Oil and
Gas CIRCULATION VITA Oil and
Gas CIRCULATION VITA
Nelson, H. Roice, Jr. -
FinderH. Roice Nelson, Jr. likes to find things, particularly when what he helps found discovers oil and gas. He was the initial founder of Landmark Graphics Corporation, HyperMedia Corporation, Walden 3-D, Inc., and Dynamic Oil & Gas Corporation. Roice is an entrepreneurial geoscientist with deep roots in the international oil business. As a geophysicist at Amoco, Mobil, the University of Houston's Seismic Acoustics Laboratory (SAL), and his more recent projects he has spent 23 years interpreting seismic data from many major geologic basins on earth. He prefers to work as part of a multidisciplinary team, where the proper expertise is applied to identified exploration and production problems. Most of his geoscience experience is in hydrocarbon exploration with emphasis in 3-D seismic interpretation.
Work as a geoscientist has provided him solid experience in seismic data acquisition, processing, and interpretation. His seismic data acquisition training included work on seismic field crews in Rock Springs and Green River, Wyoming; The Great Salt Lake; Kalamazoo, Michigan; offshore Nigeria; and offshore The Cameroons. Running 4 seismic crews for 1 1/2 years resulted in extensive field experience in Hugoton, Kansas; Mesquite, Nevada; Alvar, New Mexico; Findley, Ohio; on an Opseis land telemetry crew in Sayre, Oklahoma; Cedar City, Utah; Seminole, Pecos, and Laredo, Texas; as well as Gillette and Big Piney, Wyoming. These crews used a variety of sources, including shear-wave vibrators, P-wave vibrators, shot hole, Poulter staked explosives, surface explosives, as well as high frequency air guns on a barge in the Great Salt Lake, regular air guns, and the various pressure and shear-wave piezoelectric elastic wave propagation through physical models at the SAL. Half a dozen noise studies were conducted and interpreted. Six months of seismic processing experience was supplemented by processing the physical and numerical model data at the SAL. Regional interpretation projects include: The Quaternary sediments of Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming; The Andaman Sea, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand; offshore Argentina and Uruguay; 16.5 million acres offshore Brazil; The Gargano High, Italy; The Gulf of Kutch, India; West Casamance Permit, Senegal; and a regional study of the Adua, Asabo, and Enang Area of OML 70, offshore Nigeria. Detailed seismic interpretation projects include: Block F-7 in the Dutch North Sea; West Cameroon Blocks 508 and 509 and East Cameron 262 in the Gulf of Mexico; Block II Offshore Brazil; Statfjord, Norwegian North Sea; bright spot studies in OML 70, Offshore Nigeria; dozens of projects with Landmark Graphics customers, including a year study of the Jiji subbasin for the Bohai Oil Field, People's Republic of China; participation with an interpretation team working up High Island A339/A340 and A563 for Pennzoil in the Gulf of Mexico; and evaluated 15 open blocks for BHP Petroleum in the Eugene Island area, Offshore Louisiana, for the 10 May 1995 lease sale (BHP won 2 blocks with a combined bid of $508,470 for one of the prospects, and Chevron / LL and E; won the other key identified prospect with a bid of $575,000.)
Entrepreneurial activities have always been an important part of Roice's undertakings. A successful entrepreneurial activity was as General Manager and principal administrator of the Allied Geophysical Laboratories (AGL) at the University of Houston. Roice managed the conversion of the 17 researchers, graduate students and staff at the SAL into an integrated set of 5 research labs with 65 employees. The five research labs mirrored multidisciplinary industrial activities: The Field Research Laboratory (FRL) for seismic field studies; the SAL for 2-D and 3-D physical and numerical seismic model studies; the Well Logging Laboratory (WLL) for studying the controlled response of well log tools; the Research Computation Laboratory (RCL) for 3-D seismic migration, 2-D and 3-D seismic modeling, and parallel processing studies; and the Image Processing Laboratory for studying 3-D visualization technologies and prototyping tools for interactive 3-D seismic interpretation.
The most successful entrepreneurial activity to date has been the founding and growth of Landmark Graphics Corporation. Landmark's major success has been in providing interactive seismic interpretation tools, particularly for interpreting 3-D seismic data. The company has grown to annual revenues of $171 million in fiscal year 1995. Part of this growth occurred by building an interdisciplinary company and merging with (a) Petroleum Computing Corporation to provide interactive petrophysical tools; (b) Inverse Theory & Application to provide interactive seismic processing and modeling tools; (c) Energy Analysts to provide interactive velocity analysis; (d) Zycor to provide interactive mapping and interactive geological interpretation tools; (e) ExploiTech to provide interpretation consulting; and (f) Advanced Geophysical to provide 2-D and 3-D seismic processing tools. Roice initiated or was involved in each of these acquisitions. As the initial co-founder, he raised the first $2 million capitalization for Landmark Graphics. He started manufacturing, marketing (introducing Landmark technology in Norway, England, Australia, Canada, Hungary, India, China, Turkey, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and the various U.S. markets), field service, customer support, technology transfer, advanced interpretation training, Landmark's university program, and Applied Geoscience Research. Before leaving in July of 1992, he was actively involved in long-range planning and developing new advanced interpretation products for Landmark, including SeisCube, SurfCube, and FaultZap. Roice has published and presented over 140 papers at professional conventions, organized 9 state-of-the-art SEG research workshops (including the multidisciplinary Archie Visualization Workshop on 18 May 1995), and has taught numerous SAL, IHRDC (International Human Resource Development Corporation), Landmark Graphics, and HyperMedia public and private schools. The emphasis of these activities has been introducing and improving interactive interpretation developments and techniques.
From 1989 to 1992 he worked part-time at Landmark. In addition he co-founded China Cattle Corporation with Chuck Edwards, former Chief Geophysicist at Chevron, to develop a joint-venture cattle operation in Gan Xu Province of China. This project was not successful before selling out his interests. He also co-founded and is now running HyperMedia Corporation, which sells an for the Oil & Gas Industry, Best Practices, and an UNIX, X-Windows, Motif, client-server asset management / project documentation and presentation system. Roice's main focus is Walden 3-D Inc. Walden was founded to develop a prototype of a new, people-scale rather than automobile-scale urban environment, through the design and building of three-dimensional intelligent cities. Walden 3-D is closely connected with several other companies. These are: Advanced Structures Incorporated, providing specialty structures and space enclosures using space-frame and other advanced building technologies; Information Design Corporation, providing computer programs to automatically generate computer visualizations of various kinds of built form; and The Gardner Partnership Architects. Walden 3-D's charter for the next decade is to use 3-D seismic technologies to find and own new hydrocarbon energy sources which can be used to fund and fuel building the prototype city of the future. The work for Pennzoil and BHP Petroleum has been done through Walden 3-D, Inc.
To some degree, Roice's track record is evaluated by the impact of interactive seismic interpretation technologies on the Oil & Gas Industry. This technology has created a significant change in the way all oil companies look at hydrocarbons. This impact was forecast and documented in his book "New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics," published in 1983 by Gulf Publishing, and then translated and published into Chinese. As far as direct success in finding hydrocarbons, there is a "new" platform extending the Asabo Field in OML 70, offshore Nigeria, that was the end-result of one of Roice's interpretations at Mobil.
Roice thoroughly enjoys sharing ideas and training others in new technologies. Past teaching activities include:
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