HGS General Dinner Meeting - WHO WERE THE FIRST INDEPENDENTS? The Origin of the Oil & Gas Industry By Jeff Lund

Join us for the HGS General Dinner Meeting

Date: Tuesday October 15th

Place: Norris Conference Center, Houston Beltway 8 and I-10

Social Hour starts at 5:30pm, Dinner at 6:30,  Talk at 7:15 pm

Cost: $65 Pre-registered members; Student $40; $75 non-members & ALL walk-ups
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 Sunday, September 15.

WHO WERE THE FIRST INDEPENDENTS? The Origin of the Oil & Gas Industry - By Jeff Lund

Jeff Lund has worked as a geologist, exploration manager and VP for nearly a dozen oil companies but the truly formative ones were Amoco, Clark Oil, Southland Royalty, Burlington Resources, Ashland and Kerr-McGee. At Ashland and Kerr-McGee he served as VP of Exploration and Production and as VP Worldwide Exploration, respectively. By 2009 he finally figuring out “going independent” was much more fun and lucrative and he formed a consultancy named Corridor Oil & Gas LP with Bill Crenshaw, an engineer colleague. Despite retiring, he still consults and has production in the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford and Gulf Coast Tertiary. He remains actively involved with HGS, AAPG and SIPES.

Marti and Jeff Lund moved to Houston in 1969 to start careers, respectively, as an operating room nurse in the Medical Center, and as a petroleum geologist at Pan American Petroleum. 55 years later, it looks like it was a good idea. The irony is that they both grew up in the place where the oil and gas industry literally started, but did not really come to appreciate it until much later. Jeff grew up in Jamestown, New York and Marti in Corry, Pennsylvania. Glacial drift and Devonian Shale outcrops defined their hometowns, located within a few dozen miles of Drake’s oil well in Titusville, Pa. and even closer to the first natural gas well in Fredonia, New York. Who knew?

This presentation is also a personal journey of learning about the origin of petroleum geologist’s profession and a passion in telling the fascinating tales few of us seem know. Jeff will discuss Colonel Drake’s drilling venture, which changed the world, and the even earlier first commercial use of natural gas.

Along the way here are a few things you may find interesting to learn more about:

• How did the “First Independents” decide where to drill?
• Where does the term “wildcat” come from?
• Why do we measure oil volumes in terms of “barrels”?
• How does John Wilkes Booth enter the story?
• Why did Charles Lyell visit Fredonia, New York in 1841?
• How did our profession “save” the whales from extinction?
• How did John D. Rockefeller create one of the largest corporations in history? And then get in trouble? And thereby provide many of us our first jobs in the industry?
• Who first used surface casing to drill?
• When and how was the first “frac job” conducted?
• In short, how did the professions of petroleum geology and petroleum engineering begin?

Jeff received his BS in Geology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and then, while working at Amoco and Clark Oil, attended  U of H to earn an MS in Geophysics and an MBA in Finance.

He has been President and is an Honorary Member of HGS and GCAGS, Chair of the AAPG House of Delegates, Honorary Member of AAPG, and is currently a Trustee of the AAPG Foundation. He serves as a board member of SIPES Houston and chairs the HGS Calvert Memorial Scholarship Board..