About Us

Strata-Search geologists have decades of experience in the petroleum industry. Our experience base ranges from North America, Central America, and South America, to Africa, Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Australia, and Southeast Asia. We have helped develop a high-resolution sequence stratigraphic framework for some of the world’s most prolific reservoirs (Arab-D carbonates and Thamama Group) in supergiant oil fields (Ghawar, Abqaiq, Zakum fields). In addition, we have conducted investigations into the high-resolution sequence stratigraphy of:

• Giant reservoirs in Jurassic alluvial-fan/estuary and Cretaceous deltaic and incised valley facies of the Western Siberia basin, Russia
• Miocene fluvial/deltaic and lacustrine exploration targets in Malaysia
• Cretaceous carbonate stratigraphy in the United Arab Emirates
• Cretaceous carbonate and siliciclastic strata in the U.S. Gulf Coast
• Carboniferous turbidites in the Arkoma Basin, USA
• Cretaceous shoreface, fluvial, and incised valley fill deposits, Colombia, South America
• Jurassic desert alluvial and shoreface reservoirs in southern Alabama

For more information, please contact our office by telephone at 828-736-8033 or e-mail.

Dr. C. Robertson Handford is founder and president of Strata-Search, LLC. Dr. Handford received his Ph.D. in geology from Louisiana State University in 1976. Since then he has spent most of his professional career in petroleum industry research chiefly within the field of sedimentology and stratigraphy. He has worked for the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology, and the research laboratories of Unocal, Amoco, and Arco. In addition, he taught geology at the University of Arkansas for two years. Although his primary interest is in sequence stratigraphy and its application to hydrocarbon exploration and production, Dr. Handford has conducted research and published papers on the sedimentology and stratigraphy of carbonates, evaporites, mixed clastic-carbonate systems, fluvial to deep-marine siliciclastics, and karst processes and facies. His experience base ranges from North America, Central America, and South America, to Africa, Europe, Eurasia, the Middle East, Australia, and Southeast Asia. He recently teamed with Saudi Aramco geologists to develop a high-resolution sequence stratigraphic framework for the Jurassic Arab-D carbonates in the world’s largest field (Ghawar Field) and the surrounding area. In 2004 he began a high-resolution stratigraphic analysis of the Simsima reservoir in Abu Dhabi and in 2006 he has led the sequence stratigraphic analysis of Jurassic and Cretaceous clastic reservoirs in the western Siberia basin, Russia.

An invited lecturer to numerous geological societies and universities, Dr. Handford was selected as AAPG Distinguished Lecturer for 1995-96 on carbonate stratigraphy. He has received the SEPM Excellence of Oral Presentation Award on two different occasions, the SEPM Excellence of Poster Presentation Award, second runner-up for the AAPG Jules Braunstein Memorial Award, and SEPM Excellence of Presentation Honorable Mention. He also received Honorable Mention for Best Paper published in SEPM's Journal of Sedimentary Research in 1995. Dr. Handford is a member of the AAPG, SEPM, IAS, and NSS.