SCA Instructors
At SCA, our courses are delivered by recognized industry experts in their respective fields. We are committed to providing a high-quality training experience that enhances the success of our clients. To achieve this, we continuously observe and evaluate industry needs, ensuring our offerings remain relevant and effective.
We are always seeking new instructors and courses to expand our offerings. Instructors at SCA have the opportunity to develop innovative training options and maintain their technical skills through consulting services when not teaching.
Sia Agah
Sia Agah
Sia Agah is a petroleum geologist and an Associate with SCA in Houston. He holds a M.A. in Petroleum Geology from the University of London. Sia was with the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC) in Tehran for 13 years, working as a geologist, a wellsite geologist, a senior geologist, and a geological advisor until 1979, when he joined Conoco. With Conoco until 1997 as Senior Geologist, Chief Geologist, Exploration Manager, and new ventures Vice President; he worked respectively in Houston, Tunisia, Angola, and the UAE (Dubai). After early retirement in 1997, Sia moved to UMC/Ocean Energy to set up and manage their South Asia – Middle East Exploration Department and manage seven exploration blocks in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Yemen. Sia has an extensive knowledge of the petroleum geology of the Middle East, South Asia, North Africa, and Offshore West Africa, and Brazil.
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Jill Almaguer, PE, PMP
Jill Almaguer, PE, PMP
Jill Almaguer is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Registered Professional Engineer in Texas. She provides leadership and project management to coordinate suppliers to deliver contract requirements on time and on budget while meeting or exceeding customer expectations for quality results.
While working at HP for 20 years, she led a number of technical project teams implementing a broad range of projects from $10 million of medical electronics for the new Brooke Army Medical Center built in San Antonio to nationwide high-speed telecommunications network monitoring systems. She also led software application engineering team for implementation of semi-conductor design software and was director of development for an RFID asset tracking system. At HP, she taught quality process improvement methods to over 600 employees in the southern US as part of the Voice of the Customer project implementation.
Almaguer also provided project management and consulting services to clients such as BP Gulf of Mexico division for a major ERP conversion project. She has presented at numerous national and regional conferences for Society of Women Engineers and Project Management Institute. Jill has a BS in Bioengineering and an MBA and currently serves as Vice Chairman for the City of Bellaire Board of Adjustment and on the board of the Federation of Houston Professional Women, and Texas A&M University Biomedical Engineering Industry advisory board. She is current chairman of the Biomedical Engineering Society Houston Industry Chapter and past president of Association of IT Professionals in Houston.
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Ewerton Araujo, PhD
Ewerton Araujo, PhD
Dr. Ewerton Araujo has 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry as a geomechanics specialist. He has worked over 100 projects in many different countries in Latin America, USA, Canada, Middle East and West Africa, and Australia in both onshore and offshore fields. He received his BSc in Civil Engineering from the Universidade Federal de Paraiba and his MSc and PhD in Civil Engineering from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Rio de Janeiro.
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Robert 'Bob' Barba
Robert 'Bob' Barba
Bob has over 40 years of practical experience in the petroleum industry as an openhole wireline engineer, product development manager, petrophysicist, and completion optimization advisor focusing on integrated reservoir characterization studies, completion optimization studies, rock mechanics analysis, and horizontal well field development projects. He has extensive experience in both conventional and organic shale reservoirs.
Bob received the Regional Formation Evaluation Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers Southwest North America region (Permian Basin) in May of 2018. He served as a Distinguished Lecturer 1995-1996 for the Society of Petroleum Engineers on the optimization of completion designs using petrophysical and reservoir engineering inputs. Bob is a recognized industry authority on refracturing rock mechanics and practices. He delivered the keynote address at a major refracturing conference for the SPE in Calgary January 2016 and has delivered over 100 presentations on the use of refracturing to enhance production in organic shale reservoirs. Bob served as an expert witness on log derived rock properties for BP through Kirkland and Ellis in the Macondo trial. He pioneered techniques to evaluate well performance using production data and routine well log data and applied the concept to over 5,000 wells to date. This significantly improved completion results in those fields.
