7th ESAAPG Webinar – Rick Fritz, AAPG President

Join us for our 7th Webinar in our Series, featuring Rick Fritz, AAPG President, as he presents:

Dynamic Career Pivots—Always Pay Attention to the Really Big Things

Rick Fritz, AAPG President

Every career has ups and downs. This is especially true of the cycles experienced in the petroleum industry.  Pivots or changes in careers are also related to the myriad of opportunities available in science.  During my 40 years in the industry I’ve experienced eight major career pivots.  From a geophysicist at Texaco to a geologist at Exxon to a research geoscientist and manager at Masera Corporation to an geo-land speculator and president of MXC Exploration to executive director of AAPG to new ventures lead at SM Energy to CEO and entrepreneur of Council Oak Resources, a private-equity company, and back to chief consultant and bottle washer for Fritz Energy Partners.   Wow! That’s a mouth-full…or rather a life-full.

In today’s work climate an out-of-work geoscientist must look at an even broader range of opportunities.  To help our members pivot and find work AAPG joined with SPE in the Members in Transition (MiT) program.  This is a comprehensive program of information sharing, meetings, mentorship and support.  As a result AAPG has developed a toolbox that contains information on jobs and resources (https://toolkit.aapg.org/).  In this program 50 geoscience or geoscience-related jobs were identified through review of industry and other commercial job websites.   The strategic step in pivoting to a new career is to understand the maturity of an industry and how many jobs are available in that industry—this is job density.  For example, one of the highest job densities is found in the mature environmental/ hydrogeology industry.  Another promising career is in carbon capture; however, since it’s an “emerging industry” job density is low right now but should increase in ten years.

Albert Einstein once said, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” I don’t claim genius but I’ve had a passion for science even when I was a kid and all through my career. I believe one secret to success is to always – always – pay attention to the really big things! During my career, it seems that approximately every five years there was a major scientific discovery or technological advancement– something that significantly changed our view of Earth processes or allowed us to use technology for applications we had not imagined. Examples are plate tectonics, sequence stratigraphy, horizontal drilling with staged hydraulic fracturing, shale petrophysics, correlation and mapping programs, geo-analytics, among others. These are major pivot points in our science and profession.  I’ve found it was always important in my career to pay close attention to these big events, embrace them and learn as much as possible.