Given the oil demand destruction wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic and the increasing focus on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions, now may seem like an inopportune time to be an aspiring geoscientist.

Adam Law thinks otherwise.

Managing director of UK-based energy consulting group ERCE, Law has been in the business long enough to have weathered more than a few downturns, and while recovery from the current one will be different, he says, demand will not disappear any time soon.

Continued role for oil and gas

“There is an energy transition, or rebalancing, and that will continue,” he says. "But while we are building that new infrastructure and finding alternatives to petrochemicals, we're going to need carbon-based energy and materials, possibly for a long period of time."

Law himself was working on his undergraduate degree in exploration geophysics at University College London (UCL) in the wake of the 1980s oil price shock, and most of his classmates took jobs outside oil and gas.

The landscape may look even more hostile now on its surface. But the opportunities are there, he insists, including low-carbon and renewable energy technologies.

“The world will still be investing in subsurface activities. Some projects will involve the development, redevelopment, exploration and production of hydrocarbons. Others will be for the development of geothermal energy and injection of CO2. And that's where the geoscientist comes into play,” Law says.

ERCE, formed in the 2010 merger of ERC Energy Resource Consultants and Equipoise Solutions, actively supports Master’s degree programmes through teaching and offers internships at the company for young scientists-in-training.

“Some of them have stayed with us, some of them gone to work for others,” he says. “We want to provide geoscientists that first step up on the ladder, to get them involved with the energy business, because it's quite exciting.”

University days

Law credits his own first step up on the ladder to a professor at UCL, “the irrepressible John Milsom”, who encouraged him to continue his studies.

Law heeded the advice and pursued a doctoral degree at Cambridge University, working with the British Institutions Reflection Profiling Syndicate (BIRPS), which conducted seismic surveys around the world and extensively on the UK continental shelf.

“That was really fabulous, really hardcore geophysics, really tricky maths and great field work in Sweden, where I was involved in looking at seismic,” he says.

From Cambridge, he joined British Gas as part of the company’s graduate development programme — “a really good, structured training programme”, he recalls. “I do try to replicate that, in our own way, at ERCE."

Exploration work

By 1996, oil prices “reached a princely $20 a barrel or more” and exploration activity was brisk. With British Gas “going through a lot of structural changes”, Law took the opportunity to jump to Amerada Hess, as Hess was then known.

“That was straight into the deep end — pretty aggressive explorers,” he says.

“I was lucky enough to be involved in the team at Hess that was exploiting a particular Lower Cretaceous play in the Moray Firth called the Kopervik Fairway,” Law says of the prolific North Sea area offshore Scotland.

“It was a great rush for 18 months, like shooting fish in a barrel — six wells drilled back-to-back, fields like Goldeneye, Atlantic, Hannay, Blake.”

As part of the development team, he had frequent contact with people from Equipoise, a small company he joined as a partner in 2003, during a major restructuring at Hess.

Equipoise had been established in 1998 — “another start-up in the middle of an industry downturn”, Law says.

“I think that set them up to be financially sensible.”

Expansion

After the merger with ERC, the company set out to grow, expanding with offices in Singapore, in 2015 — “right in the teeth of another oil price crash” — and later establishing a presence in Perth, Western Australia.

Law speaks with pride of the company’s independence.

“The company is entirely owned by us,” he says. “That’s not unique, but quite unusual in our space.”

In part, he feels it helps maintain technical credibility, something crucial for ERCE’s business consultancy and resource assessments.

“We behave like auditors should do, which is to provide a realistic opinion of the investments (clients) are going to take,” he says.

“The subsurface always comes and bites you. And if you don’t have an opinion that is based on the facts in front of you, it could cause a problem in the future.”

Industry ESG drive

Law notes an increasing focus among clients on environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies, including the assessment of greenhouse gas emissions — “a positive change in the industry”, he says.

“I think investments will more and more depend on the clear application of ESG policy.”

Law lives in South London, convenient to ERCE’s Croydon home office, and has three children, aged 17, 18 and 20, all at various points on their own educational paths.

He has a collection of vintage cars — “nothing spectacular, nothing expensive, but I do love my old cars”, he says.

“I have a Morgan I built from a kit when I was younger.”

He also is a fan of theatre and opera and “obviously, as a geologist, I like being outside a lot, which is a bit frustrating at the moment”.

Geology not only instils an appreciation of the outdoors but “helps you understand risk” and “how to deal with imprecision and contradictory information”, he says.

“It really helps you understand and grow your analytical skills as a human being,” Law adds.

“So although you might not wish to go on to practice geology, it's a very good starting point, I think, for developing skills that are pretty important for business in the future.”

Exploration

'The world will still be investing in subsurface activities' - Adam Law