Sean Shannon Murphy holds a B.S. in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma with electives in oil and gas law and business management. He is a registered professional petroleum engineer in the states of Oklahoma and Texas and a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. He has over 35 years of domestic and international on/offshore petroleum engineering, operations, enhanced oil recovery, and management experience.
He started his professional career with Superior Oil in 1981 at the peak of the drilling boom when the rig count in the U.S. was over 4500 drilling rigs. At Superior Oil he worked as a production and completions engineer in California and Texas. His assignments included completing new wells in the Giddings (Austin Chalk) field and in the Monte Christo field (Vicksburg/Frio) in central and south Texas, respectively. He also completed Edwards Lime, Travis Peak and Cotton Valley wells in Central and Northeast Texas. He managed production and completion operations for wells in Coalinga (Steam Flood) and Rio Vista, California, and managed a polymer flood in Torrance, California. He spent 14 years of his career working onshore and offshore operations in West and North Africa for Mobil Producing Nigeria, Sonatrach D.E.P. Algeria, Cudd Pressure Control, and Halliburton.
He spent 3 years working on the Navajo Indian reservation in Aneth, Utah managing a CO2 flood for Mobil Exploration and Producing, U.S. as the Flood Management Team Leader. He has experience with propane fracs, fiber optics, fracture stimulation and cluster spacing optimization, reservoir engineering, black oil and thermal reservoir simulation, enhanced oil recovery, transient nodal analysis, and deep, high pressure gas well completions (23,000 ft TVD, 20,000 psi BHP). He also has worked as an international consultant for well control, fishing, coil tubing, and snubbing operations. He is currently certified in blowout prevention for workover, coil tubing, snubbing and wireline operations. He was previously certified by the MMS as operator’s representative for subsea BOP stacks and became a member of the 100 club for having a perfect test score for the subsea BOP certification test. He has served as a petroleum engineering expert witness at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Oklahoma Corporation Commission.
Sean is currently employed as a companywide completions engineering advisor for Chesapeake Energy for the Completions Engineering Technology team focused on optimizing the company’s horizontal shale play completions. He also teaches courses in snubbing, fishing, and train wreck avoidance. He previously held the positions of Sr. Asset Manager and District Manager for Oklahoma properties.
He is married, has five children, and lives in his home town of Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S.A.