Joe Dunn Clegg, SPE, died 8 May. He was 95.
Clegg’s 39-year career with Shell Oil Company began with his employment as a petroleum production operations engineer at various locations across the country including Odessa, Midland, and Houston, Texas, as well as Lovington, New Mexico; Billings, Montana; Denver, Colorado; and New Orleans, Louisiana. Throughout his career, Clegg devoted himself to improving the safety of oilfield operations.
He was named an SPE Legend in Artificial Lift in 2014. He was chosen to serve during 1984–1985 as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer on the topic of “Artificial Lift: Producing at Optimal Rates.” He served a second term as a Distinguished Lecturer in 1993–1994, speaking on “High-Volume Artificial Lift.” Additionally, he authored and coauthored three papers on artificial lift in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1988, he received the SPE Production and Operations award.
In 1991, he retired from Shell and began teaching an industry course in production operations at locations around the world, including US, Canada, England, Scotland, Austria, Chile, the Netherlands, Denmark, Angola, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan.
Clegg was chosen to serve as the editor of Volume IV of the seven-volume SPE Production Engineering Handbook in 1999. He spent 6 years coordinating the 909-page volume which included 16 chapters covering all the major aspects of production operations engineering.
An SPE member since 1962, he was a member of the Gulf Coast Section, Forum Steering North America Committee, Computer Applications Committee, Program Coordinating Committee, Well Completions Committee, and Reprint Series Committee. He also served as a PetroWiki moderator and technical editor.
Clegg received several awards throughout his career, including Artificial Lift R&D Council’s Artificial Lift Award (2013) and J.C. Slonneger Award from the Southwest Petroleum Short Course (1989).
He held BA and BS degrees in engineering from Rice Institute.