Dr. Jim Hickey is a consultant to the energy industry (since 1982). Jim was employed by Arco for 18 years where he worked on research and operational problems centering on sandstone diagenesis, reservoir quality, depositional facies and stratigraphy. His consulting specialties are the petrography and sedimentology of clastic reservoirs, with considerable experience in tight gas sandstones and gas shales. He is particularly interested in the description and prediction of reservoir quality at all scales, in both exploration and development settings. He has a B.S in Geology from the California Institute of Technology and a Ph. D. in Geology from U.C. Santa Barbara.