The Crude Truth Ep. 107 Molly Turko, phD President of AAPG PSGD | Devon Energy

In this episode of The Crude Truth, hosts Rey Treviño and Kristy Kerns welcome Molly Turko, a structural geologist from Devon Energy, to explore the intricate relationship between geology and oil exploration. Molly shares her journey in the oil industry and discusses how geological formations influence oil and gas production. The conversation highlights the significance of traps and seals in petroleum systems, as well as the role of geologists in identifying potential drilling sites.

The trio delves into how advancements in technology are reshaping our understanding of oil reserves, focusing on tier one, tier two, and tier three wells. They explore the complexities of geological formations, including the impact of fractures and faults on extraction. Molly explains the interconnected geological history of Texas and Oklahoma and addresses misconceptions about earthquakes related to the industry. This enlightening discussion underscores the critical role of geology in America’s energy independence and the dynamic forces shaping our planet’s resources.

Highlights of the Podcast

03:10 – Molly’s Background

06:12 – Field Trips and Geology

08:23 – Geology of the Wichita Mountains

12:02 – Oil Reservoirs and Geological Structures

13:46 – Importance of Traps and Seals

15:50 – The Role of Geologists

16:54 – Understanding Well Logs

20:44 – Advancements in Well Performance

21:27 – Importance of Well Spacing

25:08 – Revitalizing Old Oil Fields

28:06 – Geological Factors in Oil Formation

31:41 – Earthquake Myths

36:10 – Connect with Molly

Please reach out to Molly Turko on Linkedin

Please reach out to Kristy Kerns on LinkedIn

The Crude Truth Ep. 107 Molly Turko, phD President of AAPG PSGD | Devon Energy

Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

Rey Treviño [00:00:00] Structures, faults and reservoirs. What are those? We talk to an expert and get The Crude Truth of this episode.

Narrator [00:00:07] In 1901 at Spindle Top Hill near Beaumont. The future of Texas changed dramatically as like a fountain of fortune. Thousands of barrels of oil burst from the earth towards the sky. Soon Detroit would be cranking out Model TS by the millions, and America was on the move thanks to the black gold being produced in Texas. Now more than a century later. The vehicles are different, but nothing else has truly changed. Sure, there may be many other alternative energy sources like wind and solar and electric, but let’s be honest, America depends on oil and entrepreneurs. And if the USA is truly going to be independent, it has to know the crude truth.

Narrator [00:00:50] This episode is brought to you by LFS chemistry. We are committed to being good stewards of the environment. We are providing the tools so you can be to. Nape Expo where deals happen. Air compressor solutions. When everything is on the line, Air Compressor Solutions is the dependable choice to keep commercial business powered up. Sandstone Group. Exec Crue. Elevate your network. Elevate Your Knowledge. Texas Star Alliance. Pecos Country Operating Fueling Our Future.

Rey Treviño [00:01:25] Thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of The Crude Truth. My gosh. It is just an amazing time right now. And as always is my co-host. Kristy, how are you?

Kristy Kerns [00:01:37] I’m doing really good today, thank you. How are you?

Rey Treviño [00:01:40] We’re doing excellent today. It has been a full couple of weeks. We have been the drill up a storm there at the office. So I say that the office down the field and I feel like now is a great time to bring on a great guest because, you know, it’s like, how do we find the oil? What do we do? Right. And because a hole is what, this big. Yeah. And as I think like, you know, you get the chicken or the stick and you’re like, how do you find it? And while we find it by hiring great geologist. And so it was like a no brainer to bring on a Josh just maybe sit down and give us their I say the crude truth on, you know, what a geologist actually does, how they do things. So I invited on a great guest. And today our guest is Molly Turko. Molly, how are you?

Molly Turko [00:02:24] I am great. Thank you guys for having me today.

Rey Treviño [00:02:28] Well, thank you for coming in and thank you for driving into town to do this. We really appreciate that and are coming all the way up here that are down here, I should say, to the Real News studios in Dallas, because you actually reside with Devon Energy in Oklahoma, right?

Molly Turko [00:02:42] I do, yeah. So, goodness, I think it was a three hour drive to get here. But anyway, it was not bad at all. It Texas, you’re like our neighbor.

Kristy Kerns [00:02:51] This is true.

Rey Treviño [00:02:51] That is true. And it’s so nice to see you here. For a first that I was sitting there like, Oklahoma, Texas, your neighbor, and no bad talk. Just your neighbor. So and it’s so nice of you to say, Molly, thank you so much for coming on. You know, for those out there that don’t know you, you know, can you give us a little background on you before we dive in?

