Among the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ (SPE) more than 124,000 professional and student members are those whose outstanding contributions to SPE and the petroleum industry merit special distinction. Each year, SPE confers its highest honors and awards upon such exceptional professionals. Recipients of the 2014 SPE international awards will be recognized at the Annual Reception and Banquet held Tuesday 28 October, and SPE Distinguished Members will be honored at the President’s Luncheon, Wednesday 29 October. Both events occur during the 2014 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Honorary Membership
Honorary Membership is conferred on individuals for outstanding service to SPE and/or in recognition of distinguished scientific or engineering achievement in fields encompassed in SPE’s technical scope. Honorary Membership is the highest honor SPE confers upon an individual and is limited to 0.1% of SPE’s total membership.
Adam T. Bourgoyne, Jr. is president at Bourgoyne Enterprises and Bourgoyne Engineering, both located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He started his career working during the summers of 1963 through 1968 as an intern at Mobil Oil Company, Texaco, Chevron Oil Research Laboratory, and Continental Oil Research Laboratory. He was hired as a senior systems engineer with Continental Oil Company starting in 1969 and, after joining Louisiana State University’s College of Engineering in 1971, later went on to become the college’s dean. He also served as director of the LSU Petroleum Engineering Research and Technology Transfer Laboratory from 1987 to 1990.
Bourgoyne received the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Educators in 1981 and served on the SPE Board of Directors from 1984 to 1987. In 1986 he wrote the first SPE textbook on drilling engineering, Applied Drilling Engineering. The book is still a popular title today and Bourgoyne has chosen to donate the royalties to the SPE Foundation to keep the price low. He received the SPE Drilling Engineering Award in 1989 and became a Distinguished Member in 1990. Bourgoyne served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer (DL) during 1997–98, delivering the presentation “Well Control Aspects of Underbalanced Drilling.” In 2006 he was inducted into the LSU College of Engineering Hall of Distinction, and in 2013 was made an SPE Legion of Honor member. He has BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering from LSU and a PhD in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
Ali H. Dogru is a Saudi Aramco Fellow at Saudi Aramco, based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Dogru has made contributions in the fields of reservoir simulation technology, multiphase flow technology, and uncertainty analysis for reservoir performance prediction. He started his career at Core Labs in Dallas, Texas, in 1979, where he studied in situ combustion, steam flooding, and field application of pulse testing. He also helped develop a chemical flood simulator for Japan National Oil Company and studied field simulation of gas condensate reservoirs in Argentina and gas-injection fields in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, and Egypt. In 1982, Dogru worked for Mobil R&D Company, also in Dallas. He then moved to Mobil Oil Saudi Arabia and worked alongside Saudi Aramco, in Dhahran, as a consultant before joining the company full time in 1996 as general supervisor, technology development.
Dogru received the SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award in 2008 and the SPE John Franklin Carll Award in 2012. He holds an MS in petroleum engineering from the Technical University of Istanbul and a PhD in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, with a minor in applied mathematics.
S.M. Farouq Ali is a consultant at H.O.R. Heavy Oil Recovery Technologies in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Encana Chair and honorary professor at University of Calgary. Prior to this, he served at the U. of Alberta, and at the Pennsylvania State University, for 40 years as professor of petroleum engineering. He has conducted more than 350 oil and gas reservoir studies and designed more than 30 major oilfield projects over the course of his career. Farouq Ali has done extensive research on micellar-polymer flooding in enhanced oil recovery, first testing and developing its usage in the 1960s while working with Marathon Oil. He also did pioneering work on integrated simulation—a practice by which fluid flow equations are solved together with stress-strain equations to predict rock stresses and subsurface subsidence. The first study on this approach was published in the SPE Journal in 1972. Many of his students extended this work to steam injection. Since 1965, he has taught 1-week, intensive short courses to industry professionals around the world on topics such as thermal oil recovery, numerical reservoir simulation, enhanced oil recovery, horizontal wells, carbon dioxide flooding, and miscible displacement.
Farouq Ali received a Distinguished Achievement Award in 1991, the Lester C. Uren Award in 1996, and Distinguished Membership and the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal in 2007. He has a BEng in electrical and mechanical engineering from Karachi University, Pakistan; a BS in petroleum production engineering from the University of Birmingham; and MS and PhD degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Pennsylvania State University.
