SPE Board Announces Nominees: 2021 President and 2020 Directors

2021 SPE President

Tom Blasingame is a professor and holder of the Robert L. Whiting Professorship in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University. His teaching and research activities focus on petrophysics, reservoir engineering, analysis and interpretation of well performance, exploitation of unconventional reservoirs, and technical mathematics. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the university. As of February 2019, Blasingame has graduated 67 MS (thesis) students, 34 MEng (report, non-thesis) students, and 14 PhD students. He served as assistant department head of graduate programs for the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M from 1997 to 2003 and has been recognized with several teaching and service awards.

Blasingame was named an SPE Distinguished Member in 2000 and is the recipient of numerous SPE honors and awards, including the Distinguished Service Award in 2005, the Lester C. Uren Technical Excellence Award in 2006, the Anthony F. Lucas Technical Leadership Gold Medal (SPE’s pre-eminent technical award) in 2012, the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal in 2013, and the Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty in 2014. He was named an Honorary Member of SPE in 2015. He served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2005 and 2006 and was the SPE Technical Director for Reservoir Description and Dynamics from 2015 to 2018. He has prepared approximately 160 technical articles and chaired numerous technical committees and technical meetings.

Blasingame holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a PhD from Texas A&M, all in petroleum engineering.

2020 SPE Directors

Regional Director Middle East

Qasem Al-Kayoumi is senior vice president technical center in Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s (ADNOC) Upstream Directorate. His work experience includes drilling, reservoir management, reservoir simulation, field development, business planning, field operations, and technology development and deployment.

Al-Kayoumi has been a member of SPE since 1985 and received a Regional Service Award in 2009. He helped establish the SPE Abu Dhabi Section, served as its chairman from 1993 to 1994, and continues to play an active role in section activities. He has also been a member of the program committees of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC), the Middle East Oil and Gas Show (MEOS) in Bahrain, and Middle East Forum Series in Dubai. He served on the organizing committees for SPE advanced technology workshops on modeling and simulation in Beirut in 2004 and on overcoming field development challenges in Abu Dhabi in 2005. He served on the organizing committee for MEOS in 2005, and was the vice chairman of its executive committee in 2006 and the vice chairman of the program committee in 2007. He was also co-chairperson of the International Petroleum Technology Conference technical subcommittee in 2009. He has been a speaker at various SPE and industry conferences on reservoir characterization and modeling, field development, operations, well integrity, and the digital oil field.

Al-Kayoumi holds a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California.

Regional Director North America

Zachary Evans is a senior storage engineer for TransCanada, based in Charleston, West Virginia. His work experience includes multiple underground gas storage development projects in the Appalachian Basin, specializing in reservoir characterization and performance monitoring, well integrity assessment, well test analysis, regulatory compliance, workover prioritization, employee hiring and training, and capital project oversight, and growth and expansion project coordination on the Columbia Gas Pipeline System. Before joining TransCanada, he worked in directional drilling and openhole logging as an MWD/LWD engineer and senior field engineer for Schlumberger in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Australia.

Evans began his involvement with SPE as treasurer of the West Virginia University Student Chapter. He was program chairman of the Appalachian Section from 2010 to 2012 and has served as chairperson of the Appalachian Section since 2012. He served on the SPE Eastern Regional Meeting Technical Program Committee in 2009 and as the meeting’s chairperson in 2014. He will chair the Eastern Regional Meeting again in October 2019.

Evans is a member of the underground storage planning committee of the Southern Gas Association and a former member of its Natural Gas Connect Planning Committee. He chaired the Underground Storage Roundtable in 2013 and 2014 and will chair it again in 2020. He also has been an Appalachian Gas Measurement short course lecturer on underground storage.

Evans holds a bachelor’s degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering from West Virginia University.

Technical Director Drilling

David Reid is chief marketing officer for NOV, where he advises on technology development, direction, and acquisition strategies for the company. He also develops company culture strategies and provides internal consultancy and advice on market trends. He has held field, management, and executive roles at NOV in E&P business and technology, product management, and drilling rig package development. Reid joined Varco International in 1992 and has worked in Scotland, California, and Houston in service, operations, design, business and product development, leadership, and management roles. He has served on the board of directors of the NOV and Schlumberger IntelliServ joint venture since 2009.

Reid has authored numerous industry publications and holds patents for a multifunction, multihole drilling rig and an automated drilling system.

Reid joined SPE in 1996 and has been an active member of the Gulf Coast and Los Angeles Basin sections. He is a former board member of the Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section, was chairperson of the Forum Series in Europe in 2010, and served as forum liaison for SPE’s 2012 Forum Series on next-generation well control.

He also served as vice president of drilling and well services on the International Association of Drilling Contractors Executive Committee from 2008 to 2015.

Reid holds a higher national diploma in construction management and design from Northumbria University.

Technical Director Production & Facilities

Robert Pearson is the technical director and founder of Glynn Resources, a consulting company based in Calgary. He has worked in production operations, completions engineering, and field development planning for onshore, offshore, frontier, and unconventional developments in several geographic regions. Pearson spent 10 years at Shell International prior to moving to Canada with Petro-Canada, now Suncor, as a district production operations supervisor. He cofounded and was subsequently president of APA Petroleum Engineering, which is now part of the RPS Energy Group. He worked for the group in Singapore and Brisbane before returning to Canada in 2015.

Pearson has led and facilitated training in production and completions engineering and integrated subsurface studies for more than 35 years for major operating companies, professional societies, and International Human Resources Development Corp.

He has been an active member of SPE for more than 40 years, and is a member of the Completions Advisory Committee.

Pearson holds a bachelor’s degree in mining engineering from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and trained as a petroleum engineer at the Shell Training Centre in The Hague. He is a registered professional engineer in Alberta.

How SPE Board Members Are Selected SPE is governed by a Board of Directors comprising 24 member representatives from around the world. Each SPE region and board-endorsed technical discipline is represented by a director. These directors, together with one at-large director, a director for academia, the president, president-elect, and immediate past president, constitute the board. Here is a look at the nomination and election processes for board members. Nominating a Candidate The nomination period opens in early October each year and ends on 1 December for the position of president and 15 December for the other open positions. Any SPE member may nominate a candidate for a position on the board. The process involves submitting an online nomination form and supporting documents, such as a curriculum vitae, résumé, and letters of support. The Election Process Candidate nominations submitted online 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. These recommendations are submitted to the SPE Board of Directors for approval at the board’s meeting in March. This year, the meeting was held on 16 March in Cairo, Egypt. Following Board Approval of Nominees SPE members will have the opportunity to review the board-approved nominees’ biographical information in the April issue of JPT and on www.spe.org. Nominees approved by the board 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, the petition must be signed by at least 1% of the region’s membership, and no more than 75% of the petitioners may come from any one section within the given region. A ballot election will be held 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 30 September–2 October in Calgary.