Molly Turko [00:03:10] Sure. I am Dr. Molly Turco, but don’t call me doctor because it’s a little bit awkward. Just call me Molly. But I do. I have a Ph.D. and structural geology, so that means that I really love broken rocks. I love understanding how they break, why they break. Pretty much raised in Oklahoma my whole life. So the oil field has always been in my backyard. My grandpa and dad were pretty similar background to you. They were just kind of raised in the oil field. They weren’t necessarily geologists or engineers. They just kind of grew up with it. So when I did finally decide to go to college and bounced around a lot, I eventually discovered geology. And my professor at the time was a petroleum geologist. I was like, I really like rocks. What can I do with this? He’s like, You can go into the petroleum industry. So I looked into that. I was at Tulsa Community College and got my associates in geology. Then I went to the University of Tulsa for two more years. I got my bachelor’s in geology. It was kind of hard to get a job as a geologist with just my bachelor’s. A lot of people really wanted you to have your masters, and I had an offer to be a teaching assistant and they would pay for two more years. So I got my master’s in geology, and then I went to work with Chesapeake Energy and Oklahoma City full time. Initially hated working, really missed the college life. I always wanted to be like a teacher and a professor, so I decided to go back to school part time at the University of Oklahoma, where I studied under Shanker Mitra, who was like a world renowned structural geologist.

Rey Treviño [00:04:53] Yes.

Molly Turko [00:04:54] It took a lot of time because I did school part time while working full time, which I eventually came to love working. I hated working corporate at first, but eventually I loved the data. I loved the people. I loved the project. So now I do love working in the industry, but eventually graduated with a Ph.D. in structural geology. So I have a lot of degrees, but they’re all kind of in the same thing. And then currently I’m with Devon Energy in Oklahoma City, and I also do some teaching for another company called Applied Stratigraphic. And then occasionally I’ll just do them for my. For myself, I guess I have Turco tectonics, which is kind of my brand, but sometimes I might do like a one day field trip to the Arbuckle Mountains or a one day field trip to the Wichita Mountains. I’ll usually just do that under Turco tectonics just to keep my name relevant. And it’s always important to be relevant out there, right?

Kristy Kerns [00:05:47] That it is.

Rey Treviño [00:05:50] I did not know that that those were scheduled field trips that you do because we were briefly talking about that. So let’s talk about that. You know. Yeah, let’s talk about Wichita Mountains for any listeners out there are people the Wichita mountains are just at the basically just north of the Texas border in south they’re at the. Oklahoma?

Molly Turko [00:06:12] Yeah. Yeah. They’re very close to Lawton, Oklahoma. Fort Sill is a big air base down there. So many times I’ve gone down there and they’ve been exploding things. So we’ll be on a field trip and on top of Mt. Scott, the tallest mountain down there, and we’ll hear big explosives. But yeah, I do field trips down there. I do go out on my own quite a bit. If you were to call, if you guys will not just like go me for a day.

Kristy Kerns [00:06:36] I want to go on it.

Molly Turko [00:06:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll take you to, like, my favorite spot in the world. When I die. I want my ashes to be spread in the Wichita mountains.

Rey Treviño [00:06:47] Really?

Molly Turko [00:06:47] So now the world knows.

Molly Turko [00:06:51] Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:06:55] It’s beautiful down there. Okay. That is definitely a planned field trip.

Molly Turko [00:06:56] Okay, let’s do it.

Rey Treviño [00:06:58] Yes, that could be real fun, actually. Yeah, we could do our. But yeah, I think so. And. And I like how you mentioned that live in Oklahoma into which so now, you know, we’ve got leases there just south of Layton and Burke Burnett will holiday Wichita Falls area which is technically one of the original boom towns that they consider and in the industry yeah wasn’t Pennsylvania but it was I think where a lot of people here in Texas initially, you know got their their teeth cut or whatever you want to say. Is that correct?

Molly Turko [00:07:30] Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’ve driven that road many times, going to Wichita Falls or Abilene recently, and you go through Burke Burnett and you see those big oil rig kind of statues or things on the side of the road. So I know there’s some pretty good history there.

Rey Treviño [00:07:46] Man. There’s some wells over there that are salt producing that were drilled. As I say, some there’s a well that’s all he works on the weekends and they go on on Friday, turn it on and they shut it all Monday mornings. But it produces five barrels every weekend. The pump jacks probably no bigger than our table. And it was drilled in 1901.

Molly Turko [00:08:07] Wow.

Kristy Kerns [00:08:08] Yeah,

Molly Turko [00:08:10] That’s. Awesome.

Rey Treviño [00:08:10] So, yeah, Solberg rented, you know, that whole area lot in Oklahoma. And so what is it, though, about the Wichita mountains that that’s your favorite place as a geologist and somebody that loves the rocks? Like, let’s dive into that.

