Mike McMurtry developed an early interest in geology when his father took a job on a diamond mine in East Africa in the 1960’s. His interest deepened when attending a UK boarding school, where weekend visits to local quarries and road outcrops were not only allowed, but encouraged.  There was little doubt that he would become a geologist. He acquired a B.Sc. in Geology & Environment at Oxford Polytechnic (aka Oxford Brookes), followed by a Ph.D. at St Andrews University, studying Lower Paleozoic rocks in the south of Scotland.

He was offered a position in the British Geological Survey, only to find it withdrawn when Mrs. Thatcher became Prime Minister and froze all Civil Service appointments. Instead, he joined Texaco and worked in the North Sea and Angola. He resigned on getting married and took up with a small company (International Energy Development Corporation), who wanted to aid “developing countries” by exploring for and developing their oil & gas. IEDC shareholders included the World Bank, Volvo and various Middle East organizations. One by one, the shareholders slipped away until IEDC became a wholly owned subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC). The subsidiary (KUFPEC) looked for oil & gas anywhere but Kuwait, primarily in Africa and Asia.

He spent over twenty years with KUFPEC in Kuwait (including being trapped there for 5 months under Iraqi occupation in 1990).  Leaving Kuwait in 2010, he set up his own consultancy and has worked for multiple clients including OMV, Hunt Oil & Schlumberger.

McMurtry was fortunate to begin his career before computer automation kicked-in, thus acquiring an understanding of the complexity of the natural world. He developed a natural skepticism that these could be solved through simple programs and algorithms. Upstream oil & gas is an industry where predictions must be made on partial or incomplete data, then tested (usually by the drill-bit), before the process repeats itself. Multiple hypotheses and an open mind are more important than identifying one solution that “fits the data”, as data continuously updates and changes.

Recently, to his annoyance, the burgeoning Green movement (and its increasing politicisation) attacked the fossil fuel industry. This encouraged him to investigate their claims that CO2 was heating the planet. He realized that what was being done in the name of climate science was not science at all – only what-if modeling (altering only one variable from many). Geological history (especially “deep time”), solar system studies and oceanic phenomena were not even considered. More recently, the 21^st century corruption of professional institutions to “consensus science”, led to his resigning from most professional bodies that he had belonged to for over 40 years. He considers “consensus science” to be an oxymoron.