Tim E. Smith

Dr. Timothy E. Smith (PhD, Ohio State University, 1976, Paleomagnetism and plate tectonics) is currently a senior exploration geophysicist with BHP Billiton Petroleum in Houston, Texas. Prior to his current posting, he taught geophysics and structural geology at Eastern Kentucky and Ohio State Universities (1976-1977). He joined Gulf Oil in late 1977 and worked as an exploration geophysicist in several international assignments, including Tierra del Fuego, the Porcupine Seabight off Ireland, the Niger delta, offshore Brazil, Ras al Khaimah, the Red Sea, the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, and Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia. He left Gulf in 1984 to join Sohio/BP where he worked in the offshore Gulf of Mexico, and was directly involved with the Atlantis, Mad Dog, Shenzi, Neptune, and Thunder Horse discoveries which comprise over 1 billion bbl of recoverable oil. He left BP in 2003 to join Unocal and was involved with the Knotty Head discovery which may be over 250 million bbls of recoverable oil. He left Unocal in 2005 to join BHP Billiton where he currently is the lead geophysicist for a large block of acreage in the offshore northwest Florida shelf in which a well is scheduled in 2012. Since 1992, he has taught over 30 sessions and variations of the seismic interpretation course for the SEG, CSEG, AAPG, the University of Tulsa, and Geoneurale in Germany.