Most recent projects involve the application of these techniques in Permian organic shale reservoirs where a solid correlation between modeled propped height and production results enables operators to forward model production results from shale reservoirs. Bob has analyzed over 3,000 organic shale wells in the Permian Basin and 400 wells in the Eagle Ford to date. He has also presented SPE 174994 at the 2015 SPE ATCE summarizing the analyses, SPE 195962 at the 2019 ATCE, and URTEC 2662 on organic shale frac and refrac optimization.
Courses
- Best Practices for New Well Fracs and Legacy Well Recompletions
- Cased Hole and Production Log Evaluation
- Open Hole and Cased Hole Petrophysical Inputs for Carbon Capture Projects
- Practical Interpretation of Open Hole Logs (3 days)
- Practical Interpretation of Open Hole Logs (4 days)
- Practical Interpretation of Open Hole Logs (5 days)
Jim Brenneke
Jim Brenneke
James (Jim) Brenneke graduated from Augustana College with a BA in Geology and an MS in Geology from the University of Illinois. He joined Shell Oil Company (US) and worked for various Shell subsidiaries in research, international exploration and domestic exploration and production. He then joined Subsurface Consultants and Associates, LLC (SCA) as a consulting geoscientist. In addition to being a consultant, he assumed various management roles with SCA including Technical Manager, Vice President of Geology and Engineering and Treasurer. He left SCA to join BP's deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GoM) Production organization.
Jim currently assists in teaching an Applied Subsurface Geological Mapping course based on this text. He has worked in the onshore and offshore U.S. and in numerous foreign countries. He has contributed to numerous exploration discoveries, field extensions and development wells in his 40 years in the industry. He has published on deep sea carbonates and on assessing fault traps.
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Ruben O. Caligari
Ruben O. Caligari
Mr. Caligari has more than 35 years' experience in engineering and operations in E&P, and his last corporate position was Sr. Technical Advisor in unconventional resources in Petrobras Argentina E&P. During his career, he led multidisciplinary teams in project evaluations, field developing, and mature fields revitalizations in Argentina and several Latin American countries, and has been active in unconventional resources projects in Argentina as well. With an excellent record of developing talent, he designed and implemented a Knowledge Management Program for E&P with proved value added.
Retired from activities, he is currently professor of Petroleum Engineering both in undergraduate and graduate levels at Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires. He teaches courses on energy at other universities in Argentina and participates in Industry and Government initiatives on Education on Energy. Ruben is author and director of an online course on Petroleum Engineering Basics presented by Instituto Argentino del Petroleo y del Gas.
In many years of professional activities within Latin America, he built a strong reputation and an extended network of contacts. He has been an active SPE member, serving as officer in different positions including President Patagonia Section, President Argentine Petroleum Section and Regional Director for LA&C, 2008- 2011. Mr. Caligari was named as a Distinguished Member of SPE in 2020.
Ruben has lectured in different events within regions, presented several technical papers, and co-authored a book on developing shale resources.
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Eric D. Carlson
Eric D. Carlson
Eric has been a petroleum geologist for 30 plus years. He worked with Marathon Oil Company, CDS Oil and Gas Group plc, and LCS Production Company, and has consulted for several Independents and PEMEX. He has an 82% drilling success record, including a 97% success rate during 2015 – 2020. Eric has worked in 12 offshore and onshore US Basins, including more than 5 years in the offshore Gulf of Mexico; and 4 basins in Latin America.
He is a subtle pay specialist who has helped reverse production declines in the Permian Basin, the Gulf of Mexico and onshore Mexico. He has generated integrated seismic/subsurface prospect interpretations and field studies in conventional fields. He has helped develop conventional reservoirs with infill drilling, waterfloods, tertiary recovery programs and horizontal drilling. Eric's experience includes preparing reserve EUR's & lease valuations in tite sands & unconventional shale plays (Permian Basin, Hardeman Basin, San Juan Basin, and Latin America). He has done unconventional exploration in Latin America and the US. Eric's Wellsite Supervision experience includes more than 25 offshore logging jobs and 200 Permian Basin logging jobs (12 wireline companies, 15 mudlogging companies).
