Synopsis of Al Steven's Talk on Recent Developments in Oil & Gas Production

The speaker for our January meeting was Al Stevens, compatriot, and retired geologist, who spent his career in the development and production of oil and national gas.

A Michigan native, Al graduated in Geology and Engineering from Michigan Tech. He spent over 37 years in the petroleum industry with half of his experience in international areas. He ended his career in 2001 as president and chief operating officer for Southwestern Energy Production Co, Houston, Texas, and in 2010, he was elected the Board of Directors.

He and his wife, Barbara, have been married 45 years and have two sons, and nine grandchildren. He collects and restores antique clocks, as well as collecting antique geologic maps. Al provides field trips on the geology of San Luis Obispo County and has taken over 1500 people on these field trips in the past seven years.

In the last decade there has been a paradigm shift in the way we produce oil and natural gas in the continental United States. The conventional oil and gas plays have become so small and expensive as to economically reach the point of diminishing returns. In 2000 companies began to explore the possibility of producing hydrocarbons from the shale source rocks that originally generated the oil and gas. By applying and refining existing technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracing, they were able to unleash a vast amount of new low cost reserves that has increased the reserves of natural gas 10 times of what existed in 2000 and has provided the United States with over a 100 year supply. The United States now has as much energy in our natural gas reserves as Saudi Arabia has in their oil reserves, and there is still enormous potential to increase these reserves in the future.

There has been a lot of press by the environmentalists which are politically against the development of these new reserves stating that fracing pollutes the fresh water and that the additives utilized are toxic. Federal and state investigations indicate that fracing has not been the source of fresh water contamination but rather the problems have been due to poor well integrity, and contamination of the fresh water supplies by historical unregulated drilling over the last 150 years.

Natural gas is the least polluting of all hydrocarbons. With this abundance of new energy supplies the challenge for our country is to seek ways to convert our existing transportation and infrastructure to wisely utilize these natural gas reserves to reduce our dependency on foreign oil supplies whose cost is out of our control.

If you did not attend this month's meeting, you missed a great presentation of the present state of the oil and gas industry in North America.