Thomas K. Perkins is retired from a 37-year position as research advisor at the Atlantic Refining Company (ARCO). He began his career teaching courses in chemical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in 1955, before accepting a research engineer position at ARCO in 1957, where he worked until retiring in 1994. Distinguished research advisor—a title he accepted in 1985—was the highest internal title attainable at ARCO. Perkins is known for his work in hydraulic fracturing, miscible displacement, and drilling operations in permafrost. He has authored 26 peer-reviewed SPE papers and is the inventor or co-inventor of 35 patents. Perkins is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Perkins is a recipient of the SPE Lester C. Uren Award, the SPE John Franklin Carll Award, the SPE Legend of Hydraulic Fracturing Award, and the Tulsa Section SPE Improved Oil Recovery Pioneer Award. He served as a DL during 1977–78, is an SPE Distinguished Member, and an SPE Legion of Honor Member. He holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University, and a PhD in chemical engineering from University of Texas.
Albert C. Reynolds Jr. has taught at Tulsa University (TU) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, since 1970 and is currently serving as the McMan Chair in petroleum engineering. He is a professor of mathematics and, since 1990, has been director of TU’s Petroleum Reservoir Exploration Projects (TUPREP)—an industry consortium dedicated to fundamental and applied research on reservoir simulation, reservoir characterization, and well testing. Reynolds has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical papers and two books, primarily on well testing and the application of inverse theory and optimization to data integration, and of uncertainty quantification to reservoir characterization and history matching.
Reynolds received an SPE Distinguished Achievement Award in 1983, SPE Distinguished Membership in 1999, an SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award in 2003, an SPE Formation Evaluation Award in 2005, and the SPE John Franklin Carll Award in 2013. Currently, he is an associate editor for SPE Journal and an associate editor and member of the editorial board of Computational Geosciences. Reynolds holds a BA from the University of New Hampshire, an MS from Case Institute of Technology, and a PhD from Case Western Reserve University—all in mathematics.
Mary F. Wheeler has been a professor at The University of Texas at Austin since 1995, as a member of the petroleum and geosystems engineering, aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics, and mathematics departments. Since 1995, Wheeler has occupied the Ernest and Virginia Cockrell Chair in Engineering. Before coming to UT, she taught mathematics at Rice University in Houston from 1971 to 1995, leaving as the Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics. Wheeler also served as the MD Anderson Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston from 1988 to 1990 and has been an affiliated senior scientist there from 1990 to the present.
Wheeler is a member of the SPE Large Scale Computing and Big Data Challenges in Reservoir Simulation committee. She has contributed to the reservoir modeling field for nearly 50 years as an applied mathematician and computer specialist, particularly in fine element discretization of flow equations in petroleum reservoirs. Wheeler holds a BS in social sciences, a BA in mathematics and computer science, and an MS in mathematics from The University of Texas at Austin. She has a PhD in mathematics from Rice University.
Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award
This award recognizes contributions to SPE and the E&P industry that exhibit such exceptional devotion of time, effort, thought, and action as to set them apart from other contributions.
Maria das Graças Silva Foster, chief executive officer at Petróleo Brasileiro (Petrobras) since February 2012, started her career at Petrobras as an intern in 1978. She was hired as a chemical engineer in 1981. From January 2003 to September 2005, she was Secretary of Petroleum, Natural Gas and Renewable Fuels of the Ministry of Mines and Energy. During this period, she also held, by way of presidential decrees, the functions of interministerial coordinator of the federal government’s biodiesel production and use program, and national executive secretary of the federal government’s national oil and gas sector mobilization program–Prominp. For the third consecutive year, she has been selected by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s 100 most powerful women. She holds a BS in chemical engineering from Fluminense Federal University and an MS in chemical engineering and postgraduate degree in nuclear engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She also holds an MBA in economics from the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
John Franklin Carll Award
The John Franklin Carll Award recognizes distinguished contribution in the application of engineering principles to petroleum development and recovery.
A. Daniel Hill is a professor as well as head of the Texas A&M University Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering in College Station, Texas. He began his career in 1978 as a research engineer at Marathon Oil Denver Research Center in Littleton, Colorado. In 1982 he became an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin. Hill has contributed to the theory and practice of matrix acidizing and diversion, in particular sandstone and carbonate acidizing, acid fracture conductivity, gel damage effects in tight gas hydraulic fracturing, and fracture conductivity of deepwater frac-packs. He also helped create the Middle East Carbonate Stimulation Research Program, which includes industry partners such as Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil, and Qatar Petroleum.
Hill received SPE Distinguished Membership in 1999 and the SPE Production and Operations Award in 2008. He has served as a technical editor for SPE Production and Operations Journal, Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, and Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology. Hill has been instrumental in shaping the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference, where he served as its first chairman in 2007 and general chairman in 2009 and 2011. He has written three books and coauthored two book chapters in the areas of petroleum logging and acid stimulation. Hill has a BS in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University and MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Texas.
Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal
The Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal, established in 1936, recognizes achievement in improving the technique and practice of finding and producing petroleum.
Marvin Gearhart has been president and chief executive officer (CEO) at the Gearhart Companies in Fort Worth, Texas, since 2005. Previously, he was president and CEO of Rock Bit International, a drill bit firm Gearhart started in 1990, which he eventually sold. The bulk of Gearhart’s career was spent as president and CEO of Gearhart Owens, a company he founded in 1955. Gearhart-Owens specialized in logging, as well as manufacturing and selling logging trucks, logging tools, and perforation charges to independent businesses. The company employed 12,000 people when it was bought by Halliburton in 1988.
Gearhart was responsible for many innovations in measurement while drilling and logging while drilling, including developing an improved mud-pulse telemetry system. In 1982, he introduced one of the first digital logging systems. Gearhart served as a Distinguished Lecturer during 1981–82; his presentation was titled “Measurements While Drilling.” In 1999, he received the SPE Legion of Honor Award. He is a trustee emeritus at Texas Christian University. Gearhart holds a BS in engineering with a petroleum option from Kansas State University.
Lester C. Uren Award
The Lester C. Uren Award recognizes distinguished achievement in the technology of petroleum engineering.
Birol Dindoruk is a reservoir engineering advisor and principal technical expert of reservoir engineering at Shell in Houston, Texas. He also teaches in-house courses at Shell Open University. Dindoruk started his career as a Shell intern during the summers of 1983 and 1982 in Ankara, Turkey. He spent the next few years as a research and teaching assistant at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, then at Stanford University. From 1992 to 1995 Dindoruk worked on research involving phase behavior, reinfiltration, and drainage in fractured porous media at the Reservoir Engineering Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. Dindoruk did research at the Amoco Tulsa Technology Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and at the Amoco Exploration and Production Technology group in Houston, Texas, between 1995 and 1997. In 1999 he became an adjunct faculty member of the University of Houston in the petroleum engineering department and joined Shell as a global consultant on pressure/volume/temperature (PVT) and enhanced oil recovery.
Dindoruk was awarded the SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Medal in 1994. He served on the organizing committees for SPE’s Low Carbon Intensity Processes for Low-Mobility Oil Recovery workshop in held in August 2014 and the Complex Reservoir Fluids III workshop held in September 2014. He holds a BS in petroleum engineering from the Technical University of Istanbul in Turkey; an MS in petroleum engineering from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; a PhD in petroleum engineering from Stanford University; and an MBA from the University of Houston.
Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold Medal
The Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold Medal recognizes distinguished achievement in mining administration, including metallurgy and petroleum.
Andrew Gould, interim executive chairman at BG Group in Reading, Berkshire, UK, started his career at Ernst & Young before going to work for Schlumberger, where he held various positions, eventually progressing to chairman and CEO in 2003. Between 2003 and 2010, while Gould was chairman, revenue at Schlumberger increased from USD 14 billion to USD 37 billion, despite the effects of the global market crisis during 2008–09. During his tenure, Schlumberger opened research and development centers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—in addition to adding training centers in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and Tyumen, Russia.
In 2004, Gould, along with the Schlumberger board, oversaw the launching of Faculty for the Future: a foundation that awards fellowships to women from developing and emerging economies so they can pursue PhD or postdoctoral studies in the physical sciences, engineering, and technology. Gould has participated as a committee member for many SPE and industry events, including serving as chair of the 2008 ATCE Executive Advisory Committee and chair of the 2005 Offshore Europe Executive Committee. Gould earned a BA in economic history from the University of Wales at Cardiff and an honorary PhD in engineering from Colorado School of Mines.
DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal
The DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal recognizes distinguished and outstanding service to SPE, to the professions of engineering and/or geology, and to the petroleum industry.
Syed A. Ali is a technical advisor at Schlumberger Technology Corporation in Sugar Land, Texas. He began his career in 1976 as a project geologist at Gulf Research and Development Company in Houston, and went on to hold various positions at Chevron starting in 1981, where he stayed until arriving at Schlumberger in 2007. Ali is recognized by the industry as an expert in formation damage control, sandstone acidizing, and production chemistry. He has authored approximately 150 technical papers.
Ali received the SPE Production and Operations Award in 2006, the Distinguished Service Award in 2012, and Distinguished Membership in 2013. Serving as a DL during 2004–05, his presentation was titled “Fluid Selection for Deepwater Completions—New Frontiers Bring New Fluid Related Challenges.” In 2009 he played an instrumental role, working with James Pappas, in establishing the SPE International Production and Operations Conference. He also helped establish the SPE Deepwater Drilling and Completions Conference in 2010 and was co-chair of the 2014 conference, held in September. He currently chairs the JPT Editorial Committee. Ali earned BS and MS degrees in geology from the University of Karachi in Pakistan, an MS in geology from Ohio State University, and a PhD in geology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty
This award recognizes superior teaching, excellence in research, significant contributions to the petroleum engineering profession, and/or special effectiveness in advising and guiding students.
