The Geoscientists of Tomorrow

Another year, another downturn in the oil and gas industry, and geoscientists in almost every oil company are likely contemplating career switches or are fearful of what the future holds. A couple of years ago, a geoscientist based in Canada wrote about “the new reality”, with the next recovery being one dominated by shale and digital tools, and coding as an essential skill. Fewer geologists would be needed to prop up the oil industry, and another crash would happen. “Yesterday’s geoscientist” made maps and calculated volumes, and those that fit this description had "no time to waste". 

I believe these predictions were accurate, though the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that the shale boom is in dire straits and may not recover its former glory. Indeed, one finds oneself asking if oil itself is going to regain its former glory. Any seasoned oil professional would be tempted to scoff at those who answer in the negative, but it’s hard to not see the writing on the wall. That leads to the question of what next for the people who make the industry what it is. I’m not a geologist any longer – at least not professionally – but I do wonder where the field will find itself in a few years with the increasing likelihood of oil going out the door and the near certainty that in the time before it does, it will need fewer geoscientists to find and extract it.

So, where does the seasoned geologist go? Is there any point studying geology in college if there are only a few jobs available? What’s EXCITING in the geological sciences these days? What can a geologist do besides oil?

Some of the answers are obvious, and can be found in any geology 101 class where professors try to recruit undergraduates to their programmes. Mining, hydrology, environmental science, fundamental research. The world’s newfound hunger for metals like lithium and cobalt will help, and the need to better manage groundwater resources will undoubtedly need a new generation of earth scientists. The need for constant scientific advancement in the Anthropocene is real, but an oversaturated and archaic academic job market is a challenge to even the most dedicated and privileged student or early-career researcher. The skills that training in the geological sciences are valuable, and can be transferred to many other fields, but what of the geologist who wants to stay a geologist? As bad as this downturn is, oil is not going anywhere in the near term and the industry will still need geoscientists to quantify it, extract it, and explore for it. Can these geologists fill that need? The answer is yes, but there will almost certainly be an overflow.

The reality is that the number of geologists needed, at least in exploration and upstream research, will likely dwindle in the years to come. Another reality is that the pipeline for new geologists is narrowing: far fewer young people today are interested in becoming petroleum geologists, and for many good reasons. I recently read an annual report from an “Earth Sciences Department” in the United States, which touched on how the number of undergraduates seeking geology majors was at its lowest in several decades. This could be bad news for the departments whose funding depends on student numbers (disclaimer: I have no real idea of what incentives universities offer to departments to boost undergraduate enrollment but I imagine that some mechanism exists), but I wonder if this is worse news for a planet that needs repair; one that it seems cannot be healed in the time our species needs it to be by nature-based solutions alone. We need solid-earth scientists to save the world.

 

The geoscientists of today wield the tools of today. They are proficient coders, and maintain strong 3D visualization skills that have transitioned from the Rule of Vs in structural geology to the ability to generate entire outcrops digitally using photogrammetry. They deploy machine learning to solve problems, and have evolved from being Petrel button-pushers to much more. All the while, they do what they do using “incomplete data” of dubious quality, quantify what they don’t know, and make decisions worth more than the average Silicon Valley venture capital deal with risk that is not only financial, but human and environmental. All this sounds really sexy, but the real problem in the middle of all this is that even the geoscientist of today works on what is essentially a problem of yesteryear: oil.

Geoscientists need new problems to solve, and should focus on finding them. Solving these problems will need new tools – and just running Monte Carlo simulations on hydrocarbon volumes simply won’t cut it. It’s becoming increasingly likely that oilfields will become stranded assets so the volumes won’t matter – just like the points on Whose Line is it Anyway? (the show where everything’s made up – much like the conceptual models geologists build*). So, in addition to learning new tools to solve problems, perhaps geoscientists should look for new, better, and more relevant problems to solve, and get down to solving them**.

Some ideas:

Problem Number 1: Too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I like to think of a large, industrial scale solution to this problem in terms of the oil industry in reverse with some renewable energy magic thrown in. The technology for the subsurface injection of carbon dioxide exists and is proven. The storage capacity of the subsurface is large enough. And capture systems already exist. The “upstream” component of this system will be driven by process engineering – making Direct Air Capture cheap enough to deploy at scale – pipeline and facilities engineering to transport captured CO2 to storage sites, and finally production engineering and geology to inject the CO2 into the ground. We're now "downstream", back to the good old reservoir engineers, development geologists, well engineers and geomechanists to prevent all of this from blowing up. Now if any of this sounds like arm-waving, you’re absolutely right. I am a geologist after all and some old habits die hard. But the fact is that the subsurface challenges – seal integrity, reservoir characterization, storage site exploration, geomechanics – have been studied extensively for decades and we have the expertise and workforce to get this done safely and effectively. How might these disciplines change in the context of carbon capture? Sounds like a job for some subsurface people looking to do cool stuff…

*The dig at geologists and our conceptual models I refer to comes from a quote by RL Bates, an economic geologist. Part of it is preserved in the link in the main body of the blog, but I've tried to reproduce the rest of this brilliant quip from memory. Anyone with access to the original is encouraged to post it!

I wonder who was the very first geologist to get it into his noddle

That an educated guess about something would sound better if he called it a model?

Now we get models for everything from the origin of dolomite to why the mid-ocean ridges are faulted,

And somehow the whole process seems very serious and exalted.

I believe that the term model so bewitches

Because it is a dignified term for a more or less ragged cluster of cerebral itches. 

**The BIG disclaimer:

It’s all well and good to tell geologists to solve new problems. Oil is evil, keep it in the ground, the future is renewable, we’ve heard it all to the point of exhaustion. The trouble is that it isn’t ultimately the geologists’ decision. Money talks: who will pay for this? Companies are already doing carbon capture, now if only it can be done at scale! But, where is the money going to come from to pay people to do this? Maybe we need geologists who know finance, policy, strategy, renewable energy, and environmental justice to figure this out. Or perhaps we need professionals in the latter fields who know geology. Or perhaps we need something bolder…