In-Person
Where: The Petroleum Club of Shreveport, 15th floor
Cost: $20, Children 10 and under $8

If you’d like a seat, kindly use the form below to make your reservation by the preceding Friday.

We encourage members to invite guests, spouses, and friends to any of our meetings.

Virtual
Where: Zoom
Cost: $10

If you’d like to attend virtually, please pay with a credit card below and use the email address where you would like Zoom login details sent. Please make your reservation to attend virtually by noon the day before the meeting.

Biography

Matt Boyce, Owner and President of EPOCH Consulting LLC

Matt Boyce PhD earned a B.S. and M.S. from the University of Arkansas in Geology. While earning his degree's he worked as an intern with SEECO (now SWN) during their discovery of the Fayetteville Shale. Matt was fortunate enough to observe and learn from the discovery of the second unconventional after the Barnett from Industry pioneer's and his advisor Dr. Walter Manger.

Matt decided after the completion of his Master’s degree to pursue a PhD at West Virginia University where he studied under Dr. Tim Carr. While there he worked with Dominion E&P (now CNX) on the initial exploration of the Marcellus in West Virginia. With the contributions from Dominion E&P as well as EQT Matt produced one the first and most widely used documents on the petrophysics and geology of the Marcellus for the area. In that same document Matt created a derivation of the Archie equation for unconventionals that later proved to have application outside of the Marcellus.

After his PhD, Matt was hired by ExxonMobil as a part of there petrophysics core group. From here Matt worked several plays on the forefront of the global expansion of Unconventionals. He evaluated and operated wells in the following basins in the U.S: Permian, Paradox, Appalachia, Gulf Coast, Unita, Piceance, DJ, L.A., Anadarko, Michigan, Williston, and Sacramento basin’s. He was further tasked with evaluating and operating in multiple international plays such as Vaca Muerta, La Luna, Bowland, Dadas, McCarther Basin, Cooper Basin, Dnieper-Donets basin, Montney, Posadonia, and Baltic basin. Matt was fortunate to have worked and viewed the wide variety of unconventional plays that greatly enhanced his ability to find hydrocarbons in unconventionals.

In 2013, Matt decided to pursue a dual skill set career at SWN. Here he operated as petrophysicist and geologist. His worked continued on finding new opportunities in the Permian, Paradox, Anadarko, Sand Wash and Appalachian basins. While at SWN Matt co-discovered a new patent (US 3005657A1) that greatly enhanced determining unconventional porosity using core NMR. This paper was later followed by a paper through SPE as paper 194484. The paper in short illustrated the usefulness of the method but also that in place values were two to three times larger than previously calculated. Due to the patent SWN decided to build their own Core NMR lab that Matt co-constructed and became proficient at Core NMR acquisition and interpretation. In addition to the Core NMR Matt applied his learnings by co-developing a engineered completion based on the findings from NMR that yielded measurable increases in production.

In 2018, Matt pursued a new venture that is EPOCH Consulting LLC. He applies his extensive background in petrophysics and geology to unconventional problems across industry. His clients enjoy the synergy that he applies between geology and petrophysics as well as how to incorporate it to other facets of their business. His clients include a wide variety of customers from Investment Banking, Non-operated companies, Operators in Permian, Mid-continent and Appalachia, and universities.

Abstract

The North Slope in Alaska is often thought to be only for the large companies and operators; however, it’s just not true. The area has a rich history of being driven by independent oil finders. The risk taking and independent thinking of these people has driven the continued exploration of the area. In the most recent election Alaska made a crucial decision to continue support of the oil business by bucking the federal government trend and allowing for exploration, including fracking on state lands. Due to this, Alaska has had a resurgence of exploration and is continuing down that path. In this talk, Matt Boyce (president of Epoch Consulting) will illustrate the history of independents, ongoing opportunities and the most recent discovery by Burgundy Xploration and others.