Thomas A. Blasingame has been a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M University since 1991 and is currently the holder of the Robert L. Whiting Professorship. He served as a graduate assistant to the department from 1984 to 1989, and a research associate there from 1989 to 1990. He has consulted for more than 30 industry clients worldwide, including ExxonMobil, Saudi Aramco, and Repsol. Blasingame has made contributions to research in applied reservoir engineering, including integration of formation evaluation data, core, well log, and reservoir performance data; new material balance methods; correlations for rock and hydrocarbon fluid properties; and analytical solutions for modeling the flow of single- and multi-phase fluids in porous media.
He received SPE Distinguished Membership in 2000, the Distinguished Service Award in 2005, the Lester C. Uren Award in 2006, the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal in 2012, and the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal in 2013. He also served as a DL during 2005–06. Blasingame is program chair for the 2015 SPE Unconventional Resources Conference and Exhibition and a member of the SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Advisory Committee. He holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering—all from Texas A&M University.
Public Service Award
The SPE Public Service Award recognizes distinguished public service to a country, state, community, or the public through excellence in leadership, service, or humanitarianism, provided the service is above the requirements of employment and is therefore not a compensated activity. Recipients of this award automatically become Distinguished Members.
D. Nathan Meehan is a senior executive advisor at Baker Hughes in Houston, Texas. Between August 2011 and February 2013 Meehan took a sabbatical to coordinate his church’s humanitarian activities in Asia. He trained volunteers and administered millions of dollars’ worth of humanitarian projects, including the provision of clean water and sanitation, medical services, and emergency relief. Two of the many projects that Meehan was personally involved with included construction of facilities in Malaysia and Indonesia that captured fresh water from mountain sources for use in local communities, and arranging the purchase of materials, volunteer instruction, and subsequent distribution of hygiene kits for typhoon victims in the Philippines. Meehan has held senior positions with Computer Modelling Group, Pinnacle Technologies, RSK, and CMG Reservoir Simulation Foundation. He received Distinguished Membership in 1997, the Lester C. Uren Award in 1999, and the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal in 2006. He holds a BS in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MS in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD in petroleum engineering from Stanford University.
Distinguished Service Award
The SPE Distinguished Service Award recognizes contributions to the society that exhibit such exceptional devotion of time, effort, thought, and action as to set them apart from other contributions. Recipients of this award automatically become Distinguished Members.
Kamel Bennaceur has served as Tunisia’s minister of industry, energy, and mines since January 2014. Formerly he was with Schlumberger, serving as vice president of technology from 2011 to 2014 and chief economist from 2009 to 2011. Bennaceur has also served the International Energy Agency and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in various roles, on secondment from Schlumberger. He received Distinguished Membership in 2008 and served as a board member for the SPE 2013 Unconventional Resources Canada Conference and the Production and Operations Advisory Committee. He holds a BS in mathematics from the University of Paris VII; a degree in engineering and aggregation mathematics from École Polytechnique, Paris; and a degree in applied mathematics and process control from École Normale Supérieure, Paris.
Marco Brignoli is a technical leader in geomechanics at Eni E&P in San Donato Milanese, Italy. He started his career at Eni in 1986 as a rock mechanics technician. He has held various positions at Eni, including drilling and completions laboratories engineer, cement and rock mechanics engineer, and team leader of the geomechanics laboratory. Brignoli has volunteered his time and expertise at SPE regional and sectional levels to improve the quality of section programs and national and international events. He is scholarship director for his section and is working with the University of Turin to set up the first SPE scholarship in Italy for undergraduate petroleum engineering students. Brignoli is a member of the Drilling and Completions Advisory Committee and the Technical Communities Coordinating Committee, and is a PetroWiki moderator. He received the Regional Completions Optimization Award in 2009 and SPE Distinguished Membership in 2013. Brignoli holds a degree in physics from the University of Milan.
