Bob Lindsay

The unforgiving Arabian sun bore down on Dr. Lindsay as he dangled 300 feet above the air. His friend Abdullah hung just a few feet above him, focused on extracting a sample of the rock. The two wayward geologists were attempting to map all 585 feet of the Tuwaiq Escarpment, which lay nearby the Saudi capital of Riyadh. One rock sample every five feet. Dr. Lindsay was beginning to understand how a packhorse feels.

Dr. Bob Lindsay is one of the most impressive alumni of the BYU geology department. After graduating from BYU in 1976 with his master's degree in geology, Dr. Linsay began working for Gulf Oil as a petroleum geologist. After nine years, he transferred to Chevron and worked for them for 17 years. In 2002, he was hired by Saudi Aramco as a senior geological consultant. At the same time, he received a Ph.D. in Earth Science from the University of Aberdeen. He retired in 2015 and now works as a private geological consultant for his own company and serves as the president of the West Texas Geological Society. Prior to becoming a geologist, Dr. Linsday served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, known also as the Green Berets.

During his time at Saudi Aramco, Dr. Lindsay worked in the Arabian Peninsula on some of the largest oil reservoirs in the world. He began his lecture by explaining the history of oil and these super giant oil fields in the Middle East. Oil was first discovered in Iran in 1908 after people noticed that there were frequent oil pools seeping from the ground. After several more findings, explorers uncovered a series of deposits that turned out to be one massive formation, called the Ghawar Arab-D Oil Reservoir, which to this day remains the largest oil field ever discovered. In total, the field stretches approximately 25-30 kilometers wide and runs a mind-boggling 285 kilometers long.

He explained the importance of studying the Ghawar field. Ghawar holds approximately 100 billion barrels of oil. If researchers can improve recovery by just one percent, that would mean an extra billion barrels of oil. With today's oil prices, one can imagine how much money that would mean. And that's just one percent. Now imagine two or three percent. Understanding the geology of the Ghawar field and other oil fields is crucial for increasing oil production and improving the quality of life for all those who benefit from oil.

Dr. Lindsay has added immensely to our understanding of oil and gas production. The department thanks him for his seminar and for his contributions to the department.