Molly Turko [00:08:23] Well, initially, just kind of being there and seeing how beautiful they are. My favorite time is the spring because the rocks are very like deep oranges and reds. And of course, southwest Oklahoma. Everything’s like dry and brown. It’s a desert, basically. But in the spring, after the rains, when everything initially blooms, you get such green grasses and green moss, mosque, moss. And just that contrast and the colors are beautiful and the flowers around there are these little color colorful lizards that come out on the rocks and do lizard stuff. And there’s buffalo and Longhorn. So even for a non geologist, you can you can just see the beauty in it. It’s really a beautiful place, beautiful hiking. You would never know you’re in Oklahoma and some of the canyons you can hike through. But from a geology perspective, that’s like the core of Oklahoma geology. About 500 plus million years ago, the continents split, and as the continents split, a piece of it kind of tore into southern Oklahoma. So that tear, that tear tore basically all the way down into like, the magma, like the earth. So as that magma began to kind of rise through these faults, as that area began to spread, the magma cooled and it became the different types of granites that we see there today. And so that like, I mean, that alone is pretty cool, right? But then back and what like a geologist would call the Pennsylvanian period supposedly like 270 million years ago or so, you had North America that was colliding with like Africa and South America at the time, and that that collision created uplift of that region. So normally all of the Wichita mountains should just be buried very deep underground. But because of that later collision, it essentially got popped up and exposed them as we see them today. And in being a structural geologist in loving broken rock, like there’s just such a rich kind of structural history. And to really dive into it, it tells a beautiful story. And I studied it for my dissertation. I’ve got a lot of publications and visuals and block diagrams, but just structurally it has a very beautiful story as well.

Kristy Kerns [00:10:48] It’s crazy and powerful at the same time. I never would have even you always think like, how did that form or how this.

Molly Turko [00:10:54] Yeah, yeah,

Rey Treviño [00:10:57] yeah. And the soldering one, you know, they always talk about Pangea, which is basically which it sounds like you were talking about.

Molly Turko [00:11:02] Yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:11:03] 150 million years ago and that. It adds that the Oklahoma Texas border has that you see proof of paying J.R., I guess maybe it may not be the right word. I don’t know. But but you have examples of why PGA are that PGA was real. Yes. And that right there, all those fault. You know, I’ve been rock climbing will not rock climbing, rappelling there to which tall mountains can’t really do a lot of rock climbing. But you could repel there. They got the the river at the bottom. And so I’m just trying to go back to when I was younger and doing that stuff. And you just see all these different layers, you know, is that, you know, that whole area, you know, that whole area has been prolific from the Texas Panhandle to really Fort Worth. Yeah. And I use it. And again, I’m sorry, but I guess what what would that be? I guess from Oklahoma City down? Is that kind of fair that that whole area has been a prolific oil and gas play for almost a hundred years, right?

Molly Turko [00:12:02] Yeah, that that boundary. So if you’re familiar with kind of where the Appalachian Mountains trace around that’s I mean that whole thing has been a suture zone that’s really kind of come together and split up and come together and split up, come together and split up. Through like the past 600 million years. A. Of, like, geologic history. Yeah. So it’s not just like one thing that happened. It’s it’s happened or happened multiple times because I’m sure there’s some type of like, weakness that builds up because it doesn’t always break off at the same place. It kind of like shifts it down the line. But where you have those shifts, there’s places where maybe the crust was a little bit weaker so you could sink that and we would call that like subsidence. That’s where the basins would form. So of course, once you get rocks and things that have organic matter in it, once you sink that deep enough to get the heat and the pressure, all that organic stuff turns into oil, which is what we want, right? And then the oil is more buoyant than like the naturally occurring, what we would probably call like a salt water or groundwater, not like groundwater, that you would just go drilled like a water well. Right. But I mean, there’s there’s water in our rocks. You know that, right? Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:13:20] You know, we were.

Molly Turko [00:13:21] They call it dry howls.

Rey Treviño [00:13:23] We were talking about that yesterday. Yeah.

Molly Turko [00:13:24] Yeah,.

Kristy Kerns [00:13:25] That was very interesting. Yeah. Or it basically on the ocean.

Molly Turko [00:13:29] That’s true. Yeah. There’s, like, so much water in our earth, but it’s pretty salty. But the oil is more buoyant, so it moves around in these different parts, and eventually it finds a spot where it gets stuck. We would call that a trap and a seal. And then that’s that’s what geologists are great for. We find those for you guys. They go drill them.

Rey Treviño [00:13:46] Yeah. Yeah. You talk about the traps and the seals. Right now we’re drilling. We feel like we’re at a spot. And again, I might be butchering the whole thing, so I’m not going to mention my geologists or whatever, I think. Right. I’m sorry if I butcher. But we found a good sand and then there’s a limestone at the bottom. And, you know, is that a good thing to have sometimes, like that limestone at the bottom?

Molly Turko [00:14:12] It’s it really just depends on if that limestone contains oil or if it contains water. If you have a really good conventional sandstone reservoir, I’d say stay out of the limestone. You don’t need it. But if you have a really tight limestone, maybe you have more porosity in that limestone and those pores are filled with oil. You maybe you want to tap into there. But limestones tend to behave like a very conventional system. So that that basically means that you want a trap and a seal. Without that, you’re more likely to get water. Yeah. And so it it it’s not an easy yes or no question. You just kind of have to look at the whole system. Think of it from a what we would call like a petroleum systems analysis as a structural geologists trap and seal are very important for me. Trap is the geometry simply just the geometry? And the seal is going to be it could be like a shale rock that’s very tight, that covers that trap, right? So that would be a good example of a seal. And if that creates a dome, what we would call an any Klein oil could be trapped in a dome. But if there’s no dome or if it’s the opposite. If it’s a bowl. There’s a chance that’s full of water.

Rey Treviño [00:15:32] and that. Funny that you would think normally a bowl would be a good thing, but it’s actually the dogs.

