713.470.8882
mailto:MDavis@DrillScience.com
Michael Don Davis
Objective
Challenging work as a drilling engineer with exceptional engineering and
geomechanical skills, detail oriented with priority of people and their
team work, an eye for the bottom line and a record of success.
Drilling Engineering Experience:
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Experience
Consultant.
Well planning and cost estimation.
Drilling and Completions.
Drilling engineer, project management and onsite
supervision experience.
Drill string design and application modeling.
Underbalanced and managed pressure drilling
Casing while drilling operations.
Rotary steerable operations.
Multi-lateral drilling and completion design.
Sub-salt drilling geomechanical modeling & well planning
HTHP, ultra-deep, casing and cement design.
Extensive HTHP Wildcat planning and drilling operations
utilizing geomechanical models built with seismic and all
other types of pre-drill formation evaluation information.
Horizontal drilling and completion experience including
current “multi-stage fracturing” completion technology.
Deepwater drilling design and operations.
Utilized every type of drilling rig.
Well de-completion and abandonment planning and
operations
Advanced safety audit and hazard assessment.
Through Tubing Rotary Drilling Design
Personal Drilling Software Authorship and use.
Geomechanical Software Authorship and use.
Team building and Project Management
Houston
1999-Present
 Served as a consultant, drilling engineer, completion engineer,
project manager, onsite supervision from spud to completion.
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During this time held various short term and long term consultant
positions and also developed a number of drilling engineering
tools with excellent, proven success. Examples:
1. 3D directional planning
2. Casing Design
3. Buckling and Wellhead Loading
4. Hydraulics with wellbore loading and EAD
5. Improved bit trip decisions
6. Risk Assessment/Decision Analysis
7. Solids Control Optimization
8. BHA Optimizer
9. Geo Mechanical Modeling of Arbitrarily Inclined
Wellbores and Pore Pressure via Seismic Transforms or
available electric logging data.
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Highly successful in drilling & completion engineering design,
team building, project management and operations.
June 2011 – Present
Noble Energy Inc.
Houston, Texas
Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Teach engineers in the deepwater drilling groups Well Cat for casing
design of ultra deepwater wells.
 Plan and implement deepwater drilling programs and provide
engineering support as a deepwater drilling engineer.
February 2011 – June 2011
Occidental Petroleum Houston, Texas
Drilling Engineer/Project Manager (Consultant)
 Hired to drill three intercept wells that OXY had spent over $10,000,000
unsuccessfully.
 Worked with production teams to come up with a better plan for one of
the wells slated to be intervened via an expensive intercept well plan.
 Successfully met with compliance officials to design drilling plans to
intercept the remaining two wells that were beyond the ability to
intercept because of existing complications.
 Worked with inter-department teams to design plans to bring problem
wells into compliance with cost saving methods.
 Successfully worked with government officials to bring OXY into
compliance in the companies largest producing oilfield.
 Plugged and Abandoned two wells that were slated for dual intercepts
due to complications hitting the objective on the first try on each
intercept. Successfully complied with the regulatory officials to take
these problems wells off the books with there $20,000,000 liability
cleared. The drilling on the first intervention well was under budget by
more than 10% and many days. The 2nd intercept was weeks ahead of
schedule and under budget by more than 50%, saving OXY millions.
July 2010 – January 2011
Choice Exploration
Arlington, Texas
Lead Drilling & Completion Engineer/Project Manager/Eng. Mgr.
(Consultant)
 Successfully planned, permitted, and drilled, 2011 drilling of highly
complex extended reach well under Trinity River.
 Drill and Complete well in company’s existing fields. Under AFE cost in
every project undertaken.
October 2009 – Present
Aminex USA
Somerset, Texas
Lead Drilling & Completion Engineer/Project Manager
(Consultant)
 Successfully planned, permitted, drilled, completed, and produced,
2009-2010 drilling program in Shoats Creek Field.
 Increased production in the Shoats Creek Field 20 times over.
 Drill and Complete well in company’s existing field. Drilling engineer,
project manager and onsite supervisor for this project. At AFE cost.
 Utilized innovative techniques to surpassed production volumes ever
achieved in field by any operator.
 Repeat customer.
April 2009 – Present
Activa Resources
San Antonio
Lead Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Prepare to drill East Texas Oil Field with research, AFE’s and team
building, utilizing state of the art horizontal drilling and completions.