Helen L. Chang is a senior staff reservoir engineer at Nexen Energy ULC (a CNOOC Limited company) in Alberta, Canada, and is responsible for shale gas reserves within the North American Gas and Tight Oil Division, which includes the Horn River, Eagle Ford, and Niobrara plays. Chang has been with Nexen since 2008 and previously worked for several operators, including Talisman Energy, BP Canada, and Shell Canada. Chang served on the SPE Board of Directors for the Rocky Mountain North America Region from 2008 to 2009 and the Canada Region in 2010. She was director of the SPE Canada Section Run for the Future Half Marathon, which raised CAD 50,000 for the section’s scholarship fund over 4 years, earning the section its first award (2014 Most Innovative Section). She received the SPE Young Member Outstanding Service Award in 2002 and a Regional Service Award in 2005. She is an SPE Century Club member. Chang has BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering from the University of Alberta.
Willem M. Schulte is founder and chief reservoir engineer at Schulte Oil and Gas International Consultancy (SOGIC)—based in Heemstede, Netherlands—which he formed in 2010. SOGIC specializes in improved oil recovery (IOR), field development, portfolio strategies, mentoring of managers in optimized plans, and providing training in recovery methodologies. Prior to founding SOGIC, Schulte held various positions at Shell over a 36-year period, including value assurance review team leader and program manager for Shell E&P’s R&D program on IOR. Schulte has also served as a visiting lecturer at Delft University of Technology for more than 10 years and has been an active lecturer on topics related to IOR, speaking at dozens of conferences and events around the world. He has served as chair of EAGE’s European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery. Schulte holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in physics from the University of Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Cedric K. Ferguson Medal and Certificate
The SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Medal recognizes professional achievement in petroleum engineering. The medal is presented for the paper written by an SPE member age 35 or under at the time the paper was peer approved. Coauthors of the selected paper who are age 36 or over and who are SPE members receive the Cedric K. Ferguson Certificate. The paper being recognized is “CO2 Injection in Vertical and Horizontal Cores: Measurements and Numerical Simulation,” published in the April 2013 issue of SPE Journal.
Joachim Moortgat (medal) has been an assistant professor at Ohio State University’s School of Earth Sciences in Columbus, Ohio, since 2013. He specializes in numerical modeling of complex, naturally fractured porous subsurface media using high-order finite element methods. Before teaching at Ohio State University, Moortgat spent nearly 5 years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Reservoir Engineering Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, where he worked on computer simulations of compositional multiphase flow in water, gas, and oil reservoirs with applications in carbon sequestration and enhanced oil recovery. He started his academic career in 2006 doing postdoctoral research at the astrophysics department of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. Moortgat has BS and MS degrees in theoretical physics and astrophysics from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and a PhD in astrophysics from University of Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Zhidong Li (certificate) has been an engineering specialist with ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company in The Woodlands, Texas, since 2012. Previously, he was a research analyst at the Reservoir Engineering Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, where he researched thermodynamic modeling and computation. He earned a PhD in chemical engineering from 2002 to 2007 at University of California, Riverside. His research consisted of development and application of density functional theory to build connections among molecular interactions in homogeneous fluid structures, thermodynamic properties, phase transitions, and interfacial phenomena for complex fluids including colloids, polymers, electrolytes, polyelectrolytes, proteins, and DNA. Zhidong also holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.
Abbas Firoozabadi (certificate) is director of the Reservoir Engineering Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, and a faculty member at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. His main research interests are in bulk-phase, irreversible, and interfacial thermodynamics, and the physics and mathematics of hydrocarbon reservoirs and production. Firoozabadi’s other work includes asphaltene and hydrate flow assurance, shale gas, low-salinity water injection, improved oil recovery, fractured reservoirs, and high-order reservoir simulation. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Firoozabadi received the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal in 2002, the SPE John Franklin Carll Award in 2004, and Honorary Membership in 2009. He has a BS degree from the Abadan Institute of Technology, Abadan, Iran, and MS and PhD degrees from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois—all in gas engineering.
Completions Optimization and Technology Award
Jennifer L. Miskimins is a senior consulting engineer at Barree & Associates in Lakewood, Colorado, where she specializes in stimulation techniques. She started her career at Marathon Oil in 1990 as a production engineer, going on to serve in various positions until she left in 1998 to pursue further education at Colorado School of Mines (CSM). While working on postbaccalaureate studies at CSM she helped teach courses and consulted for companies in the area. Miskimins started as a faculty member at CSM in 2002, quickly achieving tenure due to her research and publication background. Though she left full-time teaching for her current position in 2012, Miskimins is still a part-time faculty member at CSM. She served twice as a DL (during 2010–11 and during 2013–14) speaking on hydraulic fracturing and unconventional reservoirs and is a member of the SPE Production and Operations Committee. Miskimins earned a BS in petroleum engineering from Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology, and MS and PhD degrees from Colorado School of Mines.
