About Us

About The Course History and Presenters

Dick Murphy (1929-2010)

Dick Murphy founded the course in 1985 and was still teaching the course in the year of his death in 2010. He worked in the region for Exxon from 1958-1983 and subsequently worked as a petroleum exploration consultant for both major oil companies and national oil companies around the world.

Ian Longley

Ian Longley attended the course as a student in 1990 and took over as primary teacher of the course in 2004 and taught the course with Dick until 2010. He is a regional petroleum geologist with 30+ years of experience, who has worked for Lasmo, Woodside, Shell and Oil Search in various locations around the planet in junior and executive exploration roles. He has specialised in the plate tectonic evolution, regional petroleum geology, play and prospect analysis and the hunt for new exploration opportunities in the region. He has published extensively on the regional petroleum geology and, after deciding senior management is not for him, is currently enjoying working on his hobbies (now businesses), looking at real geology and not doing budgets or safety reviews, nor attending endless meaningless meetings.

He is joint developer and majority owner of the Player ArcGIS play analysis software (www.gis-pax.com) which is now used by 30+ international E&P exploration companies around the world. He lives in Perth, Australia where he has survived one shark attack and two forms of cancer and is now an average surfer, whose increasing girth and added floatation makes for an even slower ocean swimmer, and an even easier meal for the local sharks. His optimistic nature with regards to risk management strategies is self-evident in both his personal and professional activities, where he believes that life is too short to take political correctness and established exploration paradigms too seriously, and that everyone should enjoy a good laugh every now and then and admit how little we know about many of the basins that we explore in today. He also runs the very industry training course on the Petroleum Geology of the NW Shelf of Australia with Peter Purcell (www.pgsea.com).

Peter Ballie

Peter Ballie, also a regional petroleum geologist, has more experience than he can remember. After a lengthy period in government (various technical roles, including technical aspects of regulation of the petroleum industry), He joined TGS in 1997, commenced work in SE Asia and has since been involved in projects throughout the region. He relocated to Singapore in 2009 and joined CGG in 2012, with whom he continues to work in Perth, Australia. He is a Past President of AAPG Asia Pacific (2011–2014) and of SEAPEX (2012–2016). He is also a Tasmanian.