30 Jan 2005 #0505.html

NAPE 2005

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Dear Family and Friends,

Welcome to this week's "Thoughtlet."

These words are my personal diary and a weekly review of ideas, beliefs, thoughts, or words that will hopefully be of some benefit to you: my children, my family, and my friends.

"This week was dominated by The North American Prospect & Property Exposition (NAPE 2005). Monday and Friday were not tied up with NAPE. And these two days were spent on the phone to China or working with Luis in Mexico or talking to Christian Singfield about digital core and cutting imaging.

On Monday there were two fortune cookies left in the kitchen from the lunch for the Xing Jiang Oilfield personnel at GDC for training (0506.html). I ate them and liked the fortunes:

Tuesday I went with Sonny Landrum and Pamela West to set up the old HyperMedia booth in the George Brown Convention Center downtown. I was fascinated by the facts that the salespeople came into work just in time to set up the booth, drove me with them downtown, watched me set most of the booth up, dropped me off about 1:00, and did not come back to the office. Of course, they went to the ice breaker that evening. But all in all, whenever you have to work with other people, it is so easy to be disappointed in their work ethic, their contribution, their expectations, their personhood, etc. And these are good people, and strong professionals. Oh well!

I must admit, over all of the years of doing them, I have learned how to do conventions pretty good. And I have a lot of friends in the oil and gas exploration industry. Some comments, just based on 16 cards I picked up at NAPE 2005:

• Jim Bedford, Borero Enterprises: I worked with Jim at Mobil. He was in the same training group I was in. When he was sitting at the computer control console he hit the off switch by accident and shut down the Cyber 6600, which was a few times more powerful than my new PC is, and caused all kinds of problems. I mentioned Jim in a previous Thoughtlet (../0151.html). Last time I saw him he was having real financial trials. Seems to be back on top of the world.
• Steve Burt, Mariner Energy: Steve helped develop the Knowledge Backbone^SM. I remember Steve as the bachelor who married a flight attendant he met on a flight. They have two girls, about ages 7 and 10 now.
• Lee Buse, Exploration Data Services: I don't remember ever meeting Lee. However, he was in Bob Sherrif's class when we started Landmark, and Sherrif brought him to a convention and had him look at Landmark technology. He was interested in having GDC resell some databases he had been involved in putting together.
• Chuck Edwards, CDX: Chuck was my partner in China Cattle Corporation. I mentioned him 9 previous Thoughtlets (../9939.html, ../9940.html, ../9941.html, ../9946.html, ../0036.html, ../0207.html, ../0208.html, ../0209.html, and ../0307.html). Assuming I live long enough, I expect there will be Thoughtlets dedicated to Chuck. I think the world of Chuck, and consider him one of my best friends. However, I do not think very much of his partners at CDX. Nor does Christian Singfield. And, in fact, Chuck expressed deep concern for how CDX had handled the relationship with Christian over the last couple of years.
• Joe Foster, Newfield Petroleum: This was the first time I have met Joe Foster. He is considered one of the best geophysicists of our time. He founded Newfield Petroleum, and he is just about to resign from their Board of Directors. I talked to him about using GDC as an exploration arm, if he decides to go off and start a new company. It was a really neat discussion.
• Chuck Gartmann, Integrated Interpretations 2D/3D: Chuck and I have worked around each other for years. He has an SMT license at home now, and does speculative prospect generation. It is always fun to talk to Chuck, and there is no question in my mind about his geotechnical abilities.
• Steve Hill, Decker Operating: First time to meet Steve. I mention him because he has an interesting project in Montana, which could use a Colorado County type of Infinite Grid^SM study. He was quite interested in my approach of GDC doing the work for a fee and a bonus, where there is no bonus until he recovers all fees paid to GDC out of GDC's share of the bonus or Overriding Royalty Interest.
• Ray Levey, EGI: I worked for Ray at BEG (UT Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology), and have referenced him in several Thoughtlets (../9722.html, ../9733.html, ../9740.html, ../0008.html, and ../0320.html). He is doing some interesting work in Libya, which compliments the work GDC is seeking in Libya. It will be interesting to see if this ties together.
• Wulf Massell, Fusion: Wulf is like my brother. EPIC's financial failure hurts every time I think about it. There are so many things I have done with Wulf over the years, and only a few are mentioned in previous Thoughtlets (../9834.html, ../9929.html, ../9947.html, ../0004.html, ../0014.html, ../0015.html, ../0034.html, ../0038.html, ../0039.html, ../0040.html, ../0052.html, ../0113.html, ../0126.html, ../0138.html, ../0139.html, ../0142.html, ../0241.html, ../0313.html, ../0315.html, ../0316.html, ../0338.html, ../0340.html, and ../0341.html). His big news is his granddaughter. He likes his position as Chief Geophysicist at Fusion, and is learning a lot. Georgeanne and Wulf spend their weekends at their condo in Galveston, and he invited us to come and visit soon.
• Dan Morris, Viking International: Dan says they are having some success in his exploration ventures. He wants to stay in touch, and his comments were similar to previous comments (../0205.html and ../0242.html).
• Victor Schmidt, Editor of Offshore Magazine: Victor has not been mentioned in a previous Thoughtlet. However, we have talked at every convention I've been at for years. He is the exploration editor for Offshore Magazine. I expect I will be working with Victor Schmidt in the future.
• John Suydam, Vecta Exploration: John worked with me at Mobil, and then was Superior's representative to the SAL (Seismic Acoustics Laboratory). He designed one of the most interesting models we built at SAL (../9945.html). Last time I saw him he was out of work and struggling. Now he works for a state-of-the-art exploration company. They focus on shear wave exploration, and have been able to use it to effectively get a seismic response where none has been before. This would be a very interesting group to work with.
• Jim Trimble, Rudman Partnership: I saw Jim twice as I was walking the floor. Jim is getting older (../0046.html, ../0047.html, ../0137.html, ../0148.html, and ../0151.html). The second time I saw him I was with Dave Johnson. I told Dave about the time we took Duke Rudman to the Dallas SEG and got him sick in front of the Virtual Reality display, watched him buy jewelry for his "daughters," and watched him shine someone's shoes (../9745.html). I have never seen Dave laugh so hard as he did over these stories.
• Barry Weinman, Weinman GeoScience: Barry was at Mobil with me. He has a processing company that competes with GDC. He was very interested in what we are doing. Too interested. This needs to be followed up on.
• Larry Wood, Geotrace: Larry used to work with Wulf at Amoco. I have not seen him in a long time. It was good to catch up. He is a very good geophysicist.
• Rick Zimmerman, Texas Independent: Rick and I went through PAIRS together, and there are many times I have thought we were going to work closely together (../9733.html, ../9737.html, ../9738.html, ../9749.html, ../9826.html, ../9835.html, ../9846.html, ../9852.html, ../9902.html, ../9907.html, ../9934.html, ../9939.html, ../9941.html, ../0003.html, ../0004.html, ../0020.html, ../0034.html, ../0035.html, ../0039.html, ../0046.html, ../0052.html, ../0104.html, ../0111.html, ../0137.html, ../0140.html, ../0306.html, and ../0308.html). Rick has sold off all of his properties, has purchased 10,000 acres of land to the northwest of Austin which he is putting into a conservancy district, and is ready to do his next thing. He said he is finally going to come over and look at my prospects this next week. It will be interesting to see if he does and what his response is. He told his girlfriend about how he and I have plans for a whole new kind of community in Southern Utah. Maybe it is never too late, and I should never give up.