Multi-frac.
 Work on retainer for drilling programs, AFE’s, until this company starts
the 2009 drilling program.
 Repeat customer.
2009
Cross Canyon Resources
Houston
Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Consult on field pore pressure and geo mechanics in preparation for
drilling and for targeting gas pay zones using my methods.
 Work on retainer until this company starts the 2009 drilling program.
 Repeat customer.
2005–2008
El Paso Production Company
Houston
Lead Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Began work as El Paso had on two rigs running and a junior engineer.
 Immediately reduced drilling costs in development and exploration
(wildcat) wells using my seismic to pore pressure and wellbore stability
transforms, and my experience with HTHP ultra deep wells.
 Suggested using Rotary Steerable to reduce costs and downtime in
onshore Texas wells after conducting thorough feasibility study that
was ultimately confirmed to be accurate with subsequent drilling.
 Reduced costs in field development drilling in Renger/Roden from over
$5 million per well to $3 million even as drilling costs increased.
Reduced costs in field development drilling in Bob west from $3.5
million to $2.5 million using experience and techniques mentioned.
 Built up rig count working with drilling manager from 2 rigs to 12 rigs as
the geologic prospect inventory increased due to realized, lower drilling
costs that we procured with our techniques, methods and project mgt.
 Helped orient younger engineers that were subsequently hired and
trained sharing with them my experience and knowledge on drilling. I
made a great deal of effort in helping them to grow as engineers and
take pride in their work.
 Utilized Real Time Monitoring and MSE to increase ROP and decrease
“invisible lost time”.
2005
Mission Resources(until acquired by Petrohawk)
Houston
Lead Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Re-entry, rotary steerable, underbalanced lateral through depletion
under budget. Utilizing state of the art Geomechanics.
 Designed and drilled HTHP, wildcat, Yegua discovery well. Utilizing
state of the art Geomechanics and seismic transforms.
 Designed and operated numerous deep HTHP wildcat drilling projects.
Utilizing state of the art Geomechanics and seismic transforms.
2004–2005
BP
Houston
Project Lead Drilling/Completions Engineer (Consultant)
 Headed research and feasibility project into the options to develop
mature fields and bypassed reserves in the deepwater asset team
 Technologies included: 4D seismic modeling, 3D directional drilling,
Starburst Multi Lateral whipstocks, TTRD (Through Tubing Rotary
Drilling), Micro Hole drilling, Rotary Steerable, expandables, subsea
intervention, and multi-lateral drilling and completions. Also did
feasibility modeling, performance engineering and modeling,
production modeling, drilling design and economics estimations.
 Received Knowledge Management Award from BP for “Low Cost
Reservoir Access” intranet portal.
2004
POGO Producing Company
Houston
Lead Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Design, team build and permit program of OCS jackup drilling projects.
 Repeat customer.
2004
Pioneer Resources
Lake Arthur Louisiana
Lead Drilling Engineer/Wellsite Representative (Consultant)
 Design and implement ultra deep, high pressure, workovers and
recompletions.
2002–2003
Team Lead Corporation
Houston
Lead Petroleum Engineer(Consultant)
 Began a partnership with Team Lead Corporation that utilized my
drilling and reservoir engineering software on a Russian Oilfield
acquisition and development project.
 Utilized my skills in team building and my resume database software.
 Developed an extremely successful and profitable software project for
Lyondell Petroleum.
2001
Energy Exchange
Houston
Lead Drilling Engineer(Consultant)
 Partnered to supply engineers on contract and permanent basis to
companies in the energy business.
 Awarded supply contract with Halliburton and Smith International to
supply engineers to projects locally and international.
1999-2001
IP Petroleum Corp.
Houston
Lead Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Designed, drilled and completed mid range (16,000’) offshore
directional wells with Jackup and platform rigs most of which were
under budget.
 Work over deep HTHP, sour gas, onshore land rig wells most of which
were under budget.
2001
Kerr-McGee Corporation
Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
Houston
 Design, team build and permit program of OCS jackup drilling projects.
 Geomechanical analysis of problems associated with the drilling of a
salt dome offshore Louisiana.
2000-2001
AFE Oil and Gas/Premium Resources
Dallas
Lead Drilling Engineer (Consultant)
 Consulted to solve problems with the first two wells drilled in the field
costing $5 million whereas other wells were costing $2 million.
