Christopher Lee Liner

Geology professor, president of the international Society of Exploration Geophysicists, brings things under the ground to light.

NWA Democrat-Gazette/DAVID GOTTSCHALK - 1/16/15 - Christopher Liner, president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (worldwide) and Maurice F. Storm Chair in Petroleum Geology in the Fulbright College at the University of Arkansas, at his home in Fayetteville Friday January 16, 2015.
NWA Democrat-Gazette/DAVID GOTTSCHALK - 1/16/15 - Christopher Liner, president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (worldwide) and Maurice F. Storm Chair in Petroleum Geology in the Fulbright College at the University of Arkansas, at his home in Fayetteville Friday January 16, 2015.

Sit still long enough, and Christopher Liner will attempt to tell you everything he knows.

Though that would be an impossible feat, it would be an enjoyable one to attempt, most who know him would agree. His easygoing manner makes that exchange of information a little more like getting coffee with an old friend than listening to a lecture.

As the Maurice F. Storm endowed professor of geology at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and president of the international Society of Exploration Geophysicists, his simultaneous approachability and desire to explain come together as he leads geophysicists of all experience levels and nationalities.

"He has a way of teaching people, where he takes extremely complicated concepts and breaks them down to where even I can understand them," says Max Parker, an engineer at McKee Foods in Gentry. "He gets it to where it makes sense in such a down-to-earth way. That's why he's such a good teacher."

"That's the beauty of Chris. He takes complicated things and breaks them down."

As head of a society that has 33,000 members in 138 countries, 100 staff members and a $25 million budget, Liner has a lot of people looking to him for guidance.

The geology and geophysics industries can use a leader right now. With oil and gas prices falling to half what they were last summer, the scientists historically so valued by oil companies are finding that exponentially fewer of them are required.

"There are some aspects likely to make his presidency tricky," says Dave Monk, director of global geophysics for Apache Corp. and past president of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. "The oil business is in the toilet, they're laying people off, budgets are changing. Members [of the SEG] are challenged to do a better job, and the society has to do a better job for the same price."

In more than 35 years in the business, Liner has risen to prominence and now uses his expertise to rally individuals and other worldwide organizations to help fellow geophysicists weather the difficult years on the horizon.

"The oil price is down and our society is full of people related to oil and gas exploration, mining, groundwater and environmental," Liner says. "All of those are cyclical businesses subject to severe funding changes. If government regulations change, the funding for big projects can evaporate overnight."

OUT ON THE RIVER

Liner, 58, was born in Tulsa, although he considers Fayetteville his home. He was in high school when he and his parents, two older brothers and a sister made the move. The rolling hills of the Ozarks were a stark contrast to flat, midtown Tulsa.

"In Fayetteville, it was hilly and woody," Liner says. "I'd never seen anything like it. It was like going to Alice in Wonderland or something. I fell in with a wonderful crowd here."

It was the beginning of a love affair with nature, including a childhood filled with hiking and fishing to his boyish heart's content. He made friends on the football and track teams, and though his ties to the sports were temporary, the friends stuck for life.

Parker became more or less a member of Liner's family. He describes his old friend as unwaveringly optimistic.

"He doesn't seem different to me now than [he was in] high school," Parker says. "He has a positive attitude on the world, and to him there are no strangers. He's always inviting people in to his home. He's not just looking for the good side of things. When there's something hard to deal with, he asks 'How do we solve that?' and works through that. He cares for other people."

Liner's early years were spent outdoors, fishing and canoeing. As a professor, he continues to make those trips -- partly for research (he's mapping every significant outcropping of rock over a 4,000-square-mile area from Harrison to Oklahoma) and partly because he loves it.

Over the course of his life, Liner has taken too many of those camping excursions to count but one in particular will never be forgotten.

As a teenager, he and three friends set out to float the Big Piney River in southern Missouri. Recent rains had brought the water to 10 feet high in places that were usually dry, and the fields nearby were so flooded it was difficult to tell where the river channel began and ended.

Against family advice, the four set out and struggled through a day of tipping over, being caught in flood-loosened brush and losing the majority of their food. Being young, invincible men, they tried again the next day rather than turn back, and spent the next 20 hours in conditions that warped the canoes, caught them in whirlpools and left them with only a can of Beanee Weenees to fuel their long hike through the Mark Twain National Forest.

"We walked and walked and walked," Liner says. "We'd see a light, and the road we were following would turn away from the light. It occurred to us that we had actually died on the river and were walking toward lights you never reach."

When they did reach one, it was a small farmhouse, and the tenants helped them contact Liner's father to fetch them.

The experience taught him a respect for the elements.

CONSTRUCTING AN EDUCATION

Chris, the youngest of the three boys, and his brothers worked at their father's construction company, McClinton Anchor, during the summers.

Brother Robert was on the dirt crew, Jeff raked concrete, and Chris shoveled asphalt. Sister Beth worked the desk.

"Being the only girl, they all picked on me, but not Chris," Beth Liner says. "He's funny, and he has a lot of compassion for people, which I find admirable. He's very tolerant with all different people and places."

The summer work would give them each enough money for tuition for the fall semester, then their dad would foot the bill for the spring term.

