Who he is
Paul P. Denney is a petroleum geologist and geophysicist who describes himself as a structural geologist with Chevron geophysics training. For more than 60 years he has worked Oklahoma’s Anadarko, Ardmore, and Arkoma basins—as well as orogenic thrust belts more broadly—for companies including Standard Oil of Texas, Chevron, and Anschutz, and as a consultant for ARCO, Amoco, and Subsurface Consultants & Associates, among others. His resume, as he states it in his formal NorthStar proposal, also includes international geophysics assignments in Canada, Indonesia, Italy, Colombia, Japan, Malaysia, and Australia.
He credits his thrust-belt track record with discoveries and participations such as Ryckman Creek (Wyoming), East Anschutz Ranch East Lobe (Utah), and the Mills Ranch #1 (Davidson Hunton, Wheeler County, Texas)—details he lists in his own proposal materials.
Potato Hills and the Ouachitas
Paul is widely associated with Potato Hills Gas Field in the Ouachita overthrust belt. In brochure and presentation text he states that he worked Potato Hills for GHK from 1997–2007 and, in another deck, that he recommended GHK Potato Hills development wells from 1998–2005. He emphasizes that the field was found with surface and subsurface geology—including opposing dipmeter data in key wells—even when seismic in the area was difficult because of complex surface structure.
He published a technical description of the field in Shale Shaker (Vol. 70, No. 4, 2019): “The Discovery and Geology of the Potato Hills Gas Field.” He has also published a 2023 book on Colorado’s Florence oil field (title as given in his proposal). Project planning notes in this repo add that he earned a 1963 B.S. in Geology, worked Arkoma drilling projects in 1970–1971, and published an OCGS bulletin cross-section in 1971—use those only if Paul has confirmed them for public use.
NorthStar and recent consulting
After his GHK years, Paul describes continuing work on extensions of the Potato Hills idea along the Windingstair Thrust Fault. More recently, his formal proposal states that he consulted for Western Oil and Gas Development, LLC (WOGD) from April 2021 through October 2024, helping with shallow oil redevelopment in the Daisy / Bald area while documenting a long belt of gas potential west toward Potato Hills—work he reported to the company in maps, cross-sections, and weekly updates. He characterizes NorthStar as the culmination of that regional picture: a trend-scale interpretation built from classic surface mapping (notably Hendricks et al., 1947), well control, and limited seismic, offered to industry as a partner-scale opportunity rather than something he can lease or shoot alone.