Have I Learned Anything in 41 years?

24 July 2018 – Saudi Arabia Chapter (SAC) of SPWLA organized a luncheon event to formally introduce the chapter new president, Dr. Faisal Alenezi, Head of Saudi Aramco Gas Development Petrophysics Unit, and to bid farewell to a long time outstanding SPWLA member, Steve Crary, Petrophysics Advisor for Schlumberger in Saudi Arabia, before his retirement and thank him for his unrelenting support to SPWLA in general and the local SAC in particular.

During this historical event, Steve gave an exciting, emotional, and candid talk “Have I Learned Anything in 41 years?” reflecting on his four decades long career, he started with an introduction of what it was like to be a field engineer in the “good old days” at the beginning of his career. Then the main talk was focused on four major challenges he faced and achievements he helped to make; (1) resistivity tool forward modeling, (2) carbon-oxygen logging in openhole completions, (3) deep azimuthal measurements for geosteering, and (4) NMR wettability. As lessons learnt, Steve summarized that (1) You need to understand tool responses; the best way to gain this understanding is forward modeling, (2) Be aware of your surroundings, (3) New innovative techniques require both hardware and software/interpretation innovation, and (4) There are still surprises out there. In conclusion, Steve provided the following advices; (1) Oil industry is still a place to have a very interesting career, (2) We measure many things, but the trick is in the interpretation, (3) You need to be aware of unintended consequences of actions, and (4) The future holds a number of surprises for future petrophysicists; some good, some may not be so good, but all are interesting. The event was well attended.