"After [each] summer of that in Arkansas heat, school looked pretty good," Liner says. "I'm sure my dad knew that ... but you learn a work ethic right there that sticks with you your whole life."

Liner began his studies in entomology so he could spend more time with his buddy Max, who was taking the same classes. When the two wandered out to work on their first insect collection, it was all downhill from there.

They decided to work together, hoping to get a bigger and better collection than the next guy. As Parker lifted a barrel out at the university farm, Liner braced himself to grab whatever was underneath -- barehanded. The huge cockroaches and centipedes lurking there elicited a scream and facilitated a quick change in majors.

Both of Liner's brothers were in geology, so he went to their adviser, Walter Manger, for a little guidance.

"I came into his office and he said, 'OK, what do you like?' Well, math, physics. 'You like math and physics, and you want to major in geology? Darn boy, you're a geophysicist!' Manger filled out the paper, stamped it, and it's been that way ever since."

It was true that Liner enjoyed those subjects. As a teenager he'd read plenty on the history of mathematics for fun, but he hadn't really taken any classes in either math or physics in high school.

"My first impression of Chris was that he was sharp but somewhat adrift," Manger says. "Once he became a geologist, geophysicist, he became very focused."

The first time Liner took calculus, he failed. But once he found the right professor, he flew through calculus 1, 2 and 3, and other advanced math courses that weren't even required for his major. He read ahead in class and was a bit of a dichotomy: a budding math expert who couldn't pronounce the names of concepts that he could easily explain.

"He would do math problems for recreation," Manger says. "I was housed in Old Main at the time, and I could always tell he'd been there as the classroom green boards would be filled with equations.

"His ability at math is legendary. When combined with geology, we knew he'd have a great career."

Liner graduated with a degree in geology from UA in 1978 and completed a master's in geophysics at the University of Tulsa in 1980. In defending his thesis, he left no room for error. The time between it and his arrival to London -- for an assignment as a research geophysicist for Western Geophysical -- was roughly a day.

AROUND THE WORLD IN 30 LECTURES

When Liner entered the business in 1980, it was high times for the oil and gas industries, but that didn't last long. The very next year brought a major oil crash.

He needed a job that would be unshakable.

Liner saw two options. He could move to the oil company that Western Geophysical was contracted to, Saudi Aramco, which would almost certainly send him to Saudi Arabia, or he could return home and work for Conoco.

With the next oil crash, in 1986, Liner left Conoco to pursue a doctorate at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. The caliber of students and professors alike pushed him, and working for the Center for Wave Phenomenon set him up for a career with unlimited potential. Teaching, research and exploration geophysics were all at his fingertips, and he dug into them all.

But he returned to academia after only a couple of years, and spent 15 years as a professor at the University of Tulsa while he and his first wife, Janet, raised their two children, David and Samantha. Tulsa became home, and it meant a lot to Liner, who had fond memories of his alma mater.

By 2004, it occurred to him that his skill set could use some sharpening. His marriage had dissolved, so he accepted an opportunity to became a part of an elite group of 12 research geophysicists for Saudi Aramco.

In a country that has approximately 25 percent of the world's oil reserve, Liner got up to speed on his industrial research and his knowledge of life in the Middle East. He enjoyed working with other world-class researchers and scientists.

Liner also took the chance to embark on an international romance. Given that they lived approximately 7,500 miles apart, he asked Dolores Proubasta to meet him in the middle. The two met up in Madrid after many years of friendship through the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and Liner unexpectedly proposed.

They were sitting on a restaurant patio as nearby buses caused parasols to crash down on the guests. It was at this point that Liner got on one knee and revealed a ring. Whatever he said was covered up by the roar of traffic and the waiter asking if they wanted more potatoes.

"It was totally unexpected," Proubasta says. "If we ever happened to be in the same place, yes, we would go out, and that was it ... as far as I knew he was going to be in Saudi Arabia 10 years."

Before the visit ended Proubasta said "yes." After a whirlwind wedding in Tulsa, they completed Liner's Middle Eastern stint and returned to the states by way of Houston.

While serving as acting chairman for the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Houston, Liner continued to gain status in the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. He has been editor of the journal Geophysics and author of the "Seismos" column for The Leading Edge, the society's research journal, and a popular blog of the same title.

He also was introduced to many of the key players of the society.

"My impressions of him were the same as everyone who worked [at SEG]," Proubasta says. "We welcomed any time that he came. It was exciting because he always had something to say to everybody and would always be smiling, positive and interesting.

"If he said he was going to do something for any department, he did."

In 2012, Liner's service to the society came full circle when he was selected to lecture in 30 cities across 20 countries. His time as an industry consultant in Indonesia, Iraq, Oman and Tunisia and his well-traveled position as instructor for the society had prepared him well for the task.

When he returned to the states, he came home to Fayetteville, where he's been working on the third edition of his book, Elements of 3D Seismology, and helping students gain prestigious placements and international recognition.

"This is a difficult time but not a crisis. This is what we do. We work in oil and gas in some of the most dangerous places in the world and difficult financial environments ...," he says. "As I travel the world as president of the SEG, I'm really an advocate for the University of Arkansas, an ambassador there into the world."

April Robertson can be reached by email at [email protected].

High Profile on 01/25/2015

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