Richard Sykes

Richard is a petroleum geochemist who studies organic-rich rocks and petroleum fluids to help exploration companies to find and produce oil and gas resources for New Zealand. Whilst New Zealand still needs oil and gas (for transportation, electricity generation, and methanol production, etc.), it is far better we produce our own rather than be entirely dependent on imports. In 2004, Richard discovered that New Zealand crude oils are derived mostly from fossil leaf cuticle in coal seams, helping to dispel the widely held theory that coals expel only gas. His current research interests involve using the geochemical fingerprints of oils to identify genetic oil families and determine oil maturity, information which helps to reveal the petroleum “plumbing systems” in the subsurface. He is also interested in the use of multivariate statistical analysis to apportion contributions in comingled well streams from different reservoir zones and fields, for improved field management. Richard is the leader of the Petroleum Source Rocks, Fluids, and Plumbing Systems research programme funded by MBIE. He has been a visiting scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada and the GeoForschungsZentrum (Germany) and regularly presents seminars and short-courses at international conferences and directly to exploration companies.