Drilling Engineering Award
Rolv Rommetveit is managing director for eDrilling Solutions in Sandnes, Norway. He began his petroleum career in 1983 in Rogaland Research (now IRIS) and rose to become its senior vice president, petroleum in 2000. He joined SINTEF Petroleum Research in 2003 as a research director. Rommetveit has extensive experience in technology development in the fields of well control, drilling hydraulics, managed pressure drilling, and drilling process automation. He is author or coauthor of more than 75 technical papers and has written the chapter “Well Control Modeling” for the SPE textbook Advanced Drilling and Well Technology. Rommetveit has been a member of several committees for SPE conferences, forums, and workshops, and is currently a member of the program committee for the SPE/IADC Drilling Conference. He has an MS in physics from Norwegian Institute of Technology, Trondheim, and a PhD in applied mathematics from University of Bergen.
Formation Evaluation Award
Paul F. Worthington is principal at Park Royd P&P (England) Limited. He started his career in 1973 as a chief research officer at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa. In 1978, Worthington went to work for Howard Humphreys and Partners in Reading, UK, where he specialized in hydrogeology and geoscience of fluid flow in carbonates. He moved to BP in 1980 as a senior research associate and progressed to head of formation evaluation, before leaving in 1992 to work as an independent consultant with a focus on the geophysical aspects of integrated reservoir studies. Worthington joined Gaffney, Cline and Associates in 1994 and remained there until 2013, serving as a technical director, working in the UK and Singapore. He wrote a chapter on specialized well logging topics for the SPE Petroleum Engineering Handbook (2007) and has published more than 90 peer-reviewed papers. Worthington served as a DL during 1985–86 and during 2001–02, and was 2001–02 chair of the SPE Well Logging Committee. In 2011 Worthington won an SPE Regional Management and Information Award. He holds a BS in mathematics from the University of Hull; an MS in geophysics from the University of Durham; a PhD in engineering geophysics and a DEng in geoengineering studies from the University of Birmingham; and a DSc from University of Pretoria, South Africa.
Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility Award
Angelo Madera has been Eni’s regional vice president of HSE and initiatives for communities and territory in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2011. He is responsible for coordination of social investment in all Sub-Saharan African communities where Eni operates. Madera started his career in 1985 as an industrial physician, practicing in several countries—including Tanzania, Iran, and Libya—and contributed to the implementation and management of health systems for the employees and host communities. From 1999 to 2007 he served as medical director of Eni E&P’s International Medical Service. In 2008, Madera received the SPE Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility Award for the South, Central, and East Europe Region. He has a degree in medicine from the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, Italy, with a focus on infectious diseases.
Management and Information Award
Saeed M. Al-Mubarak is the intelligent field team leader at Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Al-Mubarak started at Saudi Aramco in 1992 as a reservoir engineer and has held nearly a dozen other roles, including field production engineer, drilling and workover engineer, and reservoir management supervisor. In 2009, he won a Regional SPE Management and Information Award and served as a DL during 2009–10, with a presentation on real-time reservoir data acquisition. Al-Mubarak was a member of the organizing committee for the 2012 SPE applied technology workshop Intelligent Fields: Making Them Happen and is a member of the 2014 Multi-phase Flow Metering Challenges and Technology Development workshop committee. He is also a member of the SPE Digital Energy Technical Section board. Al-Mubarak holds a BS in chemical engineering and an MS in petroleum engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.
Production and Operations Award
Robert P. Sutton is founder and consultant at Robert P. Sutton Consulting. He started his career at Marathon Oil in 1978, in Lafayette, Louisiana, and has worked in the operations, reservoir, and budget control departments. Sutton’s contributions to the industry have been in helping develop an increased awareness of problems relating to well performance, particularly in the case of liquid loading in gas wells. He has worked on improvements in PVT calculations to improve the accuracy of multi-phase flow pressure-drop measurement. Sutton served as a DL during 2012–13; his presentation was titled “Improving Well Performance: A New Look at Critical Flow Velocity in Complex Completions.” Sutton authored a chapter on black oil PVT correlations for the 2007 edition of the SPE Petroleum Engineering Handbook and a chapter in the industry textbook Gas Well Deliquification. He has a BS in petroleum engineering from Marietta College and an MS in petroleum engineering from the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
Projects, Facilities, and Construction Award
Gene E. Kouba is a research consultant at Chevron Energy Technology Company in Houston, Texas. He started his career in 1976 as a research associate at the University of Tulsa Solar Energy Research Laboratory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. From 1979 to 1988, Kouba worked as a researcher at University of Tulsa in various capacities, doing studies primarily on multi-phase flow, particularly slug flow. In 1986 he became an adjunct faculty member at University of Tulsa, where he developed and taught a new course on microcomputer-based data acquisition. Kouba then became involved with research at University of Tulsa Fluid Flow Projects where he worked until 1988, when he was hired by Chevron as a petroleum engineer. He has remained at Chevron performing research to the present day. Kouba has authored or coauthored more than 60 technical papers and 6 patent applications on multiphase flow and gas-liquid technology. Kouba has BS and MS degrees from Oklahoma State University and a PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Tulsa.
Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award
Faruk Civan has been a professor at the University of Oklahoma since 1983, currently occupying the Martin G. Miller Chair at the university’s Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering. He began his career teaching as an assistant professor at the Technical University of Istanbul in Turkey from 1971 to 1973 and from 1978 to 1980. Civan has made research and development contributions in carbon sequestration; unconventional gas reservoirs; reservoir and well hydraulics; multi-phase transport phenomena in porous media; oilfield pollution control; and mathematical modeling and simulation. He has published more than 275 technical articles and has authored two textbooks: Porous Media Transport Phenomena and Reservoir Formation Damage—Fundamentals, Modeling, Assessment, and Mitigation. Civan received the SPE Distinguished Achievement for Petroleum Engineering Faculty Award in 2003. He holds BS and ME degrees in engineering from the Technical University of Istanbul, an MS in chemical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
Young Member Outstanding Service Award
The Young Member Outstanding Service Award recognizes contributions to and leadership in the public and community arenas, as well as SPE, the profession, and the industry, by a member under age 36.
Ghaithan A. Al-Muntasheri is a team leader for production technology at Saudi Aramco in Houston, Texas, where he started as a research engineer in 2004. From 2001 to 2004 Al-Muntasheri worked at Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, as a research scientist. Serving as 2011–12 chairman of the SPE Saudi Arabia Section (SPE SAS) and chairman of the 2011 SPE SAS Annual Technical Symposium and Exhibition, he increased the number of active members by 1,000 and increased the number of submitted abstracts by 131%. In 2011, Al-Muntasheri won the SPE Outstanding Young Member for his region. He has published 34 papers and filed two patents (one granted). Al-Muntasheri holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. He also holds a PhD in petroleum engineering from Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands.
Matthew T. Balhoff teaches as an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin. He started his career in 1998 as a researcher at Albemarle in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, followed by a summer internship with Chevron and by two summer internships with Schlumberger. In 2005 he became a postdoctoral fellow at UT’s Institute of Computational and Engineering Sciences. In 2012, Balhoff was selected as an Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Centennial Fellow in petroleum engineering. The same year he also received the SPE International Teaching Fellow Award. Balhoff has expertise in reservoir engineering and simulation, pore-scale modeling, and enhanced oil recovery. He is a member of the SPE Faculty Innovative Teaching Award Committee. Balhoff has BS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from Louisiana State University with minors in business administration, chemistry, and mathematics.
Manish K. Choudhary has worked as a reservoir engineer at Shell, based in Bangalore, India, since 2007. He has served as an active member of both the India and Bangalore sections. As treasurer of the Bangalore Section, he improved bookkeeping and communication of section finances to the membership. Choudhary has led many young professional activities in Bangalore, including SPE quiz contests, organization of DL visits, and visits to student chapters. He has also judged the SPE Regional Student Paper Presentation Contest in the undergraduate division. He currently serves as membership chair of the Bangalore Section and recruited almost 90 new SPE professional members last year. Choudhary led organizing committees to deliver a young professional workshop in at the NAICE conference in Nigeria, and education day events at the 2013 Middle East Oil and Gas Show in Bahrain; the 2008 SPE Indian Oil and Gas Technical Conference and Exhibition; and the 2012 OGIC Conference. He has a BS in petroleum engineering from the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, India, and an MS in petroleum engineering from Stanford University.
Siddhartha Gupta is a senior petroleum engineer at Schlumberger in Houston, Texas. He started with Schlumberger in 2006 as a production engineer in Mumbai, India. In 2009 Gupta interned at Shell with a focus on drilling engineering and served as a teaching assistant at The University of Texas at Austin. He rejoined Schlumberger in 2010. From 2011 to 2013, he was a member of the SPE Gulf Coast Section Young Professionals Board and served as the young professional chair of the Digital Energy Technical Section starting in 2013. Gupta has published SPE papers on rig automation and artificial lift. He has a BS in petroleum engineering from the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India, and an MS in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
Ning Liu is currently a reservoir engineer with Tengizchevroil (Chevron) in Atyrau, Kazakhstan. She started her career in 2002 as a summer intern at Schlumberger’s, Rosharon, Texas, reservoir completions center and the following summer as an intern with Anadarko Petroleum in The Woodlands, Texas. Since 2005 Liu has held various reservoir engineering and stimulation positions with Chevron, working on the Agbami field, offshore Nigeria; new field development, offshore Angola; water injection and history matching projects in Kuwait; and IOR operations in Kazakhstan. She is a committee member for the 2014 Caspian Region SPE Technical Conference and Exhibition and an SPE Journal technical editor. She received an SPE Outstanding Associate Editor Award in 2009. Liu holds a BS degree from the University of Petroleum in China, an MS degree from the University of Tulsa, and a PhD from the University of Oklahoma—all in petroleum engineering.
