Luncheons

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Gulfport Energy’s company philosophy is to establish a position in areas known to have substantial unrecovered oil in place and apply the latest methodologies and new technologies. From this strategy, Gulfport has locked up a very large base of assets consisting mainly of liquid hydrocarbon focused opportunities. Gulfport has a solid cash flow base from its Southern Louisiana properties, an interest in a Permian Basin unconventional-resource-play company, a long-term position in Canada’s oil sands, and an excellent near-term growth potential in the Utica/Point Pleasant of eastern Ohio.

With over 128,000 gross acres in the Utica, Gulfport Energy is aggressively working to further prove the play, focusing in the wetgas/ retrograde-condensate window of this play. Source rock studies provided excellent indications into the thermal maturity, organic content and ultimately the generative potential of the rock. Additional petrophysical data was collected from the rock and well logs to determine mineral content, porosity, permeability, brittleness, fluid saturation, and anisotropy. Well logs provided the necessary data to determine structural position, thickness and porosity and permeability distributions. Data was integrated to delineate the most economic area to lease. Subsequent testing indicated that this was the liquid hydrocarbon window.

With the highest flow rates reported thus far in the play to date, we plan to continue to work on determining optimal lateral spacing, well lengths, fracture methods and other drilling and completion methods to optimize results and reduce costs.

Palm has served as a director of Gulfport Energy since February 2006 and as Chief Executive Officer of the Company since December 2005. Prior to joining the Company, James pursued oil and gas investments primarily in Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle and Kansas as the manager and owner of Crescent Exploration, LLC, a company he founded in 1995. He currently serves as a member of the Industry Advisory Committee of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. From October 2001 through October 2003, Palm served as the Chairman of the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board and from 1997 through 1999, he served as the President of the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association. Mr. Palm received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1968, and a Masters in Business Administration in 1971, both from Oklahoma State University.

The AAPG Foundation’s Teacher of the Year Award will be presented during the All-Convention Luncheon. The annual Teacher of the Year award of $6,000 is given to a K-12 teacher for Excellence in the Teaching of Natural Resources in the Earth Sciences. The award includes $3,000 to the recipient’s school and $3,000 for the recipient’s personal use. In addition, the recipient receives an expense-paid trip to the Annual Convention & Exhibition (ACE) to receive the award. Nominations for the award are submitted by the AAPG sections and the winner is chosen by selected members of the AAPG Youth Educational Activities committee.

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All of the logic, intuition, and metrics humans have for making decisions were developed during a time when resources were abundant, human populations were relatively small, and we could afford to focus on maximizing returns today because tomorrow always held new frontiers filled with limitless riches. We were far too wise to repeat the mistakes of the Anasazi, the Norse Greenlanders or the Easter Islanders; Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” would assure that resources were used efficiently and wisely, that self-destructive behaviors would be weeded out and halted.

None of this is true anymore (if, indeed, it ever was). The “invisible hand” never had to deal with a world in which any piece of information — whether true or not — is instantly flashed around the globe. The primary objective of most modern societies, constant economic growth, is mathematically unsustainable. And our measures of economic value (NPV, IRR, P/I, etc.) punish exactly the type of behavior which is most closely associated with long-term success.

How do we make good decisions when everything we know is wrong?

Patrick Leach is CEO of Decision Strategies, a decision-focused consulting firm that helps clients in the Oil & Gas, Chemicals and Oilfield Services Industries untangle the complexities of the decisionmaking process. Pat is a recognized expert in risk management and decision making in the face of uncertainty, and has published and presented numerous papers on these subjects. He has extensive international experience in the development and implementation of creative strategic initiatives, probabilistic methodologies and upstream energy projects. Pat has a BSc in Geomechanics from the University of Rochester and earned an M.B.A. from the University of Houston.

Leach is also the author of Why Can’t You Just Give Me the Number? — An Executive’s guide to using probabilistic thinking to manage risk and make better decisions.

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Isabel Patricia Montañez is a Professor in the Department of Geology at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Montañez is a field geologist and geochemist whose research focuses on the marine and terrestrial archive of paleo- atmospheric composition and paleoclimate conditions, in particular in reconstructing records of greenhouse gasclimate linkages during past periods of major climate transitions. She received her Ph.D. in geology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1990, was awarded the James Lee Wilson Young Scientist (1996) and Outstanding Paper awards from the Society for Sedimentary Geology (1992), the AAPG Cam Sproule Award (1996), and is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and recent Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2011-2012).

