Dr. Bill Heins in a classic professorial pose
Ammonite Managing Partner Skip Hobbs is very pleased to announce that William A Heins has joined Ammonite as a Senior Exploration Advisor, a position he held when he retired from ExxonMobil this summer. Bill in a licensed New York Professional Geologist with 35 years of experience in geoscience, finance, and strategy, especially as they intersect in global unconventional and frontier hydrocarbon exploration.
As a former consultant (1985-1993) with the Strategic Management Group (SMG) of Philadelphia (now part of BTS), as a former geology professor at Vassar College and Lewis-Clark State College (1993-2001), and as a researcher and explorer at ExxonMobil for 18 years, Bill has concentrated on the quantitative, probabilistic, description of complex systems in order to predict and risk outcomes. Today he uses this approach to value individual prospects or properties and to evaluate investment portfolios of properties or exploration portfolios of prospects for maximum expected returns.
At ExxonMobil Bill helped risk the chance of Oil vs. Gas in prospects offshore Nigeria using genetic analysis and interpretive geophysics; collaborated to develop and patent the Sand Generation and Evolution Model, unique in the petroleum industry for predicting sand character in undrilled locations; and explored worldwide for unconventional hydrocarbons from the Bakken and Eagle Ford of the US, to opportunities across Europe, to frontier plays in South America and the Caucasus. Bill’s ExxonMobil career included postings to the UK and Germany from 2008 to 2013. Following his retirement from Exxon in 2019 as a Senior Exploration Advisor, Bill moved from Houston to New York City.
Bill Heins is a frequent keynote speaker on sediment genetics and play-element prediction at international scientific meetings, and an instructor in reservoir-quality courses for industry and academia.
He received undergraduate degrees in Geology and Finance from the College of Arts and Sciences, and from the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar. He obtained a doctorate in Geology from UCLA. Heins was a Fulbright Scholar at Eotvos University in Hungary in 1992. He communicates effectively in English (mother language), German (grandmother language), Hungarian (mother-in-law language), and Chinese (mother of all languages). The Chinese is a byproduct of several detours to the mainland and Taiwan during grad school, which included stints as translation editor at Acta Seismologica Sinica (English-language version of 地震學報) and Acta Geophysica Sinica (English-language version of 地球物理學報), and writer for the late-night China Central Television English newscast. Bill is a 2-time Jeopardy! champion, but do not, under any circumstance, ask him about Broadway stars of the 1950s.
Skip Hobbs and Francois Auzerais look forward to having our new “neighbor” Bill join us at our monthly lunches at interesting restaurants somewhere in Fairfield County, Connecticut to discuss global geoscience matters.