If you think about the skills you use in your job every day, “creativity” might not be the first thing that leaps to mind. But those who are tasked with finding oil and gas need to be extremely creative to take what they do know and apply it to what they don’t.

This concept was the focus of an American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) webcast recently titled “Creativity in Exploration.” Speakers Ted Beaumont of AAPG and Doug Strickland of Jayden Consulting shared their thoughts on how explorationists can infuse more creativity into their search for hydrocarbons.

Beaumont outlined how the creative process can work. Typically it starts with insight, the realization that something is missing. The search for what’s missing is known as saturation and is a left-brain process requiring gathering, sorting, and categorizing. “It’s arduous,” Beaumont said. “It can take hours or years.”

Once the information gathering has been completed, the left brain falters, and the right brain works on the problem subconsciously. This usually takes place when you’re relaxed and leads to the “aha!” or “eureka!” moment, when the answer to the problem suddenly seems obvious. When the left brain becomes aware of the solution, it can see all the pieces. Verification then tests the solution.

Often the best form of creativity is to look at an old problem in a new way. Beaumont used the Michigan Basin as an example. A Shell geologist decided to take a new look at the Silurian reefs in the northern part of the basin. He thoroughly tested the concept by getting data from the 38 existing wells and made cross-sections and maps, ran samples, and studied cores and cuttings. He established that dark, thin basinal carbonates were present in the center of the basin and that there were high-energy carbonates present on the shelf.

His “aha!” moment came in his hotel room while he was studying the existing interpretations of the area. By walking around to the opposite side of the bed and reading the isopachs upside-down, he realized that the middle of the basin was starved but that the pinnacle reefs in the area provided good hydrocarbon traps. Since then more than 700 producing reefs have been discovered in the basin.

Strickland might argue that the discovery moment was possible because the geologist was alone, not working in a team. Based on his previous experiences working in oil companies, he said that the team concept, competition between colleagues, and time constraints are all creativity killers. And countless meetings don’t help, either.

“I used to spend hours in meetings,” he said. “Some of them were really trivial.”

He cited author Julia Cameron and presented creative obstacles in the workplace. These include a hostile and competitive work environment, difficulty aligning work and personal goals, handling criticism, applying strengths to the job at hand, overcoming depression, and handling an impossible workload.

Perhaps because of these obstacles, Strickland said he missed two big plays during his career — the Oklahoma fold play and the Marcellus Shale. “I wasn’t looking at fresh stuff but taking it for granted,” he said. “My mind was shut to it.”

To open his and other’s minds, he quoted a poem by Robert Service: “There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting. It’s luring me on as of old. Yet it isn’t the gold I’m wanting so much as just finding the gold.”

“That’s the fun part of our careers,” he said. “The process of finding is exciting.”

So how does one spark creativity in today’s frantic workplace? Strickland suggested two things — drawing and writing. Many explorers already draw maps and models in their jobs, but they’re not necessarily drawing as a hobby. Everyone can be taught to draw, he said, and it helps people look at the world in a different way.

Writing also helps. He suggested an exercise called “Morning Pages.” These can be about anything that comes to mind. “Anything goes,” he said. “It can be trivial, negative, petty, angry, self-doubting, seemingly pointless.

“But they are not pointless. They clear your brain and get rid of pessimism. They allow you to be creative again.”