Interviewers: Tyler Priest and Jason Theriot

Affiliation: University of Houston

Dave Montague was trained at the Colorado School of Mines in petroleum engineering, but soon moved into petrophysics. Shell soon hired him in that capacity, and by 1984, Montague’s career focused on unlocking the geological secrets of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. As a member of Shell’s deepwater exploration group, Montague helped to discover major finds like the Auger, Mars, Ursa, Mensa, and Brutus fields. Tapped in 1988 to work on Shell’s interdisciplinary “Turbidite Task Force” (organized to advance the firm’s knowledge of turbidite geology), Montague aided in the discovery that deepwater sands could produce oil and natural gas at strikingly high rates.

Mark Shannon began at Shell as a chemical engineer, before being informally drafted by the petrophysics team. His work with Shell took him to California, the Gulf Coast, and beyond. At the beginning of Shell’s serious efforts to understand the geology of the Gulf of Mexico beyond the edge of the continental shelf, Shannon was tapped to be one of three co-heads of Shell’s internal Turbidite Task Force in 1988. There, he worked with colleagues like Dave Montague and others to decode the geology of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.