James "Perry" Lawrence

Mr. Lawrence brings to Pontem 39 years of experience at Pennzoil, Devon Energy and Linn Energy spanning acquisitions, drilling, completion, production and reservoir engineering.  He was recently a senior advisor to Renuergy, and independent Texas conventional upstream operator.  He has 36 years of experience with low and extremely high-pressure (16,000 psig) wells in complex geologic fields in coastal Texas from Houston to Mexico.  For 32 years, Mr. Lawrence focused on drilling, completion and production operations in the field, increasing reserves through stimulations, recompletions, artificial lift and decreasing operating expenses for the South Texas Division. From 1987 -1994, he worked as a reservoir engineer in Houston with a team of a very successful geologists and geophysicists calculating reserves for acquisitions and wildcat/development drilling prospects in South Texas. Material balance equations were used to disprove ceiling faults and expand reserves from 30 bcf to 150 bcf in Zapata, Texas. This close working relationship with geologists sharpened skills in log analysis.

Combining log analysis with onsite drilling experience led Mr. Lawrence to recommend testing a low permeability interval on a failed Edwards test in Texas in 1998. Explorationists denied the request as “just a pressurized shale”. It turned out to be the Eagle Ford Shale in Karnes County. Later in 2008, seeing similar indications of a low perm silt/shale section, and using the  Nolte-Smith 3D simulator, Mr. Lawrence convinced the team to frac the section with 1 million pounds of sand. This led to a new discovery resulting in 18 conventional and unconventional wells.  He studied and executed a micro strategy on the Agua Dulce field in South Texas that increased field production from 4 to 30 mmcfd through 10 wells and 60 recompletions in the first year. 

Mr. Lawrence also trained and mentored engineers for the last 20 years in developing logistics and best practices in completion/production operations and trained foremen on budget responsibility and risk/reward understanding.  Based in Corpus Christi, TX, Mr. Lawrence earned a BS in engineering-geology from Vanderbilt University and supplemented with various engineering courses from Texas A&M and various industry schools.