Lance Robertson joined Marathon Oil in 2011 to spearhead the company’s Eagle Ford program. He handles
all operations development and planning in the play and works on M&A opportunities with the business development team. He started in the industry as a deepwater drilling engineer for ExxonMobil in Angola. He also held
positions at Pioneer Natural Resources and Amerada Hess Corp.

Accomplishments: Led Marathon Oil’s Eagle Ford presence from zero to strong production in a little over a year. In 2012, the company began with production of 14,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and exited at 70,000 per day. “I think it’s important to note that from the beginning, we knew our success would be dependent on assembling the right team with the right skills and couple that with a very sharp focus on executing our business plans each and every day."

How to reach a milestone: “Sometimes those greatest challenges are the biggest catalysts for change and adoption of new ideas, because what you’ve always known before is probably not going to help you reach a milestone. Certainly in the case of the Eagle Ford, we had to retire dogma and ideology and say ‘what do we need to do to execute on such a grand scale at this pace?’”

Goals: “To demonstrate that 40-acre and 60-acre downspacing have some viability, which would offer the opportunity to extend our drilling inventory out to the 10-year-plus range and add additional resources for the company.”