Molly Turko [00:15:39] Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And it’s because oil is buoyant. It wants to go up. So once it finds that dome and it has a good seal, it’s like. It’s just going to sit there, build pressure until somebody pokes it well in there.

Rey Treviño [00:15:50] And when you poke the well, you still you know, we were yesterday. You still got to do the perps, like even if it’s because we do a lot of convincing. Actually, that’s all we do, you know? Yeah, we do do some you know not OP would let let the big let the big boys handle those big horizontals they’ve that they proven that they know how to do it really well. But we like to you know operate the more conventional straight good old fashioned vertical wells and that even when you got to go down, you still have to pass there and then hopefully your rock is, like you said, porous enough to where that you can just create that suction or maybe even free flow.

Molly Turko [00:16:25] Yeah, very true.

Rey Treviño [00:16:26] Yes. And so, you know, I just I love it. You know, I don’t know that much about geology other than, you know, what I have been able to learn over the years. And I like we were saying to you before we jumped on this episode that it’s like I know enough to know if a geologist is straight up lying. But once you dive into the actual data of Here’s why it looks good. Mike I can, I can, I can always do the airplane wings of the lungs, right? Yeah.

Molly Turko [00:16:54] Yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:16:55] Well, you because you are the well logs you said there and then I saw like, look here’s some airplane when you call sun, everything shoots out like the gamma rays.

Molly Turko [00:17:03] Yeah. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:17:05] It’s like, there it is And it’s a lot of times it’s true, but a lot of times it’s not true. It might just be water.

Kristy Kerns [00:17:11] Okay.

Rey Treviño [00:17:12] Yeah. Yes. And but, well, logs are also a poor part of what your look at it. Is that correct?

Molly Turko [00:17:18] Yeah, very true. I mean those wall logs are reading those rocks. And I mean, nowadays we have incredibly brilliant Petro physicists that can you know, I was on a project recently and we had old well logs from the 60s and it was frustrating because we’re used to modern logs, we’re used to having all the answers, the neutron, the density, the logs, all of those things that really kind of speak to us. But we’re dealing with these old logs from the 60s and it was my intern. I had an intern this summer working on the project and he did a beautiful job with it. And we got to work with our Petro physicist who’s like incredibly brilliant. But those logs are such a key part of the story because they’re really telling us about the types of rocks, the fluids in the rocks and how those transition as you go deeper or shallower.

Rey Treviño [00:18:05] Yes. And I think that’s cool that you all were able to back in to that data because of the old wells are the old logs. We have a lot of people and I’m glad that you talked your concern that we’ve in our travels, you know, we’re looking for geologists. We need to find somebody that can read those 1960s logs. Yeah, because we have wells that that we have that are that were drilled in the 60s or early 70s and they’re still producing today. And will we want to go in and rework them. We need to understand what’s going on and they’re like, well where’s your where’s your, you know, Gamma, where’s this? Well, here’s some formulas. And you know, because that’s what I’ve had to do is look back into the prosody. Are you back exactly. Resistivity Yeah And you know, so you know, every now and then I do some math. I try not to share too much but, but it helps because you know these things and I think that’s a lost art. Molly Excuse me. That everything’s going on, that we are getting into a world of where we’re headed, everything. Or because we are able to get more data, which is nice, but with the more data and we take that old data and we collide, that makes it even better.

Molly Turko [00:19:15] Yeah, it really does. I feel like I was almost a last generation of people who, when we were in college, we were really taught the petroleum system and kind of the conventional way I, I graduated with my bachelor’s in nine and my master’s at 11, and I went straight to work at Chesapeake Energy. And they I mean, they were drilling these horizontal wells, which was like incredible technology. They were learning how to frack these wells and think about different stages and how much sand to pump, all these different things. So very technically heavy on the engineering side. But I almost feel like there is a period, almost a decade where that was what people saw. They thought, this is the future. I don’t have to worry about whether I have a trap in a silo because this is shale rock. It’s my source rock. I’m fracking it. It’s there. Let’s get it out. So there was a big I feel like a loss.

Rey Treviño [00:20:12] Yes.

Molly Turko [00:20:13] But now a lot of those shales have been drilled up. People are going back to think about conventional and think about hybrid plays, where you where you need a mix of both. And I almost feel like there’s like this new spark for understanding conventional reservoirs and it’s kind of exciting.

Rey Treviño [00:20:31] Yeah,.

Molly Turko [00:20:31] Yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:20:32] That’s real good actually, because it conventions and I like how you also mentioned there’s like a lot of the shows that drilled and I think that would have been considered a tier one. Is that correct?

Molly Turko [00:20:43] Yes, exactly.

Rey Treviño [00:20:44] Yeah. And then you have it’s your. Two in the tier threes? Yes. And now because of technology on the good side and these traps have these faults that it’s like meeting these tier two and tier threes might even be better than the initially thought to where they’re not going to be even better than the tier ones.

