Richard Fillon, a geoscientist at Texaco, discusses a cross-section of the continental shelf.
Richard H. Fillon
Exploration Geoscientist, Texaco
As an exploration geoscientist working in
New Orleans, I find myself thinking that if only the Jurassic dinosaurian
denizens of southeastern North America had kept a geographic database,
we'd be further along in our race to understand the Mesozoic history of
the Gulf of Mexico before the United States runs out of petroleum, and
geoscientists run out of funding to study crustal processes and stratigraphy.
But no such luck! Daily we must grapple with the Jurassic genie. This
genie of the Gulf is massive, able to alter its shape and it is often
cloaked in invisibility. When encountered by the drill bit, the allegory
evaporates, and the genie reveals itself to be the huge quantity of sea
salt that was deposited in the Middle Jurassic. Under high pressure and
temperature, this salt behaves like a viscous liquid, oozing up faults
and cracks in the overlying sediments and working its way along bedding
planes. It has provided a slippery base for massive thrusting. The salt
genie has created the fantastically complex geology of the Gulf in the
process, facilitating the migration and entrapment of hydrocarbons. Mischievously,
however, it disperses acoustic energy so efficiently that it frequently
leaves sophisticated 3-D seismic image processing looking like a 1920's
hand-corrected seismic experiment gone bad. The tricks played by the genie
challenge us intellectually, as explorers and as scientists, and make
our job a continuing adventure, where something new is learned almost
every day.
The job my colleagues and I do is best described
by paraphrasing the great mathematician Paul Erdos' comments about mathematicians.
An exploration geoscientist consumes coffee and turns it into plausible
geological models that predict where relatively tiny volumes of precious
liquids have come to rest after 140 million years of traveling through
a seething pot of moving rock and salt. The Gulf of Mexico, considered
a mature exploration province, has produced billions of barrels of oil
and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas during the last 80 years. Yet
as we explore for hydrocarbons under the Gulf of Mexico, we know that
huge reserves still remain, deeper in the rock, beneath canopies of migrated
salt, and beneath still deeper water. Natural hydrocarbon seeps on the
sea floor of the deep Gulf pique the explorer's imagination. Exotic tube
worms devour hydrogen sulfide and methane and the other creatures that
I see from deep diving submersibles remind me that I am still, at the
core, a GSO scientist.
As I try to imagine the Jurassic framework
of the Gulf of Mexico, I think back on my time at URI in the early 1970's
and the diversity of learning experiences and variety of disciplines presented
to me. I am grateful that I took advantage of what was offered and grateful
to the faculty and students who assisted me on the road to becoming a
scientist. At GSO the enthusiasm I've always had for studying the earth
and its water masses was heightened, and I acquired the technical skills
and professional experience necessary to turn my enthusiasm into a vocation.
That vocation has led me to three rewarding careers in geoscience: in
government, as a Geologic Survey of Canada research scientist with the
Atlantic Geoscience Centre at Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova
Scotia, studying the Quaternary history of subarctic oceans; in academia,
as a research professor at the University of South Carolina's Belle Baruch
Institute, studying the paleoceanography of the North Atlantic; and in
industry, as a Texaco exploration scientist.
I would advise late 1990's students preparing
to embark on careers as scientists to work toward developing a strong
base of knowledge in more than one field, as seemingly disparate as chemical
oceanography and marine geophysics, for example. Also I would recommend
specialization in not one, but two or three technical areas related to
those fields. Consider pursuing a Ph.D. and post-doctoral program, if
necessary, to accomplish this.
Science and technology are undergoing such
rapid change as we approach the twenty-first century that it is impossible
to predict what will be the most exciting and productive career paths
a decade from now. Oil might be sought then, not in the earth, but in
the technology of molecule-assembling nannobots (microrobots). The one
sure bet is that computers will play a more significant role in all aspects
of our lives and work. Be computer proficient, make computer science one
of your technical specialties, but to stand out among your peers, learn
the limitations that computers will always have. Rely on your own informed
thought and imaginative reflections for advancing knowledge and making
true breakthrough discoveries.