Tom Blasingame, 2021 SPE President, has been named the new head of the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University, effective 1 May.
Blasingame is an SPE Honorary Member and served as the 2021 SPE President, becoming the second SPE president to come directly from academia.
Blasingame, who previously held the Robert L. Whiting Professorship at Texas A&M, researches applied reservoir engineering, reservoir modeling, and production engineering. He has made numerous contributions to petroleum literature in pressure transient analysis, production data analysis, reservoir development/management, reservoir engineering aspects of low and ultralow permeability reservoirs, phase behavior, and petrophysics.
Aside from his duties in the classroom and guiding graduate students through research and degree paths, Blasingame served as assistant department head for graduate programs within the petroleum engineering department from 1997 to 2003. He also served in other academic service roles, such as the Faculty Senate, the Council for Principal Investigators, and the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
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.
He holds bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University.