Molly Turko [00:21:00] Very true. Yeah. One because of technology. And then once you drill so many wells and you drill each one a little bit differently and and you realize, well, this all did really good. We did X, Y and Z, Let’s try X, Y and Z on tier three. Now, my Tier three well is better than my tier one because of that time and data and technology and things that you’re learning and applying along the way. It’s technology is always going to kind of help us out in the end, you know?

Rey Treviño [00:21:25] It is. Yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:21:27] I’m just taking this all I’m sorry, I’m not going to be watching. I’m like obsess.

Rey Treviño [00:21:32] It’s a lot that, you know, Kristy, you’ve been you know, you’ve been now doing this for almost a year. And, you know, we were out there drilling this weekend and it’s just been so much fun. And it’s like, you know, these are all the things that we look at when we decide, hey, we’re going to put a hole right here. Yeah, it’s a lot better because you figure like where we’re at right now, the spacings are 330ft. And so that just means we got to at least be 330ft separated the wells. Well, there’s so much. It’s like 330ft and you got seven inches, right? Yeah, that’s a big deal. It’s a it’s a gamble, but it’s. I say that, but it’s really not, you know, because we’re doing so much research into that seven inches and where to place it.

Kristy Kerns [00:22:16] Yeah, it’s it’s definitely interesting to see from start to finish like how do you the know and this and yeah I was mesmerized yesterday when I was like, they’re like you’re getting sprayed with okay, I don’t consider this warming that.

Rey Treviño [00:22:31] It’s what it’s about. And you know, being able to find the oil and, you know, a lot of geologists are always like, hey, I found this. And, you know, I joke with you, but I got to ask, you know, how many barrels of oil have you found? It’s you know, I told you I’d ask you that.

Molly Turko [00:22:46] Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s a great question. It’s a great question. I don’t have a number. I’m going to pretend like it’s a whole lot. It is a traditionally I’ve always had kind of a technical role. So I have I have been an exploration kind of geologist in that role before, but primarily as a structural geologist. My role is more about understanding are there faults and fractures in the reservoir? If there are, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Not all fractures are bad. Not all fractures are good. It depends on what are they filled with? Are your fractures filled with oil or water? Are they open at all? Because if you think about a really tight rock like we talked about, conventional versus unconventional conventional, you would have a good porous sandstone reservoir. Unconventional would be like a very tight shell. But what if you have a very tight sandstone that’s completely cemented up? You’re not going to have a bunch of like porosity, you’re going to have a little bit. But let’s say that’s near a big fault system and there’s a lot of fractures in there. Now, those fractures can be pathways and pathways can be really important as long as they’re transporting oil and not water. But if those pathways are transporting oil, then those are fractures that you’d want. Right? So that’s kind of my role, is understanding do we have fractures and faults? Are they significant or not? Can they help us? Can they hurt us in Where are they? Do we want to stay away from them because they’re not just blanketed. There’s there’s might be a fault over here where we see more fractures and not a fault over here. So it really spatially is kind of dependent as well as understanding like down to that might fracture. Like how is that hurting us or helping us.

Rey Treviño [00:24:39] That. And I think that also is a testament to what companies that are at that level are able to do. But also it shows how much care they’re putting into not only the new wells, but then to go back and understand more because obviously, like we’re saying, the more data we have, the more we know which is obvious. And so to have you and your team be in there analyzing all these things, it creates new life in these old fields for people.

Molly Turko [00:25:08] That’s true. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:25:09] I mean, golly, you are just so happy to get what you and your team do because you all have a pretty big team there. I mean. Right? Yes. I’ll be your dad in a multiple.

Molly Turko [00:25:18] Yeah. Yeah, we. We have quite a few business units and we have a really pretty good sized technical team. It includes engineers and geologist, New Al Connor. We all kind of have a specialty and something.

Rey Treviño [00:25:31] She’s. So you just recently did a talk in Abilene. Well, let’s let’s talk about that just for a brief minute, because, you know, I always joke that Abilene is where the Fort Worth Basin and the Midland Basin merge.

Molly Turko [00:25:45] Yes.

Rey Treviño [00:25:46] Is that correct?

Molly Turko [00:25:47] Yeah. Yeah. So we have learned something new. I mean, there are some pretty basic outline maps that you can find on the Internet and in some people are a little bit more picky. It’s like, are you in the basin or are you on the shelf?

Rey Treviño [00:26:03] Yeah. Yeah. Right. So people want to think, Well, what do you mean you’re part of the Permian or what do you mean you’re in the Fort Worth Basin? It’s like, well, I’m in the Barnett Shell. Like, okay, then that kind of might be, you know, limited a little bit more than it’s like, well, where we’re saying this is like, okay, that’s over here. I mean the stronger well, because like so, you know, with everything that goes on, what makes Texas and I know you’re an Oklahoma girl, but what makes Texas so geo the geological rich with oil. Like what is it about Texas that makes that happen?

Molly Turko [00:26:34] Oh man.

Kristy Kerns [00:26:34] Question.

Molly Turko [00:26:35] If you think Oklahoma is special, Texas has that, but like multiplied.

Rey Treviño [00:26:43] Could you say that again for my Texas?

