How do you describe your job when you meet people at a party?
A geologist - hopefully assisting companies to find & produce commercial hydrocarbons
What is ‘cutting-edge’ about your work?
The ongoing (and never ending) revision, update and at times rejection of geological models as the knowledge base / experience grows
What are the biggest implications your work will/could have in the future?
Hopefully assist in a continuation (albeit perhaps limited) of a global energy source
Describe some of the highlights of your average day.
Finding new fossils. Suddenly seeing the light with regard to a potential geological model and / or a problematical geological correlation
Describe briefly how your career has progressed to date.
From a junior employed position, to a reasonably well recognized consultant
How is your job cross-disciplinary?
Acts as an interface between petroleum geology, sedimentology and geophysics and provides a “time-stratigraphic framework” for modeling etc
How well is your job compensated? What is the starting salary for your field, and how much can this be expected to rise?
Very well! Starting in the region of £25K, rising to potentially £100K+
How do you see your field developing over the next 5-10 years?
Perhaps more complex and certainly more exciting as smaller and smaller hydrocarbon fields are searched for
What’s the most unexpected thing about your job?
A lack of public understanding in what I do
What’s the biggest achievement of your career so far?
Becoming the first biostratigrapher to be recognized by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists as a “Certified Petroleum Geologist”
