With the A Peer Apart award, SPE recognizes those dedicated individuals involved in the review of 100 or more papers for SPE’s peer-reviewed journals.
Peer review is an essential part of scientific publishing and helps to ensure the information contained in a journal is well supported and clearly articulated. Volunteers who commit their time to review papers make substantial contributions to the technical excellence of our industry’s literature. Each year SPE typically has more than 1,400 individual reviewers submitting more than 3,500 reviews for SPE’s various journals. These committed volunteers come from a variety of backgrounds, including academia, service and operator companies, and consultancies from around the world.
Peer review is a demanding and time-consuming task. Over time, the individuals receiving this honor have volunteered hundreds of hours to the Society, making SPE journals a valuable resource to authors and the industry. It is an outstanding accomplishment for those who reach the milestone of reviewing 100 papers.
This year, six individuals join this elite group, bringing the total membership of A Peer Apart honorees to 167 dedicated members.
Please join us in congratulating the 2018 honorees.
Williams Chirinos is president of Inexertus, Inc., an international project-management consulting firm that provides software applications, training, and consulting services. He has more than 20 years of project-management accomplishments in planning and execution of complex projects in the oil and gas industry and engineering, procurement, and construction management environments. Chirinos obtained his industrial engineering degree in Venezuela and holds an MSc degree in petroleum engineering from The University of Tulsa. He is a Project Management Professional credential holder and an active Project Management Institute member since 2006. Chirinos serves as an associate editor for SPE Production & Operations.
Yildiray Cinar is a petroleum engineering specialist with Saudi Aramco, having previously held positions at the University of New South Wales and Stanford University. His areas of specialization are special core analysis, reservoir engineering, CO2 sequestration, and gas-injection enhanced oil recovery. Cinar has authored or coauthored more than 150 technical papers. He holds BS and MS degrees from Istanbul Technical University and a PhD degree from Clausthal Technical University, all in petroleum engineering. Cinar is a 2012 SPE Teaching Fellow and a recipient of the 2012 SPE Asia Pacific Regional Distinguished Achievement Award. He served on the editorial board of SPE Journal as an associate editor and has been serving on the SPE Reservoir Description & Dynamics Advisory Committee.
Reza Fassihi has more than 37 years of experience in research, development, and field application of reservoir management. After having held several positions within BP, Amoco, and Arco, he is currently working for BHP Petroleum in Houston as a distinguished advisor responsible for assurance on global subsurface projects, transferring new technologies, and IOR applications. Fassihi is coauthor of the SPE Monograph Low-Energy Processes for Unconventional-Oil Recovery and has authored or coauthored more than 40 publications, covering topics that include rock and fluid characterization, reservoir description and dynamics, management of challenging reservoirs, primary production, waterflooding, and enhanced oil recovery. He holds a BS degree in general engineering from Abadan Institute of Technology in Iran, and MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering and petroleum engineering, respectively, from Stanford University. Fassihi joined SPE as a student in 1977, and was awarded with best paper in the 1981 Student Paper Contest in the PhD division and at the 1988 CIM Meeting. Since then, he has been a member or chair of six SPE Forums and two SPE Applied Technology Workshops; a member of the technical committee for the SPE/DOE IOR Symposium in Tulsa since 1988; a current SPE liaison for different forums; a member of the SPE Reservoir Description & Dynamics Advisory Committee, the SPE Management & IT Advisory Committee, the SPE Forum Series Implementation Committee—West Hemisphere, and the SPE Editorial Review Committee; and an associate editor for SPE Journal. Fassihi is a recipient of the 2018 SPE IOR Pioneer Award, the 2016 SPE Outstanding Technical Editor award, served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer during the 2003–04 season, and will be recognized as an SPE Distinguished Member at this year’s SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Dallas.
Seung Ihl Kam is the Donald W. and Gayle A. Keller Distinguished Professor in the Craft and Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering at Louisiana State University. His research interests cover multiphase flow in porous media and pipes; complex fluid systems with phase thermodynamics; and capillary/interfacial phenomena that have applications in improved/enhanced oil recovery, drilling/production operations, unconventional resources development, subsea flow assurance, and subsurface remediation. Kam has authored or coauthored approximately 50 papers in refereed journals and has presented more than 70 presentations in scholarly meetings. He holds BS and MS degrees in energy resources engineering from Seoul National University and a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Kam currently serves SPE as an associate editor for SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering and as an organizing committee member for the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. He is also a member of the American Association of Drilling Engineers.
Sunil Kokal is a principal professional and a focus area champion of enhanced oil recovery in the Reservoir Engineering Technology Team of EXPEC Advanced Research Center at Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Since joining Aramco in 1993, he has been involved in applied research projects on enhanced/improved oil recovery, reservoir fluids, hydrocarbon phase behavior, crude-oil emulsions, and production-related challenges. Currently, Kokal is leading a group of scientists, engineers, and technicians to develop a program for CO2 enhanced oil recovery and to conduct appropriate studies and field-demonstration projects. Before joining Saudi Aramco, he worked at the Petroleum Recovery Institute, Calgary, and is a registered professional engineer. Kokal has authored or coauthored more than 150 technical papers. He holds a BS degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India, and a PhD degree in chemical engineering from the University of Calgary. Kokal is a member of SPE and the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta. He has served as an associate editor for SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering and Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering. Kokal is a recipient of the 2018 SPE IOR Pioneer Award, the SPE A Peer Apart Award, the 2012 SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal, the 2011 SPE Distinguished Service Award, the 2010 SPE Regional Technical Award for Reservoir Description & Dynamics, and the 2008 SPE Distinguished Member Award for his services to the Society. He served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer during the 2007–08 season, and became an SPE Honorary Member in 2016.
Vijay Shrivastava is the coordinator of compositional simulation development at Computer Modelling Group (CMG). He has been with CMG since 2003 and has been instrumental in development of key features and work flows that include unconventional resource exploitation, coupled fluid flow and geomechanics, integrated surface network and reservoir flow simulation, and CO2 sequestration modeling. Previously, Shrivastava worked with ONGC of India as a senior reservoir simulation engineer, and has had reservoir-simulation assignments with major international companies across Asia and Latin America. His research interests include diffusion and dispersion in porous media, nonlinear solver convergence, miscible flows, stability and runtime, and high-performance computing. Shrivastava holds a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from the Indian School of Mines, and a master’s degree and PhD degree in chemical and petroleum engineering from the University of Calgary. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the province of Alberta, Canada. Shrivastava has served as an associate editor for SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering since 2009, and as a technical reviewer for SPE journals since 2007. He has been a member of the SPE Unconventional Resources Conference Technical Program Committee since 2013, has served on the SPE Forum on Carbon Capture and Storage Technical Committee, and is currently serving on the 2019 SPE Reservoir Simulation Conference Technical Program Committee. Shrivastava was a recipient of the 2008 and 2016 Outstanding Technical Editor award and the 2011 Outstanding Associate Editor award, all for SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering. He was honored as an SPE Distinguished Member in 2016.