 Presented evidence and report as to the reasons and solutions to
prevent overruns on subsequent wells.
 Involved a solids control system audit and recommendations for
deviation control methods, and ROP improvement techniques.
 Saved the company $3 million dollars on subsequent wells utilizing my
recommendations.
1999
Apache Corporation
Houston
Petroleum Engineer (Consultant)
 Merged Canadian Oxy acquisition of offshore Texas Gulf Coast
properties with Apache operations.
 Made recommendations for order of importance of walkovers once
merger was complete.
 Supervised transfer of operations of offshore production facilities
personnel to Apache.
 Supervised integration of CXY files into Apache Headquarters and
worked through Triage of most needy work over and recompletion
candidates.
1992–1998
Cliffs Drilling Company
Houston
Senior Drilling Engineer
Perform drilling engineering design, estimation, trouble shooting,
research, analysis, operations, onsite supervision and data
gathering/client meetings/sales. In 7 years designed and implemented
practically the most difficult wells on the planet. Worked on over 200
wells per year each project several million dollars or more. Deepwater,
highly pressured, deviated and complex. Very successful safety record.
Planned, supervised and operated floating drilling project over 25%
under budget despite weather problems, planning difficulties, and lack of
experience of rig personnel. Engineered a floater work program that
resulted in million dollar profits and helped bring Marathon Oil
Company’s deepwater assets into the 21st Century.
Value safety and economy while generating over 200 drilling programs
of the most difficult wells to plan and drill each year. At least 90% of the
wells had intermediate casing, with many having as many as two liners.
This includes: high pressure, directional, horizontal, depleted zones, salt
domes and deepwater. Even with this amount of work met the deadlines
that existed and my programs were always feasible. Projects utilized
semi-submersibles, jack-ups, barges and land rigs. Was a member of
the team that signed the first PEMEX contracts awarded to company.
1990–1992
Triton Engineering Services Company
Houston
Drilling Engineer
 Successfully designed, supervised, and operated well drilling
programs. This included successfully designed deepwater drillship
drilling programs. Projects utilized semi-submersibles, jack-ups,
submersibles, barges and land rigs. Presented SPE papers to an
audience of engineers in a technical drilling engineering forum on a
regular basis. Engineered programs internationally in most every
petroleum producing country of the world. Was a member of the team
that garnered the first PEMEX drilling contracts awarded to an
American company. This same team signed the first Venezuelan
contracts for our company.
Summer 1989
Chevron
Ventura, California
Intern Drilling Engineer
 Worked as a Drilling Representative having all responsibility of two rigs
performing abandonments in the L.A. basin.
 Ordered equipment on schedule and handled paperwork.
 Supervised men.
 Presented analysis of operations in the division and recommendations
for cost savings of millions of dollars over the whole field.
 Supervisor wrote that my strengths were, “Dependable, common
sense”. And, “Very Good. Asked many questions and carried his load”.
Summer 1988
BP
Anchorage, Alaska
Intern Reservoir Engineer
 Studied available Decline-Curve Analysis software packages and
made recommendation for action.
 Review of injection performance of Kuparuk wells taking produced
water.
Analyzed pressure tests of well within selected pads.
Attempted to locate multiple tests for wells and establish a base of
results for comparison with future analysis.
 Supervisor wrote in my review that my “pressure analysis were better
than many by more established engineers.
 Supervisor also wrote, “Picked up the method of pressure analysis
well. Considering the limitations of the data Mike provided a good base
from which to monitor for formation damage in the future.
Education
Graduated December 1989 The University of Texas at Austin, Texas
 B.S., Petroleum Engineering
 Inducted into Tau Beta Pi and Pi Epsilon Tau National Engineering
Honor Societies.
 SEC (Student Engineering Council) Representative for SPE student
chapter
 SPE student chapter officer
 Dean’s List every year attended.
 NG and RE Whiting Presidential Endowed Scholar
 Chevron Scholarship recipient
 Conoco Scholarship recipient
 Texas Oil and Gas Leadership Award in Petroleum Engineering
Memberships
Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
American Association of Drilling Engineers (AADE)
International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC)
Editorial Post
Technical Editor on the SPE Peer Review Committee
Interests
Member SPE Online Communities Advisory Committee, Memorial
Green Owners Association, Board of Directors; Joseph Radinsky
Charity, Board of Directors; being the dad of my four kids, people,
reading, tennis and music.