2026 SPE President
Jennifer L. Miskimins is a professor and the department head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines (Mines), where she holds the F.H. Mick Merelli/Coterra Energy Distinguished Department Head Chair.
She has over 30 years of experience in the petroleum industry, starting with Marathon Oil Company as a production engineer. Miskimins began teaching at Mines in 2002 and has held various appointments since then. From 2013–2015, she held a part-time appointment at Mines while working at Barree & Associates. In 2016, she returned full-time to the university.
Miskimins served as the first Completions Technical Director on the SPE International Board of Directors. She was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2010–2011 and 2013–2014. She was awarded the 2014 SPE Completions Optimization and Technology Award, and in 2022, she received the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty.
Miskimins has served on a variety of conference organizing committees, including chairing the 2023 and 2024 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Conference and Exhibition, and as a technical editor for SPE journals, including serving as the executive editor of Production & Operations for 3 years. She was the editor in chief for the 2019 SPE Monograph update “Hydraulic Fracturing: Fundamentals and Advancements.” Miskimins has served on the AIME Board of Trustees since 2018 as an SPE trustee and was the 2022 AIME president.
Miskimins holds a BS from the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology and MS and PhD degrees from the Colorado School of Mines, all in petroleum engineering.
2025 SPE Directors
Africa Regional Director
Riverson Oppong is an oil and gas business analyst with 15 years of global experience across the oil and gas value chain. He is the commercial manager in charge of economic modeling, risk management, and policy planning (ERP) at Ghana National Gas Company and holds the position of director of the SPE Ghana Section, after serving as a section chair from August 2022 to September 2023.
With lifetime membership status, his dedication to SPE spans decades, during which he has contributed to various SPE international committees, including Business and Leadership Committee, Awards Committee, ATCE Program Committee, and served as a judge for SPE’s Student Paper Contest since 2016.
Oppong was recognized by Gurus and Prospects magazine as one of the “Top 10 Energy Thought Leaders in Africa and Diaspora.” He received the 2023 SPE Africa Regional Management Award, 2022 SPE Africa Regional Distinguished Service Award, the 2022 Ghana Communication Technology University/Coventry University Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2020 Presidential Millennium Excellence Award, Oil and Gas. He has authored and coauthored many SPE technical papers, and articles published widely in a variety of publications.
Oppong holds a PhD in international oil and gas management with a focus on finance and economics; diploma in earth geoscience; a master’s degree in petroleum engineering; a bachelor’s degree in materials engineering; and a diploma in project management.
Asia Pacific Regional Director
Koji Yamamoto serves as a senior vice president of the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security. In this role, he leads the organization’s technological efforts in the energy sector, encompassing oil, gas, carbon capture and storage, and low-carbon fuels. Throughout his career, he has been extensively involved in petroleum geomechanics projects, played a key role in developing a hydraulic fracturing simulator, and conducted borehole stability analyses for various oil fields in Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania. He also served as a leader in field operations for Japan’s national gas hydrate research and development project. He teaches technical topics at Kyoto University and Kyushu University.
Yamamoto holds a PhD from Tohoku University in engineering, where his research focused on acoustic scattering in poroelastic media.
Completions Technical Director
Margaretha “Peggy” Rijken is the chapter manager, geomechanics, at the Chevron Technology Center, Houston. Rijken has 23 years of experience in geomechanics and completions and manages an organization of subject-matter experts supporting development and application of well, completions, and reservoir geomechanical technologies that are integral to exploration, appraisal, development, and abandonment activities.
She has authored and coauthored more than 50 papers and holds multiple patents.
Rijken has an extensive SPE volunteer history including serving as the 2022 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technical Section Chair and chairing the SPE Completions Optimization and Technology Awards Subcommittee. She was the 2019 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition Program Committee Chair.
She is the recipient of the 2019 SPE Distinguished Membership Award and was also the recipient of The University of Texas Distinguished Alumni of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Award in 2015.
She holds a PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in petroleum engineering and an MSc from Delft University of Technology in Mining and Petroleum Engineering in engineering geology.
Middle East and North Africa Regional Director
Abdullatif A. Al-Omair holds the position of director of northern area reservoir management department at Saudi Aramco. Prior to this, he served in several managerial roles including the manager of Saudi Aramco’s reservoir description organization, manager of Khurais reservoir management organization, and the manager of Khurais field operations organization. With over 20 years of extensive industry experience, his expertise spans field development planning, formation evaluation, reservoir and production management, carbon capture and sequestration, and digital transformation.