I could go on and on about NAPE 2005, and I won't. I looked at my calendar and discovered that I missed an interpretation committee meeting at 9:30 AM on Thursday at NAPE. Oh well! I could also talk about our trip to San Antonio with the Chinese on Saturday, but I'll save that for next week and for the Thoughtlet on Xing Jiang Oilfield Training (0506.html). Let me close with three possible stanzas for Prime Words, which I wrote at sacrament meeting today:

There isn't much connection between testimony and my theme. And the testimony theme for sacrament meeting was a nice way for my week to end, a week focused on NAPE 2005."

Since the 38th week of 1996 I have written a weekly "Thoughtlet" (little statements of big thoughts which mean a lot to me). Until the 43rd week of 2004 I sent these out as an e-mail. They were intended to be big thoughts which mean a lot to me. Over time the process evolved into a personal diary. These notes were shared with my family because I know how important the written word can be. Concerned about how easy it is to drift and forget our roots and our potential among all of distractions of daily life, I thought this was a good way to reach those I love. It no longer feels right to send out an e-mail and "force" my kids and my family to be aware of my life and struggles. Everyone has their own life to lead, and their own struggles to work through. I will continue this effort, and will continue to make my notes publicly accessible (unless I learn of misuse by someone who finds out about them, and then will aggressively pursue a legal remedy to copyright infringement and I will put the Thoughtlets behind a password). The index to download any of these Thoughtlets is at http://www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets, or you can e-mail me with questions or requests at rnelson@walden3d.com (note if you are not on my e-mail "whitelist" you must send 2 e-mails within 24 hours of each other in order for your e-mail to not be trashed).

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Copyright © 2005 H. Roice Nelson, Jr.