Molly Turko [00:26:46] Alcohol, although people really want to hear you say that. No, I mean, you look at oil numbers. I don’t think that’s any surprise. Right? Right. Yeah, But Texas had the same geologic history as Oklahoma because I had mentioned that suture zone from the Appalachian Mountains and that circles all the way around through like central southern Texas, even into to Mexico. So like the Oklahoma basins, a lot of those are Pennsylvanian in age. So around two, 70, 300 million years ago, maybe a little younger, older here and there. That’s the same geologic history that happened in the Permian Basin. You have the Delaware and the Midland Basin, basically your your two bowls. And both of those bowls were sinking during the Pennsylvanian and in the Permian. The time period followed the Pennsylvanian. And then a lot of that history is also seen. You know, you have like the little uplift. You have the the Fort Worth Basin. Fort Worth Basin is the same Pennsylvanian basin. That’s why we have all of the same rocks. Woodford, the Barnett, the Arbuckle, Ellen Burgers. It’s all kind of the same system, right?

Rey Treviño [00:27:54] Okay.

Molly Turko [00:27:55] And then it was all impacted during what we would call the Pennsylvania progeny or progeny is like a mountain building event. So Pennsylvanian progeny is a big word in geology.

Rey Treviño [00:28:06] It’s a big word in the garage.

Molly Turko [00:28:11] And then once you get into like South Texas and the Gulf Coast, you had mentioned Pangaea earlier. Pangea was like the last big supercontinent that split. And when that split, that’s kind of when the Gulf of Mexico open. But as the Gulf of Mexico opened and everything started to kind of sink into the goal for lack of words, there was some salt and the salt made it easy to kind of like sink down there. That created a lot of faults, that created a lot of reservoirs along kind of the Gulf Coast as well. What else? Yeah. Yeah. So Texas has a pretty complex tectonic story as well. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:28:50] Wow. I did not.

Kristy Kerns [00:28:50] I did not.

Molly Turko [00:28:51] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:28:52] Yeah. So. So the media did not create the Gulf of Mexico?

Molly Turko [00:28:57] No, it didn’t create the Gulf of Mexico crashed into there, but it didn’t create it.

Rey Treviño [00:29:02] Okay. Because I would be not not trying to switch gears or anything, but or even get into. But I always thought I always heard maybe a comment or something. But anyway. So you’re saying that the.

Kristy Kerns [00:29:15] that’s cute. Sorry. Sorry

Rey Treviño [00:29:22] are you worried, though. That they’ll.

Kristy Kerns [00:29:23] Kill the.

Rey Treviño [00:29:24] the one that you would go.

Molly Turko [00:29:26] Either

Rey Treviño [00:29:26] Have you heard that?

Molly Turko [00:29:27] Of course. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.

Kristy Kerns [00:29:29] Did this really That?

Rey Treviño [00:29:32] No, no. No. But. But I love how the big head. Something else I want to pick up on that you said was that Peggle was a last soup.

Molly Turko [00:29:39] Yes. Yes.

Rey Treviño [00:29:40] So this happened? Possibly.

Molly Turko [00:29:42] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:29:43] Really?

Molly Turko [00:29:43] Yeah. yeah. There’s Gondwana and Rodinia. Those are two other major super continents and and one of the earliest ones to break up was when I mentioned the Wichita Mountains and I had mentioned that, you know, it wasn’t necessarily called North America at that. Time. But let’s say North America, North America split. We had a tear that tore into southern Oklahoma. That’s the Wichita mountains. So that happened. Goodness. Like 500. 75 million years ago. 65 million years. Ago.

Rey Treviño [00:30:19] I promise we’re not going to we’re not going to fracture. Okay. The next 100 million plus years.

Molly Turko [00:30:24] And then they came together and you had one part of the Appalachian Mountains pop up. And then they split a split up again, maybe like 370 million years ago. And then they came together again. And that’s what we call the Pennsylvania entourage. That was like 270 something million years ago. And then it went apart for the last time. And that’s what created, you know. The if you if you go up to like green Greenland and Iceland, there’s like the the continents are split apart. And then that kind of comes down into the Gulf of Mexico. So that was like the last time everything split apart.

Rey Treviño [00:31:01] Wow.

Molly Turko [00:31:01] Yeah. Yeah. If you Google paleo geography, there’s a guy named Blakey, Ron Blakey. He’s got some beautiful maps and animations and just Google Paleo geography of the world.

Kristy Kerns [00:31:15] Okay. Yeah, I Yeah. I don’t even know. It’s not late to go research.

Rey Treviño [00:31:22] Yeah, because, like, you’re talking about all these faults, and so this isn’t the first time then, that obviously we have earthquakes on Earth, right? Right. During this time, Yes. And this also means that it all. Let me ask you this. Not not that it means so does that mean that all these plates are still moving every day?

Molly Turko [00:31:41] Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And they move faster in some places and sometimes they move together apart or slide next to each other.

Rey Treviño [00:31:49] So I get this question a lot especially, and I think you may already know where I’m going.

Kristy Kerns [00:31:54] I know where you’re going.

