The “Great Krewe Change” in oil and gas has occurred. The large age gap of subsurface professionals, created by the industry downturn in the 90s, left a void of real-world experience. Traditionally the oil and gas industry has been plagued by overestimation of technical success and over promise of production at investment decision. All the greater reason to share our collective experiences and learnings. My mentors had a farewell tour before retiring after more than 30 years; sharing their insights, stories, and mysteries they never figured out. These collective learnings have been leveraged within my own work and in mentoring staff.

This talk will be an avenue to share the learnings and insights I’ve had in my career and how I’ve used them to continue to grow myself and others as a subsurface professional. Harnessing learnings can improve predictability of subsurface outcomes and improve decision quality with realistic ranges/outcomes. Being able to work and integrate at different scales of observation from the play level to thin section reservoir analysis are the goals of a petroleum geologist. When we know the details to focus on, we can sort out the devil of predictability.