Keith Winfree is an independent geologist doing business as Cut Plain Geoscience. He retired from the oil industry in 2021 after 37 years of doing oil and gas exploration, development and merger and acquisitions work. He has extensive experience using advanced structural and stratigraphic subsurface mapping skills to generate prospects and plays involving conventional or unconventional reservoirs. He is an expert on the petroleum-producing basins of the US Lower 48 with special emphasis on the Midland, Delaware, Fort Worth, Anadarko, Piceance-Uinta and Powder River Basins. For the last year he has been exploring for helium in the US Midcontinent region. Keith is available for consulting or expert witness work.
Career Summary
ConocoPhillips, Houston TX, 2007-2021
Exploration and acquisition evaluation with emphasis on unconventional plays
- Midland and Delaware Basin Wolfcamp, Bone Spring, Barnett and Woodford play fairway mapping
- Anadarko Basin SCOOP/STACK Woodford, Caney, Sycamore, Meramec, Springer and Granite Wash play fairway mapping
- Gulf Coast Basin Austin Chalk regional geologic mapping
- Gulf Coast Basin Cotton Valley prospect generation
- Fort Worth Basin regional mapping for Barnett acquisition prospects
- Appalachian Basin regional mapping for Marcellus acquisition prospects and data rooms
- Play fairway mapping for multiple reservoirs throughout the Rocky Mountain region with emphasis on the Piceance-Uinta, Greater Green River, Denver and Paradox basins.
Burlington Resources, Midland TX, 1997-2007
Geologic mapping to support acquisition models
- Mapped reserve estimates for several multi-billion-dollar acquisition attempts
- Extensive experience evaluating the Williams Fork tight gas play of the Piceance Basin and the Big George-Wyodak coal-bed methane plays in the Powder River Basin
- Evaluated numerous data rooms for acquisitions for the Barnett of the Fort Worth Basin and multiple Appalachian Basin plays.
Exploration and development prospect generation
- Wolfcamp and Bone Spring of the Delaware Basin
- Anadarko Basin Granite Wash and Atoka
Exxon Company USA, Midland TX, 1983-199
Exploration and development in the Midland Basin and Central Basin Platform
- Development prospect generation for San Andres fields under CO2 floods
- Development prospect generation for the Spraberry play
- Midland Basin exploration prospect generation for San Andres and Wolfcamp plays.
Education
University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.S. Geology, 1983
Lamar University, B.S. Geology, 1981
Publications
- Winfree, K.E., 1983, Depositional Environments of the St. Peter Sandstone of the Upper Midwest: unpub MS, University Wisconsin.
- Winfree, K.E., 1992, Did Laramide compressive stresses fracture the Spraberry Sandstones of the Midland Basin?, in D.H. Mruk and B.C. Curran, eds., Permian Basin Exploration and Production Strategies: Applications of Sequence Stratigraphic and Reservoir Characterization Concepts: West Texas Geological Society Publication 92-91, pp. 121-122.
- Winfree, K.E., 1994, Post-Permian Folding and Fracturing of the Spraberry and San Andres Formations Within the Midland Basin Region of West Texas, in T.M. Laroche and J.J. Viveiros, eds., Structure and Tectonics of the Big Bend and Southern Permian Basin, Texas: West Texas Geological Society Field Trip Guidebook, Publication 94-95, pp. 189-212.
- Winfree, K.E., 1995, Exploration and Development Significance of Post-Permian Folding and Fracturing Within The Permian Basin: West Texas Geological Society Bulletin, v. 35 no. 4, pp. 5-16.
- Winfree, K.E., 1995, Correlation of the San Andres in the Wasson Field, Yoakum County, Texas, to outcrops in the Algerita Escarpment, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico: in M.T. Moussa, ed., The San Andres in Outcrop and Subsurface: Permian Basin Section Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Publication 95-36, pp. 51-62.