Lawrence D. Meckel, Jr.

Lawrence D. Meckel, Jr.

Our immediate family comprises a numbers of geologists, all AAPG members: our two sons Trey and Tip, Barbara my wife, and me. Collectively we graduated from 8 colleges and universities, and we would like to honor those institutions with this named grant. They provided that all important educational background upon which we built our professional careers.

Larry is an exploration consultant with over 45 years of U.S. and international experience. He is currently a consultant and instructor for the oil industry and an Adjunct Professor in the Geology and Geological Engineering Department at the Colorado School of Mines. Prior to forming his own Denver based consulting company, he was a partner and co-founder of Sneider and Meckel Associates. He started his career at Shell Development (as a researcher and later as a manager) and Shell Oil Company (exploration in onshore and offshore areas).

Larry has worked clastic and carbonate plays throughout Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. He has been fortunate to be part of various exploration teams that have made a number of discoveries, including the giant Elmworth Field in Western Canada. He attempts to bring this experience to his industry and university courses. He has provided in-house exploration courses for over 40 U.S. and overseas companies and has taught in several AAPG schools as well as convention short courses and field trips. He currently teaches “Unconventional Petroleum Systems” at the Colorado School of Mines.

Larry was awarded the Grover E. Murray Distinguished Educator Award at the 2011 AAPG Convention in Houston. He is currently a member of the AAPG, SEG, SEPM, RMAG, and Mexican Geological Society.

Larry graduated with a PhD in Geology from Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Rice University where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

Barbara Toan Meckel

Barbara Toan Meckel

Barbara, who grew up in Montana, has degrees in Geology from Bryn Mawr College and The Johns Hopkins University, where she and Larry met. They were married in 1964 and have four grown sons: Lawrence (Trey), Barrett, Timothy (Tip), and Christopher. The boys were reared in Houston and western Colorado where their parents surrounded them with rocks. Trey and Tip turned out geologists; Bret and Kit are a veterinarian and an architect.

Barbara had taught at a private high school in Virginia before marriage. After a sabbatical to raise the children she rejoined geology and the family consulting company. She specialized in correlating Gulf Coast logs, library research, and map making.

Dr. Lawrence D. Meckel, III

Dr. Lawrence D. Meckel, III

Dr. Lawrence D. Meckel, III (Trey) has 15 years experience in the oil and gas industry. Presently, he is the acting Exploration Manager and Chief Geologist for Pexco N.V., a privately-held, international E&P company based in Jakarta, Indonesia. He was formerly the Chief Geologist of Woodside Energy USA (Houston, USA) and the Coordinator of Reservoir Modelling and Geoscience Technology at Woodside Energy Ltd. (Perth, Australia).With Pexco, and previously with Woodside and Shell International E&P, Trey has been involved in new ventures, exploration, development, production, research, and technology application projects in the Southeast Asia, North America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, South America, and West of Shetlands.

Trey specializes in integrated depositional systems analysis, sequence stratigraphy, risk assessment, reservoir characterization, and compartmentalization issues. His expertise includes reservoir- and system-scale stratigraphic analysis, basin and reservoir modelling, and turbidite geology. He also dabbles in biostratigraphy and reservoir geochemistry.

Trey received a PhD in Earth Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zürich), an MA in Geology from The University of Texas at Austin, and a BA with Honors in Geology from Williams College in Massachusetts.

Among his numerous papers and presentations, he won the New Orleans Geological Society’s 2002-2003 Best Paper Award. He has also chaired numerous technical sessions at international and national conferences. He is on the Technical Program Committee of the 2012 GCS-SEPM Bob F. Perkins Research Conference and is a co-convenor of a special session on Pacific rim petroleum systems at the 2012 International Geological Congress. He was the convenor of a successful AAPG Hedberg Research Conference in 2009 on deepwater foldbelts.

Dr. Timothy Meckel

Dr. Timothy Meckel

Dr. Timothy (Tip) Meckel is a Research Scientist with the Bureau of Economic Geology at The University of Texas at Austin ’s Jackson School of Geosciences.

Tip is a sixth generation Texan, born in Houston and living in Austin . Upon graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in Geology from Colby College (ME), he attended Indiana University’s summer geologic field program in Montana where he developed an interest in regional structural and stratigraphic complications. Inspired by the geology of Montana, he enrolled in the graduate program in the Geology Department at the University of Montana in Missoula, receiving a M.S. in 1998 incorporating his interests in field geology and geophysics into a thesis investigating the applications of GPR for delineating stratigraphic heterogeneity in consolidated sandstone deposits. From Montana, he entered the graduate program at The University of Texas at Austin, where he received a Ph.D. in 2003 for his contributions to understanding the tectonic evolution of the southernmost Australian-Pacific plate boundary south of New Zealand under supervisor Dr. Sharon Mosher. During his dissertation, he was employed temporarily as an exploration geologist by ExxonMobil in New Orleans . After completing his Ph.D., Tip taught undergraduate geology for one year at Colby College before receiving a Mendenhall post-doctoral research fellowship investigating subsidence issues in Louisiana with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, MA. He returned to Texas in 2006 to work with the Bureau of Economic Geology, where he currently focuses on economic and environmental aspects of carbon dioxide in the subsurface.

In addition to his full time role in geoscience research, Tip instructs both in the field and in the classroom, supervises graduate student research, and mentors aspiring earth scientists. He has been an AAPG member since 1999 and serves on the AAPG Research Committee. In 2009 he was co-convener for an AAPG Hedberg Conference on geological carbon sequestration.