Lyn Arscott

John Donnelly, JPT Editor

Editor’s Note: In recognition of SPE’s 50th anniversary this year, JPT is conducting interviews with several Society luminaries about their careers, their relationship with SPE, and the changes they have seen in the oil and gas industry and the Society over the past several decades.

How did you get involved in SPE?

As a young engineer coming into the petroleum industry, I needed to learn petroleum technology and the obvious place was SPE. I had a PhD degree in rock mechanics and I had taken a job with the Gulf Oil Research Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For young engineers, there is no better place to learn the technology of petroleum engineering than SPE meetings and literature. It’s simply a must-do.

What was your early experience with SPE like?

I began to get involved in the SPE Pittsburgh Chapter where there was a heavy involvement from the Gulf research people and a lot of representation from the natural gas sector because of all of the gas activity in that area. The meetings were exciting for me because I was young and eager to learn and I particularly enjoyed the Distinguished Lecturers. I would attend every meeting I could, and before long I was invited into the local officer rotation. About 1974, I became Chairperson of that section, and that is when I really got involved in SPE activities.

How has SPE benefited you professionally?

SPE helped me become knowledgeable about oil and gas production technology and it has kept me up to date for my whole career. Another important benefit has been networking. I have always found that the SPE community is nonconfrontational and offers a lot of mutual support. I would call an SPE member who worked for another company and expect to receive a very cordial response to any question, and I would reciprocate. People would call me and say, “I met you at an SPE meeting, and what do you know about this or that?” I have found the SPE network to be invaluable.

What did you take away from your experience as SPE President in 1988?

I joined the SPE Board of Directors as treasurer in 1984, so I had been on the board for several years before becoming President-elect. As President, I was able to travel throughout the United States and abroad, and it was then that I realized how big was the SPE global empire and how important was the role we play in the international oil and gas business. When traveling in the centrally planned economies of China and Russia, I remember the difficulty in explaining that SPE was a voluntary organization. They kept asking what part of the US government did we belong.

How international was SPE at that point?

We were in the early stages of becoming truly international. The International Oil and Gas Show and Exhibition in China had become established and we were nurturing that carefully. We had no regional offices in the 1980s. The Offshore Europe Conference was up and running, and we were able to finalize the financial structure whereby SPE had an equity position in the meeting. This has been a tremendous financial benefit to SPE ever since. We continued to grow our activities in the Middle East, South America, Asia, and Africa.

What SPE activity that you participated in are you the most proud?

During the time I was on the Board, I was appointed to head the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Department for Chevron. This gave me a golden opportunity as I traveled around the various sections and conferences to carry the message of the growing importance of HSE to this industry. In the mid- to late 1980s, there was a revolution going on not only in the oil and gas industry but in all industries because of an avalanche of HSE regulations in the United States and Europe; our industry simply had to adjust rapidly to this growing regulatory regime. Some of the first steps were to establish management practices and principles and to educate our employees about how important it was to be in compliance with the new regulations. SPE played a very significant role in this. I remember the first HSE Forum in 1989 where we decided to establish a committee on HSE and decided to organize the first HSE conference. The first US conference was held in 1991, and the first international conference was held later that same year. SPE is now planning its ninth international HSE conference. We have held them in Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and North America—so it has been a truly global effort.

What are the most important HSE accomplishments the industry and SPE have made since then?

Because of SPE’s mission of collecting and disseminating information, it has created a data bank of thousands of technical papers that are now in the archives, an archive that is growing every year. For practitioners in HSE and for operators who live with HSE regulations, this is a critical source of information for their business. I do not know how they could conduct their business without this wealth of technical information. SPE’s HSE meetings have brought together a broad collection of disciplines for networking and discussion. In addition to engineers skilled in oil and gas production operations, we have lawyers who specialize in environmental issues, medical doctors and toxicologists who specialize in health issues, and ergonomic experts who can help us with safety issues. There is a wide spectrum of science and engineering that applies to the HSE function in the oil and gas industry. I do not know any other part of our business that is quite that broad in the range of its disciplines. The SPE meetings also help develop partnerships with environmental organizations, other non government organizations, members of governments, and representatives of communities. It brings together the hard and soft disciplines—the technology and the political and social issues that enter into discussions of HSE issues.

What are the industry’s future HSE challenges?

Over the past couple of decades, we have made tremendous progress in creating management systems for companies that help integrate HSE objectives with operating objectives. The industry has made good progress in safety and environmental performance, as well as in training employees and raising awareness. We are growing in our ability to handle social responsibility. Where the industry needs more effort is in the management of health; health programs tend to lag the safety and environmental programs. The industry also has two special challenges it will face over the next 10 years or so. One is greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change, and the other is furthering our understanding of biodiversity.

What else should the industry be paying closer attention to, and how can SPE help?

The industry has to keep improving its ability to communicate with the public, and there is a need for SPE members to understand more about public-industry interaction. SPE now has an Energy Information Committee that is working to make sure our members are up to speed on these issues and to help them enter into a dialogue with the public. I am a member of that committee and we recognize that SPE’s role is part of a larger effort by the industry to improve the public’s understanding of energy issues and energy-environment interaction. SPE can help by mobilizing its army of volunteers to talk to local communities. I also see a need in the industry for some of our senior management to make sure that they support the role of SPE. If those managers have petroleum engineers on their staffs and they were members of SPE at a young age, there is a much better chance that they will be sympathetic to what SPE does and how it contributes. But we do have a number of senior managers in the E&P business who are not SPE members and we need to improve communications with them.

Lyn Arscott, SPE, is a consultant to the international oil and gas industry specializing in sustainable development. He was 1988 SPE President and was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer on the subject of sustainable development in the oil and gas industry during 2001–02. He is an Honorary Member of SPE and the American Institute. of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers. From 1998 to 2001, he was Executive Director of the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers. He is a past Chairman of the American Petroleum Institute General Committee on Health and Environment and past Chairman of the Western States Petroleum Association committee on Environment, Health, and Safety. Arscott retired from Chevron in 1998, where his assignments included Senior Executive Consultant for Exploration and Production reporting to the Chairman of the Board and Corporate General Manager of Health, Environment, and Safety. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineers. He holds BS and PhD degrees in engineering from the University of Nottingham, England.