Rey Treviño [00:31:55] And I get this question all the time, especially when I whenever I the news media thinks that that read and I get to do you know the other day came up because like these earthquakes that are happening right now you know are they caused by the oil and gas industry? And I say no. I said, if you look at the I-35, it’s on a fault. Yeah. Now, that’s why you got inner space. Kind of a natural bridge, kind of like. Yeah. It like 2 or 3 other ones, and it’s like it’s on a fault line. Texas is a fault line. And now learning all of this more today. I mean, it’s always going to be blue. Is that right? I mean, all right.

Molly Turko [00:32:32] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the earth and the plates have been moving for, like millions of billions of years, and we have our plate boundaries. So have you heard of, like, the San Andreas Fault in California? That’s the major plate boundary. And I mean, they recently had some decent sized earthquakes. They’ve obviously had some like really big ones in the past. And then we have kind of old plate boundaries, old things that are from like mountain building events like 270 something million years ago. That was a time when the plate boundaries were really near to like Oklahoma and Texas. So our crust. Can I call the earth? The crust? So what do you get once you get down past the soil where the rocks are, like, really deep? Okay. They’re just busted up. There’s. There’s faults. There’s faults everywhere. I mean, not everywhere, but like it just because you don’t see a fault out your window doesn’t mean there’s not one 10,000ft below your feet in the granite that you that you’re sitting on. So there are faults everywhere. But we’ve had a very kind of dynamic earth for a long time, especially Oklahoma and parts of Texas. They’re very broken up and. Faults. Like to move whenever they’re under a condition that we would call stressed. So they get stressed out. They get, like really stressed out.

Rey Treviño [00:33:55] Yeah.

Molly Turko [00:33:56] And it kind of just there’s stresses naturally occurring in our earth. Everything is under stress. That’s natural, that it’s it’s just there. And those stresses have magnitudes and orientations. So if there’s an existing fault in the subsurface and it’s optimally optimally aligned to these stresses like the slightest perturb it. Yeah, it might want to move and it’s not going to I mean you’re not going to get like a magnitude ten because you call made a fault slip, but you might get like a magnitude one or something that you don’t even feel okay.

Kristy Kerns [00:34:30] And so the ones recent that we had here in Texas. Did you did I didn’t. I like people are like on my building it’s there’s an earthquake and it’s like, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so that’s mine is. Yeah.

Molly Turko [00:34:43] Okay. Yes. Because just thinking about like plate tectonics, what you get in California, what happens, what’s happened in like Japan or Indonesia, those are big, big chronic earthquakes. What can happen in the basins is just. It’s relatively small. Yeah. And sometimes, like. Activity can cause. And I mean were fracking wells were breaking rock that causes earthquakes. But the two time not film I’ve. Been on site for like frack jobs and I was like you know, I was doing interesting I got this right, this well, yeah, like waiting. Like. I didn’t really. Know. So we. Do create tiny earthquakes, but it’s not something.

Kristy Kerns [00:35:22] That you would actually fill. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:35:24] So like, the cartoons, we, you know, they would throw the dot in the ground. Also, you just see the. Like.

Kristy Kerns [00:35:31] That’s not really what happened. You know, I’m okay.

Molly Turko [00:35:33] That’s what I was expecting.

Kristy Kerns [00:35:35] But. Well, that’s the point

Rey Treviño [00:35:37] today. I always try to look for, like, maybe a little pop pop or we perf the wells, you know, maybe a spark might come up 2000ft or there.

Molly Turko [00:35:46] Yeah, it’s really uneventful.

Rey Treviño [00:35:48] It really is. But every time you do it, you’re like, Come on.

Kristy Kerns [00:35:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:35:55] Come on, now. It is fun. Well, Molly, I cannot thank you so much for coming on today. Before I ask, you are buying our new little thing that we do like to ask all our guests, You know, how can people find you?

Molly Turko [00:36:10] And the best way, honestly, is through LinkedIn. That’s where I feel like I’m, I’m cool. I, I have an Instagram and and a Tik tok, but I don’t do too much. I kind of just post my videos there. But LinkedIn is the best place to kind of connect with me. Molly Turko I, I don’t think there’s that many Molly Turkos’ in the world, you know, So pretty easy to find if you, if you want to email me my my email is Turko tectonics @ gmail.com. So after I have to play on the last name right.

Rey Treviño [00:36:44] yeah.

Kristy Kerns [00:36:45] I like that.

Molly Turko [00:36:45] Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:36:45] Speaking of playing the last names field trip. So what a fall or spring field trip would you prefer to do?

Molly Turko [00:36:54] wow. Spring is always nice because you get like, BigQuery. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:37:01] All right. What do you want to do?

Molly Turko [00:37:02] Okay.

Rey Treviño [00:37:02] I think we need to do something.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:04] We do a volunteer? Yep. I want to.

Molly Turko [00:37:08] I would. Go today.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:08] Okay.

Molly Turko [00:37:09] Well, with a hundred degrees.

Rey Treviño [00:37:11] Okay. Let’s do something. And we’ll. We’ll make something. Maybe. Really? Maybe we’ll do a dry run in the fall and maybe do something like, you know, maybe try to get some other companies and do something big from the.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:22] That would be amazing. Yeah, I would love that.