Additionally, he has performed more than 600 e-log evaluations in unconventional zones and several thousand pay counts in conventional reservoirs. Eric earned a BA/Honors in Geoscience (1982) from Cornell University. He is a licensed geologist in the State of Texas: License Number 5258. He is a member of the AAPG and other professional associations.
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Alan Cherry
Alan Cherry
Alan Cherry is a Senior Geoscientist with over 34 years of industry experience. He has been associated with SCA since 2005 as one of the company's principal geoscience consultants. His integrated skill set includes 2D and 3D geophysical interpretation, exploration play analysis and prospect generation, field development, reservoir engineering, formation evaluation, economic assessment, reserves evaluation, drilling, completion, and production operations. He is highly proficient in the use of multiple geologic and seismic interpretation tools.
His areas of expertise include Offshore GOM, Texas Gulf Coast, South Louisiana, East Texas, Permian, Uinta – Piceance, Williston, North Slope, Cook Inlet, and onshore California. Internationally he has worked projects in Ukraine, Russia, Indonesia, North Sea, Senegal, Nigeria, Gabon, Tanzania, Morocco, Somalia, Iran, Qatar, Thailand, South China Sea, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia.
Alan received his BS in Geology at State University of New York and did his graduate studies at the University of Houston and Wright State University. He is a Licensed Professional Geologist in Texas and a Certified Professional Geologist in Indiana.
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Rajan N. Chokshi, PhD
Rajan N. Chokshi, PhD
Dr. Rajan Chokshi works as an artificial lift and production ‘Optimizer'. He has over 36 years of experience working with a national oil company, research consortia, consulting and software firms, and a service company in various roles: engineer, software developer, project manager, trainer, consultant, and senior business leader.
Rajan has worked on global projects in multiphase flow, artificial lift, production optimization, data analysis with real-time production monitoring. He has co-authored over fifteen SPE papers and holds two US patents. He has served on the SPE training and global production award committees and several technical committees for the SPE ATCE and artificial lift conferences. He has co-chaired an SPE artificial lift workshop, an SPE forum on production issues in unconventional, and an SPE multiphase flow metering workshop. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer twice for the 2015-2016 and 2018-2019 years. Dr. Chokshi holds a Bachelor's and Master's in chemical engineering from the Gujarat University and IIT-Kanpur, India; and a Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa, USA.
Courses
- Artificial Lift and Production Optimization Solutions
- Artificial Lift and Real-Time Optimization for Unconventional Assets
- Data Analytics Workflows for Artificial Lift, Production and Facility Engineers
- Gas-Lift & Deliquification Applications
- Producing Unconventional with Gas Lift – From Annular to PAGL to Plunger Lift and In-Between
Ellen Coopersmith
Ellen Coopersmith
Ellen Coopersmith founded Decision Frameworks in 1999. She has a Petroleum Engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines and specializes in Decision Analysis consultation, facilitation, training, and implementation. Prior to forming the company, Ellen led one of the oil industry's most successful implementations of Decision & Risk Analysis for Conoco, which led to her passion for Decision Science skill development, framing, uncertainty analysis and valuing information.
Ellen is a published author and invited speaker on both the implementation and the technical aspects of Decision Analysis. She has served as the President of the Society of Decision Professionals (SDP), is an SDP Fellow and registered professional engineer.