Al-Omair is an active SPE member who served as chair of the SPE Saudi Arabia Section and was the chair of its Annual Technical Symposium, and chair of YP and Student Outreach Committee and various technical programs. He served in several international conferences and technical programs including the International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) and the Middle East Oil and Gas Show.
He was awarded the 2011 SPE Young Member Outstanding Service Award. He also served as a member in the SPE Awards and Recognition Committee, SPE Forum Series Implementation Committee, and as the chair of the SPE International Distinguished Service Award Committee. He is currently serving as a member of SPE Middle East Advisory Council and as the chair of Host Committee of IPTC 2024.
Al-Omair holds a BSc degree in petroleum engineering from The University of Tulsa, an MSc degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University, and an MBA from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
North America Regional Director
Carlos A. Torres is the founder of Royal Oaks Energy Services, a service company focused on technical and business consulting in well intervention for the oil and gas industry, and recently involved in technological transition into geothermal energy. He previously worked for SLB where he held management, engineering, operations, technical, and sales positions in well intervention and pressure pumping.
In 2016 he joined Gulfstream Services Inc., where until 2018 he served as director of sales and business development, managing six different product lines: cementing systems, frac/gravel pack‑support equipment, rental tools, wireline pressure control, decommissioning services, and HP iron rentals.
In the past 8 years Torres has consolidated and grown Royal Oaks Energy Services as a trusted supplier for service companies and startups, providing support on business and technical advisor roles, project management, procurement supplier, and equipment rentals for companies in the US and internationally.
Torres has been an SPE member since 2002, served in the SPE Delta Section from 2009 to 2015, and in 2019 he joined the SPE Gulf Coast Section Board, becoming section chair in 2022. He is also a committee member of the SPE/ICoTA Well Intervention Conference and Exhibition held in Houston. He has authored and coauthored several technical publications for the industry.
He holds a BSc in chemical engineering from UNIMET in Venezuela.
Reservoir Technical Director
Rahim Masoudi is the custodian (chief) of reservoir engineering at Petronas and the subsurface technical lead at Malaysia Petroleum Management of Petronas. He has led strategic field development and asset management projects, alongside carbon capture, utilization, and storage initiatives within Petronas and the industry. He also serves as a technology advisor to Petronas global technology centers in the UK and Malaysia and chairs the Technology Readiness Level Committee.
Masoudi has over 24 years of experience across industrial, business, and research/academic sectors in exploration, development, and production, and energy domains spanning several countries such as Malaysia/Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the North Sea. He has served as an adjunct professor at Adelaide University, visiting professor at Imperial College, and Distinguished Industry Advisor to University Tech Petronas.
His contributions extend to his longstanding support of SPE, where he has been a member since 2001. He currently chairs the SPE Asia Pacific Regional Technical Advisory Committee and has served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in the 2011–2012 season. He held roles as chair, co‑chair, advisor, and invited speaker at numerous conferences and workshops in the oil and gas industry, both regionally and globally, including IPTC, APOGCE, ATCE, OTC Asia, SPE, and EAGE.
He holds a PhD in petroleum engineering from Heriot-Watt University.
How SPE Board Members Are Selected
SPE is governed by a board of directors comprising 20 member representatives from around the world, including three officers and 17 representatives of geographic regions and technical disciplines. Officers and directors are elected to a 3-year term, with approximately one-third of the board rolling off each year. Officers and directors include representatives of both geographic and technical constituencies, and three presidents (current, past, and elect).
Nominating a Candidate
The nomination period opened in October and ended in January 2024. 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, resume, 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 met in March to make recommendations for the available positions. These recommendations were submitted to the SPE International Board of Directors for approval at a meeting of the board held in mid-March.
Following Board Approval of Nominees
The Board of Directors reports the nominations in the Journal of Petroleum Technology ( JPT). 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 petition. The petition process must be completed no later than 45 days following the publication date (1 April) of the slate of Board of Directors’ approved nominees in JPT.
Board of Directors’ nominees for positions for whom no petition with the requisite number of signatures is received within 45 days following the publication date of the slate of nominees in JPT shall be deemed elected to such positions. Additional nominations require a petition from 1.0% of the voting members of SPE on petitions for president-elect, and 2.0%, or a minimum of 150 members, from the represented group for regional director and technical director positions. A ballot election will be held if any qualified petitions are received.
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 23–25 September in New Orleans, Louisiana.