Innovative thinkers

As the inventor of over 80 well logging-related U.S. Patents, covering carbon oxygen and pulsed neutron capture logging tools, as well as several other logging technologies, and most recently, nonradioactive tracers, Harry Smith, former Director of Research at Halliburton Energy Services, and current owner of Harry D. Smith Consulting, has had a four-decade career that is anything but conventional. From applying nuclear technologies to locating hydrocarbons, to being delayed by a tiger in a wellsite operation in Sumatra, Indonesia,  Smith’s adventure in the oil and gas business began in a most unusual place—Houston’s Shamrock Hilton Hotel swimming pool.

After earning his BS and MS degrees in physics from Georgia Tech, the Augusta, Georgia, native spent two years in military service at the U.S. Army’s Edgewood Arsenal, working with computer modeling programs to measure the effects of radiation on military equipment, facilities and personnel. And while working for the U.S. Navy Mine Defense Laboratory in Panama City, Florida, during the summers between his years in graduate school, Smith unexpectedly got introduced to offshore oil operations, when his group was analyzing acoustic signals onshore from seismic exploration vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. “We actually went out to a couple of oil rigs on Navy boats,” said Smith. “So I had some early, sketchy interaction with the oil industry.”

In 1969, Smith interviewed for a position with Texaco in Houston, where he stayed at the legendary Shamrock Hilton Hotel and witnessed a live water skiing exhibition—in the hotel’s 165-by-142-ft swimming pool. “I said, ‘I think this is the kind of place I want to be. These people are doing things that clearly aren’t being done other places’,” Smith said. “It wasn’t oil-related, it just focused me that I really wanted to be in Houston.”

Smith joined Texaco’s Bellaire Research Center in Houston and began work on developing the company’s carbon/oxygen (C/O) logging technology. Remembering his experience in simulating radiation effects for the Army, Smith got the idea of incorporating large radioactivity modeling programs in developing carbon oxygen logs. “We were the first in the oil business to take these big federally-developed software programs and use them to simulate the response of nuclear logging tools,” Smith said. After patenting the C/O technology and licensing it to several service companies, he and co-workers tested the technology at wellsites all over the world, even having the too-close encounter with the tiger while driving to the wellsite in Sumatra. “That was certainly a memorable experience,” Smith recalled, and made us a little apprehensive about wandering around outside the logging truck that night.” While at Texaco, Smith also investigated improving other nuclear logging technologies, including compensated neutron and pulsed neutron capture tools.

In 1978, Smith joined Halliburton’s Welex division as senior research physicist, where his first assignment was to improve the company’s nuclear logging technologies, including designing better density and compensated neutron tools,  and particularly pulsed neutron capture tools, for measuring downhole formation properties. While other service companies had pulsed neutron capture logging tools that utilized a method that required waiting for the neutrons thermalized in the borehole to decay before they could accurately measure the formation properties, Smith visualized a new way to process the data. “My idea was, why do you want to wait?  Why not just measure and analyze both the borehole and formation neutron decay signals, separate them, and thus simultaneously make a better formation measurement, as well as a new borehole measurement?,” he said.

Before Welex introduced this new pulsed neutron technology to the market in 1982, it had 0% market share of the pulsed neutron business. By 1985, the company had captured a majority of the pulsed neutron work in the Gulf of Mexico. “That type of pulsed neutron data processing is now done routinely,” Smith said. “I guess it was just luck. I don’t know why I happened to think of doing it a different way.”

Smith was working on, and patenting, other nuclear logging tools and methods as well, including natural gamma spectroscopy, density, neutron and radioactive tracer technologies. “Without the engineers and technicians, and the other scientists that worked right along with me on most of these projects, none of this would have ever happened.” Smith said. “Some of us are lucky enough to be able to come up with ideas, while others are really good at turning them into hardware and solid answers.” In 1995, he was appointed director of Halliburton’s Houston Technology Center and managed a team of over 400 people in developing wireline logging, logging-while-drilling, and downhole tool technologies. In 1998, Smith and Halliburton’s VP of Technology were assigned the task of unifying and synergizing all the research in Halliburton Energy Services under one research director, and Smith fulfilled that role for the rest of his career at Halliburton.

Smith,  the first person in the international well logging society (SPWLA) to have received their top two technical achievement awards, including the Gold Medal in 1997, took his early retirement from Halliburton at the age of 62. However, it was only a few months before he was back in the business. “Well, I was going to fish, I was going to play golf and do a lot of fun things. But, I got tired of catching fish, and my wife got tired of cooking them.” Smith said. “So I started a little consulting company.” During the last six years, under Harry D. Smith Consulting, Smith initially evaluated nascent oilfield-related technologies and companies, and their associated intellectual property, while consulting for Shell’s Technology Ventures Group. His work broadened into developing new and improved oilfield technologies for several other clients, and so far he has had eight new U.S Patents issued,  with several more pending in collaboration with four of them. 

Currently, in conjunction with CARBO Ceramics, he is developing a novel proppant incorporating a thermal neutron absorber, which can be detected by conventional neutron and/or pulsed neutron logging tools.  This new technology is designed to locate proppant placement in induced fractures without employing the radioactive tracer technology currently in common usage, and it eliminates the associated radiation hazards and logistical problems. Ironically, this new proppant technology has the prospect of at least partly obsoleting the above radioactive tracer method that Smith also developed and patented over 20 years ago.  The first U.S. Patent to issue on this new proppant technology, trade-named NRT, recently became Smith’s 83rd U.S. Patent to date.

Whereas Smith’s first patent in the 1970s received a registry number in the three-millions, his latest patent, issued in January 2012, was awarded a number in the eight-millions. “The U.S. has issued more patents throughout the time I’ve been working than it did in all the time before I started my career. It shows you how exponentially technology is growing,” Smith said. “I’ve come up with a lot of bad ideas as well as good ones, but I’m not vain enough to think that everything I come up with is good. I’ve just been fortunate enough to make some of the good ideas work.”