Meeting Location:
TGS
10451 Clay Rd
Houston, TX   77041

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Speaker: Katie Essary, Chevron

Does geophysics drive unconventional development? Eh, not really, but maybe it should? - A humble reservoir engineer’s perspective.

In the last decade, the oil and gas industry has cracked the code on how to produce from a previously uneconomic, but extremely large resource commonly known as unconventional shales and tight rock. We now know that horizontal, multi-frac’d wells can unlock reserves from extremely low-permeability rock, and in many cases, provide quick pay-outs on investments which we believe can then be replicated over-and-over again across vast amounts of acreage in unconventional basins. Initially, geophysics aided in the understanding of the overall containers or size of the prize, but type curves and drilling and completion costs dominate as the basis for economics, which drive business decisions and attract capital. Now that companies have drilled their initial wells in unconventional assets (in some cases, hundreds), how do we continue to keep the capital flowing for the next 20+ years? This talk will focus on previous and current workflows for evaluating, prioritizing and developing unconventional assets, while posing a challenge for what’s next. How can geophysics aid in the evolution of our understanding of the fundamental physics at play, in order to support long-term producibility and optimization of these very valuable assets?

Speaker Biography: Katie Essary, Chevron
Katie Essary is currently a reservoir engineer at Chevron Corporation located in the downtown Houston office and attached to the Mid-Continent Business Unit. After graduating with her BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas in 2009, she started with Chevron in Bakersfield, California, focused on developing and optimizing legacy, heavy oil assets within the San Joaquin Valley. She was transferred to Houston in 2013, joining an exploration team which was tasked with assessing horizontal shale opportunities across the Permian basin ultimately leading to participation in drilling Chevron's first horizontal wells in the Midland Basin.  Over the next four years, she was able to be a part of the evolution of the Permian shale boom while working on exploration and appraisal activities, business development, and reserves evaluations. In 2017, she pursued an opportunity with Marathon Oil Corporation, serving as a Corporate-level Reserves Coordinator with areas of responsibility including unconventional assets (Bakken and Eagle Ford) as well as conventional, international assets (UK, Kurdistan and Libya). In 2019, she returned to Chevron, and currently works with the Business Development group in the Permian for assessing acquisitions, divestitures, trades, joint ventures and farm-outs. Outside of work, Katie has been an active participant in the Society of Petroleum Engineers, previously holding leadership roles in the Gulf Coast Section and is a reviewer for paper submissions for the upcoming 2020 URTeC Conference. Although she finds petroleum engineering very rewarding and exciting, her greatest passion is being a wife and mother to her two toddlers and step son.

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