There are many members of our local geological society that I would like to hear tell how they found their way into the oil and gas business. As it turns out, Owen Hopkins called me and “asked” me if I would do this month’s “How I Got Into Geology.” I think everyone knows how hard it is to tell Owen “no,” so here I am typing my story. I can’t really say when I made a conscious decision to be a geologist. I know that when I was in my late teens I used to travel to the west coast of Mexico for the great waves there. Most of the places we surfed had some fascinating geological formations, many with rivermouths and headlands covered in cobblestones of varying size, shapes and mineral content. I spent many afternoons scouring the beach collecting igneous rocks that had been fractured and filled with mostly quartz intrusions. I didn’t know any of that at the time, I just thought they looked cool. My mom would complain when I returned home after a couple of months because I usually came back with more rocks and shells than clothes. Nowadays, the tradition carried on, but it’s my wife Mariella that complains about all the rocks I return home with. I probably have a half a ton of rocks at my house if anybody needs a few.

I moved to Hawaii in my 20’s (what I now refer to as my retirement years) and was fascinated with the geology there, mostly with the lava formations that make up most of the reefs we surfed, and the volcanic hotspot that created the island chain. While there, I realized that I was actually going to need some sort of degree if I ever wanted to buy property in the islands, so I decided I would try for a degree in architecture. I soon realized that living on one side of an island and driving to the other side to go to class and working a full-time job wasn’t going to work out so well.

In the late 80’S, married and with a pregnant wife, I decided to move back here to Corpus Christi to go to school towards an architecture degree. In true genius fashion, I had my regular cab 4X4 Toyota truck with no AC, shipped to Los Angeles and drove it and my four month pregnant wife cross country to Corpus Christi. Amazingly, she’s still with me today, some 20 years later.

While studying architecture, my brother in law, who had worked as a Schlulmberger engineer during the early 80’s boom time, convinced me that I should get a degree in Natural Gas Engineering. Texas A & I, now TAMU Kingsville, had a great degree program for that, so I started taking the basics locally at Del Mar. I soon found out that math beyond Algebra and Trig was not my forte, and decided maybe something else would be a better call after pulling a “C” in Integral Calculus.

I figured I could probably solve some of the world’s problems if I had a degree in Environmental Science (this degree required much less math than engineering). It was my “Environmental Geology” course that piqued my interest in the earth’s processes, and I settled on Environmental Geology as my major with Geology and Chemistry as my minors. Of all the courses I had to take towards that degree which emphasizes chemistry, biology and geology, it was the geology courses that held my interest the most.

After graduating, I found a job at NAS Corpus Christi as a water treatment plant operator. We were in charge of purifying the incoming raw water at an advanced metal plating facility (fancy way of saying chrome plating shop). My good friend and classmate, Jim Bentley, had taken a job as a geologist with Jeff Osborn and Ron Miller. Occasionally, we would get together and he’d tell me about the mapping they had done and their success rate on drilling new wells. I would tell him how we moved thousands of gallons of raw city water through a carbon filter train into a reverse osmosis system, then deionized the water for use in the facility. You know, really fascinating stuff.

It didn’t take me long to realize I needed to get back to the geology I learned in school, so I called Jim and told him as much. I think I said, “Get me out of here!” I guess that was really “how I got into geology.”

As luck would have it, Jim soon took a job with Coastal Oil & Gas, and after a quick interview (that included lunch at Snoopy’s), Jeff and Ron hired me. I got a crash course in petroleum geology and was soon mapping South Texas and involved in wellsite consulting (micro paleontology and supervising logging runs). I was making more money than I ever had and was hooked.

It’s only been a little over twelve years now, and I’ve already experienced a few cycles in the industry. I’ve learned that it really can be feast or famine in this business. But when it’s a feast, it sure tastes good!

Allen Lassiter
Geologist