SPE Board Announces Nominees: 2017 President and 2016 Directors

Janeen Judah is the nominee for 2017 SPE President and nine other members have been proposed as candidates to fill vacancies on the 2016 SPE Board of Directors.

March 31, 2015

Journal of Petroleum Technology

Janeen Judah has been nominated for 2017 SPE President, and nine other members were nominated to fill vacancies on the 2016 SPE Board of Directors.

The SPE Nominating Committee considers all nominations submitted, and votes on a slate of Directors to recommend for Board approval at the Board’s March meeting. These nominees stand as elected unless a valid petition for ballot election is received by 1 June. See the following page for more details on the nomination process.

2017 SPE President

Janeen Judah is the general manager of Chevron’s Southern Africa business. Previously, she served as president of the Chevron Environmental Management Company and general manager of reservoir and production engineering at Chevron Energy Technology Company.

Judah joined Texaco in 1998 as a senior petroleum engineer in the international production group and had advanced to senior production adviser when the company merged with Chevron in 2002. Before Texaco, she worked in oil and gas consulting, legal practice, and spent 11 years at Arco Oil and Gas Company in engineering and legal positions.

Judah has been recognized for her university support and advocacy for women engineers by the Texas A&M University’s Petroleum Engineering Department, Texas A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering, and the Society of Women Engineers. She serves on the advisory boards of all three organizations.

Judah was an SPE student chapter officer and has served in many leadership roles, including chair of both the Permian Basin and Gulf Coast sections, two terms on the international SPE Board of Directors, regional director of Gulf Coast North America, and currently as the Board’s vice president of finance. She earned an SPE Distinguished Service Award and is an SPE Distinguished Member.

She holds BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University, an MBA from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, and a JD from the University of Houston Law Center.

How SPE Board Members Are Nominated

Any member may nominate a candidate for a position on the SPE Board of Directors.

Nominating a Candidate

The nomination period opens in September each year and ends on 1 December for the position of president and 15 December for other open Board positions.

The process involves filling out an online nomination form and sending supporting documents that include a curriculum vitae, résumé, and letters of support.

The Board of Directors

SPE is governed by a Board of Directors composed of 28 member representatives from around the world. Each SPE region and Board-endorsed technical specialty is represented by a director. These directors, together with two at-large directors, the president, president-elect, immediate past president, and vice president of finance, constitute the Board.

The Election Process

Candidate nominations submitted using the online process are reviewed by the SPE Nominating Committee. Chaired by the immediate past president, the committee meets in January to make recommendations for the available positions.

The Nominating Committee’s recommendations are submitted to the Board of Directors for approval at the Board’s meeting in March. This year, the meeting was held on 7 March in Muscat, Oman.

Following Board Approval

SPE members will have the opportunity to review the Board-approved nominees from biographical information in the April issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology and on www.spe.org.

The SPE Constitution provides for the nominees to stand as elected unless SPE members nominate additional candidates by 1 June. Additional nominations require a petition from at least 1% of SPE membership; for regional director nominations, 1% of the region’s membership (with no more than 75% of the petitioners from any one section). The Constitution also specifies provisions for a ballot election if any qualified petitions are received by 1 June.

The Board Takes Office

If the Board slate is elected, the person nominated as president would take office as president-elect at the close of the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition.

This year, the conference will be held on 28–30 September in Houston.

Vice President of Finance

Roland Moreau, who retired from 34 years of service at ExxonMobil, spent much of his career in management, leadership, and technical positions in the production, development, research, and refining business sectors. Before joining ExxonMobil in 1981 as a project engineer at its Bayway Refinery in Linden, New Jersey, he worked for 5 years in nuclear areas of the naval industry.

Moreau served as the Health, Safety, Security, Environment & Social Responsibility (HSSE-SR) technical director for the SPE Board from 2011 to 2014. He remains active on various SPE initiatives in the HSSE-SR area and serves as chairman of the HSE Now editorial advisory committee.

He earned a BS in mechanical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA in finance from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Regional Director, Africa

Adeyemi Akinlawon is a director and a consultant petroleum economist at Adeb Konsult in Lagos, Nigeria. He retired from Chevron Nigeria in June 2014.

Akinlawon has experience in oil and gas field development planning, economic analysis, project evaluation, negotiation of gas commercial agreements, new business development, and project management of integrated field development.

He is a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers and is a registered petroleum engineer with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria. He served as chairman of the Lagos Section in 2002 and chairman of the Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition in 2010. Akinlawon received an SPE Regional Service Award in 2006.

He holds a BS (first class honors) in petroleum engineering from the University of Ibadan, an MBA from the University of Lagos, and an MS in oil and gas engineering from Robert Gordon University.

Regional Director, Gulf Coast North America

Roger Hite is the founder and principal of Houston-based Inwood Solutions, which provides consulting services in petroleum engineering, project management, and enhanced oil recovery. Previously, he worked for Shell Oil in numerous roles, serving as engineering manager, manager of production technology, and director of production research. Since leaving Shell, he has worked for Blackhorse Energy, a small operator in southern Louisiana, in addition to Inwood.

