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Gregg Norman was a significant contributor to SWS AAPG and was awarded the 2024 Norman H. Foster Outstanding Explorer Award by AAPG. He passed away October 17, 2024. Below is his bio and commendations presented by fellow SWS AAPG member Nic Brissette at Gregg's award ceremony. 

Citation – To Gregg A. Norman for a career of successful exploration and development of structural and
stratigraphic traps along the Eastern Shelf in Texas and the discovery of multiple new fields yielding
multi-million-barrel oil recoveries from shallow vertical wells. Gregg has been an industry leader in not
only Eastern Shelf new field discoveries, but also through his presidencies of North Texas Geological
Society and Southwest Section AAPG. This dedication to his work and community has landed him the
distinguished AAPG Norman H. Foster award.

Gregg grew up in northwest Texas in the town of Munday in the 1960’s through the early 1980’s.
Having unlimited access to woods, creeks and the vastness of farmland and nearby rugged ranches, it
was there where he and his friends could explore on their dirt bikes all things earth related. This
translated into Gregg earning his B.S. degree in geology from Midwestern State University in Wichita
Falls, Texas. Starting off as a geo-tech at Gunn Oil Company while working to earn his bachelor’s degree
in geology, Gregg was able to see firsthand how the petroleum industry worked. Gregg graduated in
1987 during the late 1980’s oil downturn, but successfully secured a tech position at Gunn Oil for his first
two years in the industry. Gregg was offered a move into an open geologist’s role at Gunn Oil while
working under the guidance of legendary wildcatter geologist, Robert D. “Bob” Gunn and his late son,
Vince. When the job offer was extended to Gregg, he sought council from his petroleum geology
professor, David Gee. Gregg’s primary concern was the salary offer seemed a bit low. Mr. Gee quickly
responded strongly and told him “To take the job and consider himself the luckiest person to ever walk
out the door of this University.” “Now get out of my office!” (Numerous expletives removed.)

While at Gunn Oil, Gregg’s passion for the earth sciences took off due to the operational
challenges and the lease obligations held on the Burnett 6666 Ranch in King County, Texas where R.D.
Gunn had made and operated vast oil discoveries in the Tannehill, Strawn, and Bend formations in 1969.
Gunn Oil Company was in a unique situation where Pacific Enterprises was exiting the play in King
County in the 1980’s where Pacific Enterprises had driven daily production up to 30,000 barrels of oil a
day on the King Platform. Gunn Oil was ready to take back over Pacific’s exit because Gunn Oil had been
the original operator and lease holder. These producing stratigraphic traps in King County resulted in
EUR’s close to 1 billion barrels of oil in place. Both Gregg and Bob knew there were numerous
extensions of these oil fields westward toward the Midland Basin, and Gregg was the right person to
tackle this new stratigraphic challenge.

Developing and utilizing shelf margin understandings from the Bureau of Economic Geology
under the research of L. Frank Brown, Gregg was able to develop actual returns to the company and to
the State of Texas. Armed with a wealth of knowledge from databases and geologic understanding
coupled with BEG research, Gregg was set and ready to drill for subtle stratigraphic traps.

With the utilization of affordable computer workstations and geologic software becoming readily
available to the masses in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, Gregg was able to couple not only his knowledge of
the 6666 Ranch learnings westward, but he was also able to link seismic interpretation into his
workflows. Using large datasets and building out a true exploration program using both proprietarily 2D
and 3D seismic, Gregg made another discovery in 2001 in Dickens County chasing the Tannehill sands
named Soldier Mound Field. Just like the previous work on the 6666 Ranch, the Eastern Shelf provided
multiple serendipitous producing formations that were currently not mapped or clearly understood, but
created further stratigraphic opportunities on the Eastern Shelf. Soldier Mound in Dickens County, Texas
was to be Gregg’s first significant turning point in his career where this discovery resulted in over 6.5
million barrels of produced oil. 4.5 MMBO has been produced from the Tannehill sandstone and 2
MMBO yielded from the slightly shallower Stockwether Limestone where operators previously
considered this formation to be a non-productive marker. Gregg also found several other smaller fields
across the county ranging from 0.5-1.0 MMBO.

