they don't like you or something.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's bullshit.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have like what I what we try and do is be like, you know, we're gonna push you because you're good and you deserve that's what you need to be done right now.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna push you in a but we're all supporting you and we're all helping you and and sort of gunning for you.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So um maybe it's a bit healthier approach.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, there's a there's a few, there's definitely horror stories for sure.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Erica, we have to let you go because you have a birthday to go celebrate for your one-year-old daughter, right?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I'm just looking at the time we're like twice as long as we promised we'd be.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, but thank you so much for me.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you so much for uh for giving us your time, Erica.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is a super interesting conversation, and uh and we loved it.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: This was great.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Jesse Chris, and I hope yeah, this will be interesting for people to listen in and get a variety of geoscience experience and exposure.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely will.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll we'll we'll see you uh we'll see you again soon.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Bye Erica.