Hite has worked closely with the Gulf Coast Section for a number of years, including as chairman in 2006–2007. He helped guide the SPE Digital Energy Conference and Exhibition from its formation and served as co-chair in 2008. Since then, he has helped organize and chair several workshops on digital energy topics in Houston and Brazil. Hite has published several SPE papers on management topics, both in enhanced oil recovery and digital energy.

Hite holds a BS in chemical engineering from Tulane University and MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from Princeton University. He also spent a year as a NATO post-doctoral fellow in Munich, Germany.

Regional Director, Middle East

Abla al Riyami is the in-country value director at Petroleum Development Oman (PDO). This position was created last year to increase the procurement of local goods and services, improve the capacity and capability of Omani people and businesses, and support local community companies.

Before this position, Riyami held a number of managerial positions at PDO, most recently as gas director. Early in her career, she worked for Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij and Shell International in the Netherlands. She joined PDO in 1981.

Riyami has served in executive and chairperson roles at international conferences such as the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, the International Petroleum Technology Conference, and Gas Arabia. She is the founder and chairwoman of HAWA, which was established in 2007 as a professional networking and development group for women working at PDO.

She holds a BS in physics from American University in Cairo and an MBA from Hull University.

Regional Director, Northern Asia Pacific

Phongsthorn Thavisin is the executive vice president of PTT Exploration and Production’s (PTTEP) technology and sustainability development group in Bangkok, Thailand. He started his career as a facility engineer at PTTEP in 1989.

Before his current position, he managed operations at the Bongkot gas field and served as project director of Bongkot South gas field development, both of which are offshore Thailand. His areas of technical expertise include engineering, construction, and operations. He has also served as executive vice president of PTTEP’s development and engineering group, overseeing both greenfield and brownfield projects.

Thavisin has served on various conference committees in the Asia Pacific region. He is a member of the SPE Century Club and received the Regional Award for Health, Safety, Security, Environment and Social Responsibility in 2008.

He holds a BS degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Regional Director, Rocky Mountain North America

Erin McEvers is the president of Clearbrook Consulting in Evergreen, Colorado. She is a reservoir engineering consultant on reserve evaluations, economic analysis, field development planning, and unconventional reservoir assessment. She has held reservoir engineering positions with Tom Brown, Encana, Cimarex, and Antero Resources.

McEvers has served in multiple positions on the Denver Section Board of Directors and is currently the chairwoman. She has also served on the SPE Distinguished Lecturer committee.

She holds a BS in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.

Regional Director, Western North America

Andrei S. Popa is the technology adviser and head of Chevron’s artificial intelligence and machine learning team. Since 2009, he has also served as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, where he has taught applied reservoir engineering and natural gas engineering. He has spent most of his career at Chevron, joining the company in 2002 and serving in technical and managerial roles.

Popa has more than 18 years of experience applying artificial intelligence technologies to complex optimization problems in the energy industry. He has published more than two dozen papers on the subject and is the coauthor of the book, Artificial Intelligence & Data Mining Applications in the E&P Industry.

Popa served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer from 2013 to 2014 and received the 2006 Western North American Regional Young Member Outstanding Service Award, the 2011 Regional Management and Information Award, and the 2013 Regional Service Award.

He is an active member on many SPE committees, including the Petroleum Data Driven Analytics Taskforce Committee and the 2015 ATCE Program Committee.

Popa earned a BS from the University of Ploiesti, Romania, and MS and PhD degrees from West Virginia University, all in petroleum and natural gas engineering.

Technical Director, Production and Operations

Jennifer L. Miskimins is a senior consulting engineer at Barree & Associates in Lakewood, Colorado, where she specializes in completions, stimulation, hydraulic fracturing, and production issues. She teaches a variety of short courses on these topics.

Before joining Barree, she was an associate professor in Colorado School of Mines’ petroleum engineering department, where she taught classes in completions, stimulation, petroleum economics, and multidisciplinary integration. Before that, she worked for Marathon Oil as a production engineer and production supervisor.

Miskimins received an SPE Completions Optimization Technology Award in 2014 and was a Distinguished Lecturer in 2010–2011 and again in 2013–2014, speaking both times on the topic of hydraulic fracturing in unconventional reservoirs. She served as executive editor of SPE Production & Operations Journal from 2008 to 2011 and has served on the Production & Operations Advisory Committee since 2010.

She holds a BS from the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology and MS and PhD degrees from Colorado School of Mines, all in petroleum engineering.

Technical Director, Reservoir Description and Dynamics

Tom Blasingame is a professor at Texas A&M University’s Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering and holder of the Robert L. Whiting Professorship.

He has made numerous contributions to petroleum literature in well test analysis, production data analysis, reservoir management, evaluation of low and ultra-low permeability reservoirs, and general reservoir engineering.

He is a recipient of the SPE Lester C. Uren Award, the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Award, and the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal, in addition to Distinguished Achievement and Distinguished Service awards. He is an SPE Distinguished Member and is the program chairman of the 2015 SPE Unconventional Resources Conference and Exhibition committee.

Blasingame holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees from Texas A&M University, all in petroleum engineering.