She presented the 2012 F. Earl Ingerson Lecture of the Geochemical Society at the National Meeting of the Geological Society of America. She was the Chair and lead author of the National Academy of Science— National Research Council’s Report on the Importance of Deep-Time Geologic Records for Understanding Climate Change Impacts and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on New Research Opportunities in the Earth Sciences. Isabel’s talk is entitled Earth’s Deep-Time Insight into Our Climate System.

Earth has two fundamentally different climate states — a cool“icehouse” state characterized by the waxing and waning of continental-based ice sheets at high latitudes and a “greenhouse” state characterized by much warmer temperatures globally and only small or no ice sheets. Although earth has been in an icehouse for the past 34 million years, warmer greenhouse conditions have been the“typical” climate state of the past half billion years.

At the current rate of global C emissions, atmospheric CO2 is projected to increase by the end of this century to levels last experienced on earth prior to the onset of our current glacial state. Insight into how the earth system will function in such an evolving and high CO2 environment uniquely resides in the deep-time analogs of past climate change and ecosystem response.

The deep-time archive provides the only integrated record of the full spectrum of climate related processes, feedbacks, and complex climate-ecosystem interactions in the earth system. Study of the deep-time geologic record reveals climate change in the past that was at times far more dynamic than suggested by reconstructions of the past few hundred thousand years. Data-climate model comparisons of past warm periods further suggest that the magnitude and duration of climate change and the CO2 levels at which critical climate and ecological thresholds could be crossed may well be underestimated by current climate projections. This presentation will discuss evidence for atmospheric CO2-climate coupling throughout Earth history and what it reveals regarding climate sensitivity to CO2-forcing.

Examples of past major transitions will be used to illustrate how greenhouse-gas forced climate change has unfolded in the past and to characterize the fingerprints of change that herald climate and ecological thresholds. Deep-time paleoclimate issues of highest priority and the associated research needs will be highlighted.

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Mr. Harbert will be speaking on the topic of microseismic monitoring and subsurface imaging as an important tool in evaluating the success and extent of hydraulic fracturing in shale gas reservoirs.

He is a Professor of Geophysics at the University of Pittsburgh and also chairs the University’s Department of Geology and Planetary Science. He conducts and oversees various types of subsurface geophysical imaging research efforts throughout the central Appalachian Basin, Permian Basin, Gulf Coast, and North Africa, often in collaboration with other universities, the U.S. Department of Energy National Technology Laboratory, and industry leaders.

Harbert holds a B.S. in Mathematics-Geology and Geophysics from Western Washington University and an M.S. in Exploration Geophysics from Stanford University. He earned his Ph.D. in Geophysics from Stanford University in 1987, where his research focused on the tectonics of Alaska. A Certified Petroleum Geophysicist, William is a member of several professional organizations including AAPG, SEG, SPE and AGU and is the Geophysics and Seismology Theme Chair for the ACE 2013.

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Seamus McGraw, a full-time writer who has seen his work published in Playboy, Reader’s Digest, Penthouse, Popular Mechanics, Radar, Spin, Fox and The Forward. He has received the Freedom of Information Award from the Associated Press Managing Editors, as well as honors from the Casey Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists. McGraw is currently working on a documentary trailer about his family’s experiences with the Marcellus Shale. He grew up pitching hay and spreading manure on the same fields the gas companies are now prospecting. He still lives in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and four children.

McGraw is the author of The End of Country, the compelling story about the battle for control that ensued after the discovery of gas in the Marcellus Shale in northeastern Pennsylvania, a conflict pitting the forces of corporate America against a band of locals determined to extract their fair share of the windfall — but not at the cost of their values or their way of life. Many couldn’t resist the offer to lease their land in exchange for the promise of untold riches.

The luncheon presentation, Comfortable in Our Ignorance, will focus on how extreme voices on both sides of the public debate over shale gas exploration and development are effectively undermining efforts to develop the resource more safely, damaging efforts to maximize its potential environmental advantages, and preventing the real economic benefits from taking hold. And yes, McGraw has said, on both sides.