Larry Herd - 2015
CSEG Meritorious Service Award Recipient Larry Herd
Citation by John Boyd
For lengthy support of CSEG and CSEG social committees, and recent executive level contributions to both the CSEG and the CSEG foundation.
I was honoured to have the privilege of writing a citation for a Meritorious Service Award to Larry Herd. We have worked together as business partners, directors and CSEG volunteers since 1981, when Larry became the fourth employee of Boyd Exploration Consultants. This company evolved into Boyd PetroSearch and was acquired by RPS Energy in 2010.
Larry graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1978 and then moved to Calgary and the oil patch. I met him in a period when I was realizing that Boyd Exploration could only evolve into a growing, long -lived company if we brought in young, smart ambitious people. Larry was younger than me, and I suspected, smarter, so I convinced him to give the consulting business a try.
Larry is an outstanding geophysicist, both as an interpreter and as an expert in seismic field operations. In 1986, our company had a call from Potash Corp, enquiring about our geophysical services. The oil business was a bit flat and we were very interested. Larry, Neil Thompson and I talked it over and we decided that Larry should go to Saskatoon but we couldn’t afford an airplane ticket, so he would have to drive. The trip eventually generated a high level of business, from that year to the present day. It also opened up significant business opportunities for the
seismic industry throughout those years. Larry also had an interest in Geomatics and eventually set up a Division of the company called Boyd Geomatics, later Pixxures Canada. He returned to Boyd PetroSearch in 2003 and became president in 2006.
The DoodleSpiel was Larry’s first CSEG activity. He chaired it twice and skipped the winning rink five times. His paper “Seismic Acquisition in the Loess Hills of China won the CSEG Best Paper award in 1985. Larry and I had travelled to this area in China the previous year and he had the bright idea of drilling shot holes in the powdery Loess hills with a hand powered auger. When the Chinese delegation arrived in Calgary to discuss the project, Larry gave them a Canadian Tire ice fishing auger, asked them to duplicate it, with extensions to get the hole deeper, and use these devices for shot hole drilling. They worked beautifully!
He won another Best Paper award in 1989 and presented it at the 1990 SEG Convention in San Francisco. Larry was CSEG Vice president in 2010 and President in 2011. He has been Chair of the CSPG/CSEG Honorary Address, a member of the T-Wave Committee and a Seismic in Motion Volunteer. He was on the CSEG Foundation Board as a representative of the Society and has chaired the Foundation since 2014. As well as his personal contributions, he has always encouraged his staff to volunteer for the CSEG.
The years from 2014 to 2016 have been difficult and challenging for geophysicists and their employees. In Larry’s business career, he has been challenged by the ups and downs of our industry but has always succeeded. In the last two years as Foundation Chairman he has insisted that the Foundation reach out to help its members and that it is not appropriate to cut back on essential services or programs. This is the sort of attitude that will help all of us get our industry back on its feet.
