Legends in Wildcatting with Bill Armstrong

Monday, January 8
ROOM • Norris Conference Center • 816 Town and Country Blvd #210
Site Map • Floor Plan
Social Hour 5:30–6:30 pm
Dinner 6:30–7:30 pm, Presentation 7:30- 9:00 pm
Member/Emeritus/ Honorary Life- $65.00 Non-Member- $75.00 Student- $25.00
WALKUPS: $75.00
To guarantee a seat, you must pre-register on the HGS website and pay with a credit card.  You may walk up and pay at the door if extra seats are available.  Please cancel by phone or email within 24 hours before the event for a refund.  Online & pre-registration closes Monday, January 8 at 5:00 a.m.

Speaker: Bill Armstrong

Bill Armstrong, founder of Armstrong Oil & Gas, Inc. will be our HGS Legends in Wildcatting 2024 speaker. Bill has made many discoveries over the years, but Armstrong’s largest success has been on the North Slope of Alaska, where he and his team have found numerous 100+ million-barrel oil fields.    His successes include the Horseshoe/Pikka Field, which experts say could develop into the third-largest conventional oil field in U.S. history, only behind Prudhoe Bay. The discovery has 880 feet of oil pay and the reserves of Pikka field may be as large as 1.4 billion barrels of oil.

Armstrong’s Alaskan acreage was purchased jointly with Repsol on the North Slope and comprises 750,000 acres. In the Pikka unit the peak oil production is expected to be 120 MBOPD. 

Armstrong says “What does your dream field look like? It’s probably in the U.S., it’s onshore, oil-weighted, high resource concentration, material in size, great porosity, great permeability, it has big individual wells, and it has robust economics… Well, we have all of that.”

Comparing the Pikka’s 880 feet of pay to the Parshall Bakken, Armstrong pointed out that not only was the pay 25-times thicker, but the porosity was also four-times better, as was the recovery factor. Also adding to the attractiveness of the wells, most are less than 8,000 feet deep, and require limited stimulation.

About Bill Armstrong

William (Bill) D. Armstrong founded Armstrong Oil & Gas, Inc., (AOG) a privately held oil and gas exploration company headquartered in Denver, in 1985 from the attic of his 100-year-old garage/barn. He graduated in 1982 from Southern Methodist University.  He left SMU with a B.S. degree in geology, a Phi Beta Kappa key, and a wife that he met in Geology 101. After spending time doing what one-man companies are ‘supposed to do’ - chasing deals in Kansas, the DJ, the Permian, and other independent friendly regions - Bill shifted his efforts to internally generating, assembling, and drilling large company impact exploration opportunities. By seeking out top geologic, geophysical, land, and engineering talent, and also by pursuing big potential “wildcats”, Bill created a unique business model in the energy sector that proved successful for AOG and the companies with whom they worked and partnered.

Over the last thirty-six years, AOG has been involved in the discovery of over twenty oil and gas fields in a variety of geologic provinces that include the Williston Basin, Powder River Basin, Wyoming/Utah Overthrust Belt, Green River Basin, Michigan Basin, Cook Inlet, Gulf of Mexico, and San Joaquin Valley. Most recently Bill and his team have been active on the North Slope of Alaska finding numerous 100+ million-barrel oil fields including one of the largest oil fields in U.S. history, the 3+ billion-barrel Pikka Field.

Bill is a member and past chairman of the All-American Wildcatters. He also sits of the National Petroleum Council. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists chose Bill as its Michel T. Halbouty lecturer in 2018, then in 2020, Bill and his geologist, Jesse Sommer, received Norman F. Foster Outstanding Explorer Award. In 2019 Bill and Jesse received the Michael S. Johnson Explorer of the Year Award from the Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists. In 2019 Bill was profiled in The Wall Street Journal as “One of the Last Wildcatters”.

He and his wife, Liz, are active in numerous business ventures, investments, and philanthropies.  In 2004, they founded Epoch Estate Wines, an ultra-premium vineyard/winery operation located in Paso Robles, California. Bill currently serves on the boards of Tourmaline Oil Corp. (Calgary) and Southern Methodist University (Dallas) where in 2021, both he and his wife received SMU’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Bill is a former board member of the Denver Art Museum and is trustee emeritus at Colorado Ballet. Liz and Bill manage The Armstrong Foundation which primarily focuses on education and arts philanthropy.

 From Town and Country Blvd, turn west at Plaza Way. Go by the Moran Hotel.  Turn right = North and go to Level 3 of the parking structure. The parking structure can also be reached from the northbound Beltway 8 frontage road. Turn into the driveway that is 0.33 mi. north of Kimberley Ln., just before the Amegy Bank sign.