|
Arlen Ehm: Veteran geologist or Alaska institution? In his lengthy career as an Alaska petroleum geologist Ehm has accumulated an extensive knowledge of the state’s oil and gas basins Alan Bailey PNA Contributing Writer
There aren’t too many people still active who have been involved in the Alaska oil industry since the early 1960s. Geologist Arlen Ehm is one such person.
Ehm sat the first well on the first platform in the Cook Inlet in 1965. He told PNA, “There’s no truth to the rumor that I helped God finish the geology of Alaska. Some of my … friends say that when I was in school, history was a current event.”
Company geologist Ehm, a graduate of Wichita State University with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geology, started his professional career in 1965 as a subsurface geologist for Shell Oil Co. He conducted studies in the Cook Inlet basin, as well as sitting oil wells there.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s Ehm worked as an exploration geologist in Alaska for several oil companies, eventually becoming the district geologist for Tesoro Petroleum Co.
The early years were exciting, Ehm said: “There had been big discoveries going on and a lot of action in Cook Inlet. … all the rumors, you know, ‘that guy’s got a drilling rig running on land’, ‘that guy’s got a floater’, ‘he’s got a jackup’.”
In the late 1960s, early 1970s, the region bristled with geologists, geophysicists and landmen. “Now they’re running pretty much on engineers and service companies,” Ehm said. “That’s just how Alaska’s oil and gas exploration has matured.”
Going independent Ehm’s career reached a major turning point in 1976 when Tesoro halted exploration in Alaska and cut back other exploration offices around the United States.
“They let everyone go, so I went into consulting — I’ve been doing that for 25 years,” he said.
Ehm started providing services to a wide variety of organizations ranging from oil companies to government agencies.
In one project he managed the state and federal preparations for the 1979 lease sale in the Beaufort Sea: “I … had as many as 35 of their people working for me, 17 of whom had Ph.D.s. It was really a plumb project.”
But it required an enormous amount of work. “I was working 14 hours a day, seven days a week on it,” Ehm said.
In 1983, he prepared a map of the oil and gas basins in Alaska for the state, assembling data from several sources.
“I made deals with various industry companies for their data,” he said.
Printing the map proved a major challenge. Ehm wanted to display the whole state, including the Aleutian Islands, on a single, large, full-color map. The data required 21 separate films for printing.
“I hired a draftsman and we spent months making it,” he said. “I was able to locate only two printing presses in the country … that could publish something that large at the time.”
Speculative work Ehm also worked on a number of speculative studies of his own, which enabled him to prepare geologic reports that companies could purchase. He would often market the reports to companies interested in upcoming lease sales.
“If you’re on your own like I am, you have to pretty much like the thrill of doing your own thing, and try to come up with something that’s better than the last one,” he said.
One speculative project resulted in the only proprietary geologic report on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the mountains to the south that is available to the general public (for a price, of course).
For this venture Ehm partnered with some other geologists to form a company called Alaska Research Associates.
“We went out there in 1984 and did half a million dollars worth of work,” he said.
Alaska Research pre-sold enough of the results of the study to recover third party costs; the associates planned to pay for their own time through subsequent sales.
The ANWR study lasted about a year and involved the laboratory analysis of rock samples, as well as surface geological investigations.
“We went (to ANWR) in July … stayed six weeks and spent the rest of the year analyzing the data,” Ehm said. The team of geologists used hand notes, photographs and video to record their observations.
The U.S. Geological Survey used the Alaska Research’s report as one of its data sources to evaluate potential oil reserves in ANWR.
Work with research companies Ehm has also worked with other research companies to help develop geological reports on different parts of Alaska. Typically this type of work involves teams of specialists.
For example, in 1989 Alaska Research joined with Micropaleo Consultants Inc. of California to conduct an integrated geological study of the Upper Cook Inlet basin, primarily using well data. The next year they completed a similar study in the lower Cook Inlet.
“It was an integrated study, comprising all of the various geological disciplines that were available,” Ehm said. The study delineated prospective reservoir rocks and the thermal history of hydrocarbon source rocks.
In the late 1990s, Ehm assisted Exploration Geosciences Ltd., a British firm, in a comprehensive study of the North Slope.
“It took in everything north of the Brooks Range from Canada to Russia,” Ehm said. “I did all the geologic data gathering.”
Most of the data came from public sources, including well data from the state of Alaska. Western Geophysical contributed more than 22,000 miles of its own speculative seismic surveys.
The North Slope study required seven or eight man-years of work, involving geologists, geochemists and geophysicists from Alaska, Canada and the United Kingdom. “I provided the geological background for much of the study,” Ehm said.
Less field work Ehm does much less field work than he used to. Today, most of the analyses involve collecting, assembling and reviewing existing data.
“A lot of it is production data … or different studies that are done by the governmental bodies or some agencies that publish it,” he said.
Ehm has become an authority on the history of geological exploration in Alaska. “I know where the wells have been drilled, I know where things were done, I know who to get hold of,” he said.
With the markets for speculative work drying up, Ehm does commissioned studies, rather than working on spec.
“In ANWR in 1985, I had an active list of about 32 companies which you expect would probably have bought (the report),” Ehm said. “Now the list of active North Slope companies is down to six or eight.”
However, commissioned work does involve some touchy issues. For example, clients don’t always want to hear bad news about a prospective area, especially when they’ve paid for a study.
“Sometimes the right answer is ‘no,’” Ehm said.
| 