Vision Exploration, L.L.C. - Management Staff

MANAGEMENT

HONESTY. INTEGRITY. EXPERIENCE.

Steve Walkinshaw is the President and owner of Vision Exploration. Steve began his career in the oil business in 1980, working as an intern at Forest Oil Corp., where he generated his first successful oil & gas prospect (see John Marble's testimonial). He was then hired full-time by Dudley Hughes (Hughes Eastern Corp.) in 1981, serving as Staff (and later District) Geologist, a position he held until 1989. In 1989 Steve founded and managed Cougar Exploration, a successful business unit of Paramount Petroleum, until it was acquired by Nuevo Energy in 1992. Steve worked as a staff geologist with Nuevo until 1996, when he left Nuevo and was subsequently asked by Dudley Hughes to return as Exploration Manager of Hughes-Rawls, International (HRI). Steve was promoted to Executive Vice-President of HRI in 1999.

In 2000, Steve left HRI to form Vision Exploration. Since its inception, Vision Exploration has quietly grown to become the most active non-operating independent oil & gas company in the state. Steve is a Registered Professional Geologist in the state of Mississippi and a Licensed Professional Geoscientist in the State of Louisiana; a 41-year member of AAPG; a DPA Certified Petroleum Geologist; and a member of SAGE and AIPG. In addition to his past service as Secretary, Treasurer and President, Steve remains active in the Mississippi Geological Society, serving as Webmaster (having built and maintained the Society's website) since 2002. Steve is also a long-standing member and has served as Chairman of the Mississippi State Mapping Advisory Committee (SMAC) since 2017. The Committee serves to annually review and approve the ongoing surface mapping efforts of the Mississippi DEQ Office of Geology. For further information, please see Steve's LinkedIn profile. A comprehensive Curriculum vitae and two-page List of References is available upon request.

Steve was the first geologist in Mississippi to receive Landmark Advanced Seisworks training in 1992. Since that time he has become cross-disciplined in 2D and 3D seismic interpretation, capable of interpreting seismic data using any of the modern 2D/3D software platforms. Steve is recognized by leading seismic data brokers like SEI and Seitel as a bona fide geophysical consultant, and he owns a powerful S&P (IHS) Kingdom software suite that includes the 2D3D Pak, VuPak, GeoSyn, and Rock Solid Attributes (RSA) modules. This enables him to apply advanced analysis to his interpretations of 2D and 3D data cube volumes. Steve also owns a full license to CGG Jason's PowerBench petrophysical software and has been conducting advanced petrophysical analysis for over 44 years.

In 2002, Steve was honored by the New Orleans Geological Society (NOGS) as the recipient of the Society's Best Paper Award for 2001. Steve's presentation was entitled "Magma, Salt and the Chicxulub Impact: Intriguing Implications for the End of the Cretaceous in the Mississippi Embayment".

In 2008, the Mississippi DEQ and the Mississippi Children's Museum asked Steve Walkinshaw to create the Museum's first geological PowerPoint presentation, focused on the origin and history of the Jackson Dome. Hundreds of Mississippi's schoolchildren viewed the presentation, which received wide acclaim and continues to be utilized by both the DEQ and the Museum. What the schoolchildren could not have known was that, in the course of developing the presentation, Steve researched the seminal early papers covering the Jackson Dome (published in the 1930's) and advised the DEQ of recommended revisions to its own geological understanding of the Dome, its genesis, and the economically significant Gas Rock reservoir of the Jackson Gas Field atop the Dome.

This in turn led to Steve's 2018 publication of “The Jackson Gas Rock, a Unique Upper Cretaceous (Selma Chalk) Lithofacies, Mississippi”, which was awarded the 2018 First Place Thomas A. Philpott Excellence of Presentation Award by the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS); this was the first time in 58 years a Mississippi geologist had received this prestigious award (ironically, Steve's former boss, Dudley Hughes, had been the last (and only other) Mississippi recipient of the First Place Philpott Award, in 1960).

On May 16, 2012, Steve Walkinshaw served as Presenter for the Lower Smackover Brown Dense Unconventional Oil Trend at Hart Energy's Third Annual DUO (Developing Unconventional Oil) Conference, held in Denver, Colorado. Since the DUO Conference, Steve has reprised the presentation (in a greatly expanded format) before many regional Geological Societies, including the Shreveport Geological Society (SGS), the Lafayette Geological Society (LGS), the New Orleans Geological Society (NOGS), and the Mississippi Geological Society (MGS); as well as the Mississippi Association of Petroleum Landmen (MAPL), and the Emerging Shale Plays USA 2013 and 2014 Conferences, held in Houston, Texas.

Steve's geologic research focusing on the Paleozoic strata of the western Black Warrior Basin (and the Jackson Dome) are featured prominently in the recently released book, The Geology of Mississippi (Thompson/Dockery) (2016). A wildcat well drilled to test his Coldwater River Prospect encountered the thickest interval of karsted Cambro-Ordovician carbonates in the Basin.

In October 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (and prior to the distribution of any vaccines), Steve Walkinshaw presented, in person, “The Lower Smackover Brown Dense Limestone: Its Potential as a Hybrid Unconventional Resource Play” at the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS; aka GeoGulf) Convention in Lafayette, Louisiana. This presentation was subsequently awarded the 2020 Second Place Thomas A. Philpott Excellence of Presentation Award by GCAGS. It should be noted that the October 2020 GeoGulf Convention was the only "in-person" geoscience convention held in 2020 in North America, a tribute to the tenacity and courage of LGS's James Willis and those who physically presented at and/or attended the Convention (whose organizers did a terrific job of minimizing attendees' risks to COVID-19 exposure).

In April 2023, Steve Walkinshaw presented “The Geology of the Deeply Carbon Negative Louisiana Green Fuels CCS Project, Caldwell Parish, Louisiana” at the SEG / AAPG / SPE CCUS Conference held in Houston, Texas. This comprehensive presentation of the Louisiana Green Fuels CCS Project drew a large audience and showcased Steve's ongoing work as Strategic Biofuels' Vice President - Geoscience, overseeing CCS operations for that $2.8 billion "off the grid", deeply carbon negative (-294 CI) SAF biorefinery project. In addition, Steve served as a co-author on two innovative geomechanical papers that were also presented at the 2023 Conference by Alessandra Simone (CCS consultant) and Lori Hathon (University of Houston).

In May 2024, Steve served as Panelist in Plenary Session at the first ever SEG / AAPG / SPE Latin America CCUS Conference, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His plenary session presentation was one of three presentations given by Steve on the opening day (May 22) of the LATAM Conference. Steve Walkinshaw is widely recognized as a geotechnical CCS Subject Matter Expert (SME) and his presentations in Rio de Janeiro, which included participation as an SME at the AAPG Latin American Young Professionals and Students Forum, focused not only on the technical aspects of CCS operations but also the CCS value chain and the "Social Contract", CCS permitting challenges, and a strong emphasis on ethics and professional conduct.

Also in 2024, Steve Walkinshaw served as mentor and advisor to the University of Houston's AAPG Imperial Barrel Award (IBA) Competition Team. The University of Houston's IBA Team won the North America Competition in the Petroleum Division and then advanced in June 2024 to win the Stoneley Medal and become the top IBA team in the Petroleum Division in the IBA World Competition. (The Imperial Barrel Award was founded in 1976 by the Imperial College in the UK, where its competition was included as part of an MSc Petroleum Geoscience course in 1976). Steve has served as an IBA mentor and advisor to the University of Houston since 2021.

Steve has many oil and gas discoveries and successful field redevelopment projects to his credit, primarily in South and East Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.