At about the same time as the Dickens County campaign was ramping up, Gunn Oil became coowner of an international exploration company called Globex which focused on the off-shore Northwest
Shelf of Australia and West Central Africa (Equatorial Guinea). While Gregg did not actively explore
these areas hands-on, he and a longtime friend and fellow geologist William C. “Bill” Stephens reviewed
and evaluated projects and provided recommendations to the Globex board. It was an incredible
experience to be exposed to truly large global exploration programs with all the new technology and
concepts coming on-line at the time.

While at Gunn Oil, the geologist had control and direction of their own projects. The geologist
took their ideas and prospects to the company with the understanding this was an exploration program
first. If the well struck, the geologist had a development project, while all along ready to explore to
extend their ideas across their play. Fostering true philosophy of creativity at the company, the geologist
was not only a practicing geologist, but it was recommended that each geologist develop their own
career path with a specialty or niche in the industry to apply to their projects for enhancement. Gregg
initiated and started typing the oils from subsurface geochemistry studies to map migration paths and to
forensically tie these learnings back into his years of experience of exploration. He realized the Eastern
shelf was the perfect place to apply these petroleum system concepts. Gregg was fortunate to work
with Dan Jarvie on these geochemical studies and projects.

Armed with this wealth of knowledge and the onset of unconventionals underway across the US
in the 2000’s, Gregg mapped the highly resistive and high API gamma Canyon and Cisco shales across the
eastern Midland Basin up onto the Eastern Shelf. This was a valid attempt to get out in front of the
industry to take the company in a new direction by partnering with major independents to drill laterals
in the Cline Shale. Ultimately, the Cline shale formation didn’t provide the commerciality or the reserve
potential the larger independent majors had hoped for but left Gunn Oil in a prime opportunity for more
vertical oil discoveries because Gregg was fully aware of the stratigraphic section’s potential and
forgiving Eastern Shelf.

With deep tests available on the Eastern Shelf drilled by the exiting major independents, Gregg
used his knowledge of stratigraphy and shot additional proprietary 3D seismic to develop more vertical
Cisco, Strawn and Ellenburger plays in Fisher County, Texas. These applied concepts led to numerous
multi-million-barrel oil field extensions on the Eastern Shelf within Fisher.

2015, presented a new set of challenges for Gregg’s career. With Gregg being one of the corner
stone geologists at Gunn Oil and holding his professional position since the 1980’s, another industry
downturn in 2014 caught the technical staff, and he was laid off from Gunn Oil due to the extreme fall in
oil and gas strip prices. However, knowing Gregg was not about to back down from a challenge and
stepping up to this new career direction, he created a new venture with his lifelong friend and work
associate, petroleum engineer Jimmy Browning, to form Norman Browning Exploration, NBX Energy.
Armed to the teeth with a full career of advanced knowledge of oil and gas, stratigraphy and the comfort
of knowing the Eastern Shelf, Gregg and Jimmy built out an exploration package on the Swenson Flat Top
Ranch in Haskell, Jones, and Stonewall counties in Texas. After securing partners, shooting 65 square
miles of proprietary 3D across a contiguous ranch owned by one family, and after three dry holes drilled
with partners ready to cancel the next wildcat, NBX drilled the first successful discovery wildcat on the
last well in the drill program to the Strawn resulting in the largest new field Strawn discovery on the
Eastern Shelf in 50 years. 3 million barrels of oil have been produced to date since 2017 with over 50 oil
wells drilled in the Flat Top JC (Strawn, Upper) Field. Reservoir properties are close to 18 million barrels
in place with ultimate oil recovery factors over 40%.

Gregg is a geologist’s geologist. He always carries tenacity, gumption, and the drive because the
oil and gas exploration mentality, or as we call it “the Hunt” lives within him. Not only is Gregg a great
geologist and a spectacular associate to talk geology, the geologists at AAPG are honored to present
Gregg A. Norman the esteemed AAPG exploration Norman H. Foster award. He is a good person and
friend we can all count on through his scientific methods to be successful because we know Gregg will
have another wildcat discovery waiting around the corner through his efforts on forensic exploration.