William J. Barrett is a legendary hydrocarbon finder credited with discovering oil and natural gas in several Rocky Mountain basins. Among his finds are the Wind River Basin’s Madden Field, which contains up to 4 trillion cubic feet of gas, and Highlight Field in the Powder River Basin, which holds several hundred million barrels of oil. And, he brought gas drilling in the Piceance Basin to the forefront.

“Exposure is the name of the game. I always believed in growth through the drillbit and if you don’t take a swing at the big reserves, you won’t find ’em,” he says.

He founded Bill Barrett Corp. in Denver in 2002 but retired in 2006 as chairman and chief executive officer. This, his second public E&P, has amassed more than 800 billion cubic feet equivalent of proved reserves in the Rockies. It is wildcatting in the Mancos, Cody, Gothic, Cane Creek and Hovenweep shales.

This is after selling Barrett Resources Corp., which he founded in 1983, to The Williams Cos. for $2.8 billion in 2001. That company had assembled 2.1 trillion cubic feet equivalent of proved reserves in the Rockies and Gulf of Mexico.

Barrett explored the Rockies for nearly 50 years, beginning in 1957, when he received a master’s degree in geology from Kansas State University. At El Paso Natural Gas Co., his first assignment was as a research-lab stratigrapher in Salt Lake City.

“I got to run the lithology on all of El Paso’s wells in the Rockies, primarily wildcat wells, identifying the porosity and permeability and various geologic characteristics of rock samples from Utah’s Uinta Basin, Colorado’s Piceance Basin and Wyoming’s Greater Green River Basin,” he says.

Later, he joined Amoco Production Co. in Casper, Wyoming, and then Wolf Exploration as chief geologist. Barrett talked Wolf into keeping a quarter interest in the prospects it sold. Turns out it was a good move: on those leases, Barrett found two major Wyoming oil and gas fields. “We went from zero production to 10,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.”

Barrett and colleague Chuck Shear formed B&C Exploration, also Rockies-focused, and then merged with Rainbow Resources. Rainbow was sold to Williams in 1978. After a noncompete expired, Barrett formed Barrett Resources, which Williams bought in 2001.

In 1998, he received the Wildcatter of the Year award from the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States. In 2003, Barrett’s career was recognized for its many exploration successes by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. His company’s multi-Tcf West Tavaputs gas discovery in the Uinta Basin won Oil and Gas Investor’s Discovery of the Year Award for 2005. And in 2004, he received an honorary doctorate in petroleum engineering from Colorado School of Mines. (For more on Barrett, see “He Rocked The Rockies,” Oil and Gas Investor, June 2006.)

Investor Bill, there have been so many changes in recent years, what do you hang your hat on, in geology?

Barrett The principles and concepts of geology aren’t going to change. I’ve never seen a period where there haven’t been opportunities for a geologist to find hydrocarbons. And with the advances in geophysics and completion/frac technology that have occurred over this time, the whole industry has been able to move into many projects that just weren’t economical earlier in my career. If necessity is the mother of invention, then technology might be the father.

Investor What makes a good oil and gas finder?

Barrett There are several things that make a good exploration geologist, but they apply to engineers, landmen, almost anyone…First is the love of the chase. (I love subsurface geology—you always learn something new.) Second is wisdom—knowing what to do and understanding the risks. Oil and gas finders are leaders, not followers, and they have the ability to think outside the box. They are doers. You can’t simply have a vision, you must have the ability to sell it.

It’s the work and not the clock that tells you it’s quitting time. You have to be a hard worker with common sense. The harder you work, the luckier you get. Details make all the difference...Prepare relentlessly…

You have to be patient, persistent and above all, accountable at all times. You have to be your own man and listen to your gut, trust your instincts, and pound the table for what you believe.

Investor Are we blurring the conventional and unconventional plays?

Barrett Our job is to make the unconventional conventional and we’re doing a pretty good job. Technology helps with that. Right now shale gas is at the forefront, and with good reason. There are 25 to 30 shale-gas basins in the U.S. The USGS thinks there are 600 to 1,200 Tcf. Just the Marcellus covers 30 million acres. It is flat amazing.

Investor What do you make of shale potential in the Rockies?

Barrett We are a bit behind here, but the Bakken is already there. Recent studies indicate there could be 3.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil. It’s a great play. But there are a lot of other potential shales here in the Rockies. The Pennsylvanian Gothic, the Hovenweep and Cane Creek, the Cody. These are real. It’s made a believer out of me.