To an industry insider, "unconventional" refers to the fact that these oil and gas reservoirs are traditionally considered to be source rock, not reservoir rock.

But to the layman, "unconventional" might imply that these reservoirs are risky business. Bruce Vincent, president of Swift Energy Co. and chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA), believes this second interpretation is dangerous to the industry.

"We have a marketing problem industry-wide on both the policy side and the demand side to convince the end user and policymakers that these plays are real," Vincent said. "The use of the word 'unconventional' implies that the hydrocarbons are challenging to get. They're not. Exploiting these fields is getting easier because the industry is getting better at what we do.

Swift Energy CEO and IPAA chairman Bruce Vincent: “Everybody’s got a shale play now. We need to develop that same level of confidence in the end users.” (Images courtesy of Swift Energy Co.)

"The sooner we all stop calling it unconventional, the better."

Despite his unconventional view on unconventionals, Vincent is a firm proponent of natural gas production in the US. He readily agrees that the gas market has been saturated, and he hopes convincing the public shale gas is here to stay will result in a demand uptick in the form of natural gas vehicles, power generation, LNG exports, etc.

After all, industry naysayers have all but vanished. Now the industry has to work the same magic on the consumers.

"We had CEOs of prominent companies five years ago who weren't involved in the shale plays and didn't think they were working," he said. "Everybody's got a shale play now. We need to develop that same level of confidence in the end users."

That will require change in the way the industry views these end users, he explained. Typically, the oil and gas business produces and sells a commodity, not a specific product. "We don't care who we sell our oil or gas to," he said. "We'll sell it to whoever pays the highest price. As a consequence, we don't have the mentality in our industry to focus on the customer.

"We don't have customer orientation, but maybe we need to have stakeholder orientation."

Bullish on resource plays

Vincent does not let his dissatisfaction with the "u" word keep Swift from being a major participant in some of North America's hottest plays. Its long-term position in South Texas helped it expand rapidly into the Eagle Ford shale play, he said.

Traditionally drilling the Olmos, a tight sand 450 m (1,500 ft) above the Eagle Ford, Swift engineers in the 1990s toyed with the idea of drilling a horizontal well to expose more reservoir. "At the time we couldn't figure out how to stimulate it," he said. "As we watched other companies developing the multistage frac technology, we decided to try it on Olmos. We drilled an Olmos multistage frac before we drilled an Eagle Ford well, and it worked quite handily."

Currently, the company is actively drilling horizontals in both formations.

Its Eagle Ford efforts are successful, but Vincent said Swift suffers from the same logistical challenges as any other company, primarily in terms of availability of equip- ment and people. "It's like building a Model T," he said. "You've got steps along the way, and each one of these steps has component parts. Each of these parts has to be ready at the same time. At some point if you don't have front doors or tires or paint, it shuts the whole line down."

This has caused the company to engage in planning in a time frame that would be unthinkable for a typical exploration company. "Companies with resource plays have this incredible line-of-sight inventory," he said. "It's more predictable, reliable, and dependable than anything we've ever had before. You can plan your business three to five years out so much better.

"We need to take advantage of that, but it's a challenge because many of us aren't used to doing that. We're used to planning as far ahead as the next exploration well."

Politics as usual?

Vincent's two-year stint as chairman of the IPAA ends in November, and he said it has been an interesting ride.

"From the time Obama was elected, it's been the most difficult administration this industry has seen, certainly in my career," he said. "I think it's the most anti-business administration I've ever seen, and certainly the most anti-oil and gas."

He finds this attitude bewildering because of the many benefits the oil and gas industry brings to the country. IPAA commissioned a study of onshore independents and discovered that the entire direct, indirect, and induced ecosystem of the independents generated US $131 billion of federal and state taxes in 2010, a figure that will increase to $189 billion by 2020.

"Why the administration is so opposed to the industry is hard to fathom, especially when you consider how much money the industry contributes to government coffers," he said.

With the lack of a cohesive industry advertising message, organizations like IPAA and the American Petroleum Institute do their best to convey positive messages about the industry. Vincent identified Energy In Depth ( www.energyindepth.org ) as one source for accurate information.

"I liken it to a campaign-style war room," Vincent said. "Every day it tells what's being printed about the industry. It's not just a clipping service. It's taking that information and righting the wrongs. It's educating people about the facts. Ultimately we will win with the facts. But it's a huge educational undertaking."

IPAA is going a step further by educating the writers and reporters who are generating this news. It also is helping its member companies educate communities. "The good part about the bad policy coming out of is that it has mobilized and energized people in this industry who haven't been involved in policy before in their careers," he said. "That's good because we need help from everybody."

He added that service companies have been particularly good at attending town hall meetings and educating local communities about their services.

Hopefully this education process will steer more people to a profession in the energy industry. "We've gone through cycles with people, but it's never been as constrained as it is today," he said. "We've got these people in their 20s and early 30s, and then we've got people in their late 40s, 50s, and 60s. One of the real concerns is that some of the people in their 50s have done well, so many of them decide to go to the ranch. The industry will feel their loss. "We need to entice these people to stay around. We need to figure out new ways to keep them involved and to continue to engage their expertise and experience." Vincent added that, for younger people, there has never been a better time to enter the industry. "The fights we're having over policy and the negativity won't be there forever," he said. "We need to push for policies that advocate the development of 'Americas energy resources. But we need people in this business to make it happen."