Rey Treviño [00:37:24] Yeah, that would be really cool. Just to which I love the Which tall man said.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:28] I was not then.

Rey Treviño [00:37:29] while they’re there.

Molly Turko [00:37:31] Yeah. It doesn’t take much to get me down there.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:33] Okay.

Rey Treviño [00:37:34] Though. And but but I think they’ll be super fun to go do it. And again, you didn’t have a high ticket rule recently too.

Kristy Kerns [00:37:41] as in Colorado. Yeah. It’s amazing. As has during go. But yeah. So the waterfall on as rain on and then everybody’s taken out because it’s raining knowing that rain. Yeah. But just so interesting to see the, the layers. And I sat there for hours and just took it all in.

Molly Turko [00:37:58] So beautiful there.

Rey Treviño [00:37:59] Since. So we’re doing it so we want to do two. We’ll do a small one and then we’ll try to do better. Even throwing a fundraiser for that site.

Kristy Kerns [00:38:06] I mean, fun.

Rey Treviño [00:38:07] I’m just shoot from the hip. So yeah, it does sounds like a good time. And so we’re going to do that. We’ll do that. So we’ve been doing now some fun fire burning questions. Just real quick, Rapid Fire. What book are you reading right now?

Molly Turko [00:38:21] Okay. So normally I would say I don’t read books and I have kids.

Kristy Kerns [00:38:24] Okay.

Molly Turko [00:38:27] And, but I did actually order one. So there’s a guy named John Robertson. He’s a geologist, and he wrote a book. It’s called. So while my goodness, I’m going to butcher it. The wild catting mindset wildcatters.

Rey Treviño [00:38:43] Nice.

Molly Turko [00:38:44] Maybe that’s it. Well, I just ordered it. I haven’t started reading it yet, but I’m really excited because I got it from Amazon and he interviews all of these people from like industry to academia kind of at different levels of their careers the exploration, the exploration, this mindset that.

Kristy Kerns [00:38:59] Wants to get out. Yeah, not very.

Rey Treviño [00:39:02] Worried.

Molly Turko [00:39:03] Then I’m like so excited to open it up. It’ll be the first book I’ve read literally since before kids and my oldest son just turned seven.

Rey Treviño [00:39:11] The book for kids.

Rey Treviño [00:39:16] For kids? Yeah. Are you streaming anything right now?

Molly Turko [00:39:21] no. No streaming.

Rey Treviño [00:39:23] That’s all right.

Kristy Kerns [00:39:24] Like me?

Rey Treviño [00:39:25] Yeah. Favorite sports team.

[00:39:28] No, I would, Dallas Cowboys

Rey Treviño [00:39:36] The last one. Do you have a favorite restaurant there in Oklahoma that you like to eat?

Molly Turko [00:39:43] Goodness. I really like it’s kind of basic. I love fuzzy tacos. I love good Mexican food. And their tacos are, like, really good. So let’s just go with that one, okay?

Rey Treviño [00:39:53] Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, again, Molly I cannot thank you enough or we did, we can’t thank you enough for this because the geology is probably well, it’s all important. As we were talked about yesterday, every piece of drilling a new well or finding a new play is well that’s where geologists come in. All but everybody in a well has a big part of it. You know, there’s no small parts and the geology is key.

Kristy Kerns [00:40:18] I was going to say, that’s probably the biggest part. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:40:21] And so I just cannot thank you enough for coming on to share your knowledge and showcase your knowledge. I mean, yeah, because you’ve got those fun little shows that we do. You do we talk about the Fracture Fridays and what’s it to what are they real quick.

Molly Turko [00:40:36] Okay so fall T Mondays. What is that? Wednesdays and fractured Friday.

Kristy Kerns [00:40:41] I love that. Are they on your Instagram that way?

Molly Turko [00:40:44] I do usually copy and paste them over with, but LinkedIn is usually the first place I work with them because that’s where I’m friends with all the geologists. And so I have a Facebook, but it’s like my family all get like 2 or 3 like paste, put the same video on LinkedIn. It’s like 300.

Kristy Kerns [00:40:58] yeah, I closed on Facebook just for that reason. You’re fired up. Yeah.

Rey Treviño [00:41:05] Well, again, Molly, thank you so much and thank you for sharing all the knowledge with us. I bet all our listeners probably had, you know, probably got a lot of questions answered also. So anybody has any questions, reach out to reach out to us. We’ll be more than happy to to get you connected with her. Okay. And we’ll see everybody again on another episode of the Crude Truth again.

Narrator [00:41:27] The crew Truth would like to think today’s sponsors LFS, Chemistry, Nape Expo, Air Compressor Solutions, Sandstone Group, Exec Crue, Texas Star Alliance, Pecos Country Operating and Real News Communication Network.

Narrator [00:41:47] The easiest way to start your own podcast and TV show, Real News Communications Network. Stand out from your competition. Produce streams of high quality social media content. Become a thought leader in your industry with RNCN you get to be the host. We handle everything else. Tour one of our three locations in Dallas, Fort Worth and the Colony. Call (972) 402-6333 or visit Launch a show dot com to find out more.