Amber A. Sturrock is a subsea umbilical engineer with Chevron in Houston, Texas. Sturrock started her career with internships at the US Minerals Management Service, Unocal, and Pure Resources, during the summers of 2002 through 2004. In 2005, she went to work for ExxonMobil as a subsurface engineer on the company’s offshore team, specializing in well completions. Sturrock also worked as a subsurface engineer in the Piceance basin, and subsea pipeline engineer on the Equatorial Guinea operations team. She left for Chevron in 2013, and now specializes in umbilicals and flexible pipe. Sturrock has served as an editor on SPE’s The Way Ahead Editorial Committee since 2013 and has been a member of the Offshore Technology Conference’s “The Next Wave” steering committee since 2010. She is also a member of the Women’s Energy Network and was co-chair of the SPE Gulf Coast Section Roughneck Camp from 2008 to 2009. Sturrock has a BS in petroleum engineering from Louisiana State University.
Rossiter W. Raymond Memorial Award
This American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) award recognizes the best single- or dual-authored, peer-reviewed paper published during the past 4 years, where the lead author is an AIME society member under the age of 35. The award was established in 1945 by Frederick Roeser to commemorate the life of Rossiter W. Raymond, who was a founder of AIME.
The paper being recognized is “Multiscale Gas Transport in Shales With Local Kerogen Heterogeneities,” which was published in the December 2012 issue of SPE Journal.
Ebrahim Fathi has been an assistant professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at West Virginia University since 2012. Before joining WVU, he completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oklahoma. Fathi has authored several peer-reviewed journal papers and has researched flow simulators for unconventional reservoirs, simulation-based history-matching and optimization efforts, and computational fluid dynamics. Fathi received an SPE Outstanding Technical Editor Award in 2013. He holds a BS in mining engineering and an MS in petroleum engineering from Tehran University and a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma.
I. Yucel Akkutlu is an associate professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University. Akkutlu began his academic career at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, in 2004, teaching reservoir engineering classes focusing on reservoir simulation and enhanced oil recovery techniques. In 2007, he moved to the University of Oklahoma and played an active role in the development of shale gas research. Akkutlu joined Texas A&M’s Department of Petroleum Engineering in 2013. He is the current executive editor of SPE Journal and has been a technical editor for a variety of scientific journals. He is serving as a DL during 2014–15. Akkutlu has a BS in chemical engineering from Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey; and an MS in chemical engineering and PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California.
Distinguished Members
SPE Distinguished Membership recognizes SPE members whose achievements and/or service to the society are deemed worthy of special recognition. SPE members become Distinguished Members when they are elected by the SPE Board of Directors, or once they become a past president of SPE or the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers; an SPE Honorary Member; a recipient of the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal, John Franklin Carll Award, Lester C. Uren Award, DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal, Public Service Award, or Distinguished Service Award.
Usman Ahmed, Baker Hughes
Michael Brulé, IBM
David B. Burnett, Texas A&M University
Robert C. Burton, ConocoPhillips
Maria A. Capello, Kuwait Oil Company
Helen L. Chang, Nexen Energy ULC
Abhijit Y. Dandekar, University of Alaska-Fairbanks
Mojdeh Delshad, University of Texas at Austin
Birol Dindoruk, Shell E&P
Ali Dogru, Saudi Aramco
Marvin Gearhart, Gearheart Companies
Karen D. Hagedorn, ExxonMobil
Delores J. Hinkle, Marathon
He Liu, Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development (CNPC)
Jane A. Moring, XTO Energy
Karen E. Olson, Southwestern Energy
Mary C. O’Neill, Shell
Mustafa Onur, Istanbul Technical University
David S. Schechter, Texas A&M University
Willem M. Schulte, Schulte Oil and Gas International Consultancy
Kamy Sepehrnoori, University of Texas at Austin
Thomas R. Sifferman, ETTP Consulting
Xiuli Wang, Baker Hughes
C. Dean Wehunt, Chevron
Mary F. Wheeler, University of Texas at Austin