Today’s oil and gas industry relies on new science, but some old-school methods remain tried-and-true, says George Devries Klein, an award-winning petroleum geologist and consultant. During the past 50 years, he has seen technology rapidly evolve in his work as a sedimentologist, sedimentary geologist, sequence stratigrapher, basin analyst, regional geologist and petroleum geologist.

legends

Klein graduated from Wesleyan University and received his master’s degree in geology from the University of Kansas and his doctorate, also in geology, from Yale University in 1960. He worked as a research geologist for Sinclair Research and then taught at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1970 he joined the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana and was a full professor there from 1972 until 1993.

After directing a marine consortium for three years, he taught short courses for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, among other organizations. He then opened a full-time geological consulting practice, SED-STRAT Geoscience Consultants Inc., in Houston in 1996.

Klein has authored nearly 400 white papers, books, reports, abstracts and reviews, including 11 reference books. This month, the Houston Geological Society is honoring Klein for his many contributions to the oil and gas industry.

Investor What are some of the highlights of your long career?

Klein One of them is the recognition and development of the understanding of tidalites. This is a sedimentary association, global in nature, because it is forced by lunar tidal processes and is widely preserved in the stratigraphic record.

Also, I did some coastal oceanography and recognized the control of the time-velocity asymmetry on tidal currents and how they control the geological properties of tidal-sand bodies. And, I found that Pennsylvanian cyclotherm origins are complex, as the origins are both tectonic and climatic.

I am also proud of my students. One of them, Margaret Leinen, became associate director for Earth Sciences at the National Science Foundation. Dag Nummedal became director at the Energy Research Center at the Colorado School of Mines. John Shepard has done very well as an executive for Shell Oil.

Investor Is your consulting practice mostly focused in Houston?

Klein Yes, but a lot of international work gets done in Houston, so I have worked on many international projects—some by traveling and some from Houston. I’ve worked on oil and natural gas plays in Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, West Africa, Russia, Romania, the Orange River Basin of South Africa, the Congo Basin of Angola and the Senegal Basin in Senegal, among others.

Investor What was one of your most unusual experiences in the field?

Klein On one project, to get to the rig from where you could park your car or your pickup truck, you had to walk about a mile, and it was during a cold winter. We walked out to the rig the first time, but every other time we were met by one of the drillers with a bulldozer, which they used to build retaining ponds and such.

The operator told us to step on the bulldozer loader blade, then he would lift up and rotate the loader so we could stand in it without falling out. We would ride that mile on the blade, back and forth every day. Thankfully, none of us ever fell off. I hung on for dear life. I was glad when that project was over.

Investor What oil and gas formations have you found to be most interesting?

Klein One of the most fascinating is the Bossier tight-sands gas play in the western East Texas Basin, because of the nature of the geologic controls in the reservoir. Another is the Eagle Ford shale in Texas, which, for a shale, has remarkable variability in its reservoir and geological properties.

Another is the Frio formation of the Texas Gulf Coast. It’s fascinating due to the stacking patterns of parasequences and an unusual shift in depositional facies within each one.

Investor What new technology do you find useful?

Klein I use 3-D seismic displays a lot. I use a seismic microtechnology platform. If they are processed right, you can get excellent images, very close to outcrop geometries, but on a much larger scale.

Investor What old-school oilfield methods do you still use?

Klein We still use well log correlation of reservoirs and geological formations. The Schlumberger brothers invented the resistivity log in the 1920s and the spontaneous-potential log, also called the self-potential log or SP log, in 1934. It’s digitized now, but we couldn’t work without that technology.

Investor What advice do you have for the next generation of oilfield men and women?

Klein It’s very simple. I tell young people to always aim to be a petroleum geological generalist who can solve problems, because that’s what industry and society wants and needs. That requires staying up-to-date on geological literature. This is a fascinating science and the quality of life associated with geology, in my experience, is superb.