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Steve Cossey, PhD
Steve Cossey, PhD
Dr. Steve Cossey has 31 years of global E & P experience with a specialty and expertise in deepwater clastics. He has explored in frontier areas of the United States, as well as China, Dubai, East Africa, Guyana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Spain and Tunisia. Steve has also worked on numerous Gulf of Mexico lease sales, prospects, developments and farm-ins. In 1990, he helped start a deepwater research program at BP Research in Sunbury, UK. Many E&P companies use his deepwater field, reservoir and outcrop databases and attend his classroom and field seminars. Dr. Cossey is skilled in interpreting deepwater sequences and creating sequence stratigraphic and depositional models from core, well and seismic data. He has worked with over 100 companies that are exploring the deepwater globally and is fairly fluent in Spanish and French. Steve earned his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
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Birol Dindoruk, PhD
Birol Dindoruk, PhD
Dr. Birol Dindoruk is currently AADE Endowed Professor of Petroleum Engineering at University of Houston. Previously he was the Chief Scientist of Reservoir Physics and the Principal Technical Expert of Reservoir Engineering in Shell. His technical contributions have been acknowledged with many awards during his career, including SPE Honorary Member Award (2023), SPE Lester C. Uren Award (2014), SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Medal (1994), and SPE Distinguished Membership. In 2017, he was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for his significant theoretical and practical contributions to EOR & CO2 sequestration. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2010-2011, the 2017-2020 SPE Data Science and Engineering Analytics (DSEA) technical director and a member of the Advisory Committee of the SPE Reservoir Dynamics and Description technical discipline. He is the only individual in the entire world who served as an editor-in-chief for the three major petroleum engineering journals (Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering, and SPE journals).
Dr. Dindoruk is well-known for his extensive work on thermodynamics of phase behavior/EOS development and experimental work, interaction of phase behavior and flow in porous media, EOR and CO2 sequestration, and correlative methodologies. Recently, Dr. Dindoruk has also been working in the area of data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning and focusing on effective incorporation of data sciences into the oil and natural gas industry practices and energy systems. In recent years, he has authored/co-authored various articles for hydrogen, geothermal systems and adsorptive storage.
He has 28 years of industrial experience, holds a BSc degree in petroleum engineering from Technical University of Istanbul, MSc degree in petroleum engineering from The University of Alabama, a PhD degree from Stanford University in petroleum engineering and mathematics, and an MBA from University of Houston.
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Dennis Dria, PhD
Dennis Dria, PhD
Dr. Dennis Dria has over 40 years of experience in the oil & gas industry, including 9 years with the Standard Oil Company and 21 years with Shell, in a combination of upstream and downstream oil and gas R&D and E&P operating division positions. At the time he left Shell in 2010, he was a Staff Research Engineer working in the areas of fiber-optic technology development, fiber-optic data management and integration and technology implementation for well and reservoir monitoring. Prior to this he was Engineering Advisor for Shell's Global Implementation Team for Reservoir Surveillance Technologies during which he identified appropriate in-well monitoring technologies for Shell "top 70" global development projects, resulting in field surveillance plans for more than 20 major E&P projects. He also was Shell's Global Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Production Logging and Permanent Sensing and SME for Mud Logging, and had formation evaluation and well logging (open-hole and cased-hole) assignments that included planning, vendor selection, operations, interpretation and field studies. Dr. Dria received a BS in Physics and Mathematics from Ashland University and a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Christine Ehlig-Economides, PhD
Christine Ehlig-Economides, PhD
Dr. Ehlig-Economides is currently professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston & the Hugh Roy and Lillian Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Chair. Dr. Ehlig-Economides worked for Schlumberger for 20 years in a truly global capacity. She has published more than 60 papers and has authored 2 patents, and has lectured or consulted in more than 30 countries. Dr. Ehlig-Economides is internationally recognized for expertise in reservoir engineering, pressure transient analysis, integrated reservoir characterization, complex well design, and production enhancement.
Her professional service includes: Executive Editor of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Formation Evaluation journal 1995-96; SPE Distinguished Lecturer 1997-98; and numerous posts as chairman or member of SPE committees and task forces. She was the Program Chairperson for the 2006 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Engineering, recipient of the John Franklin Carll Award, The Anthony F Lucas Medal, and the Lester C Uren Award, and on NRC Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (BEES). In 2018, she was selected as an SPE Honorary Member. In 2023 she was named a Fellow in the National Academy of Inventors.
Christine Ehlig-Economides received a B.A. degree in Math-Science from Rice, an M.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. degree in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University.
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Fermin Fernandez-Ibanez, PhD
Fermin Fernandez-Ibanez, PhD
Dr. Fermin Fernandez-Ibanez has 20 years of experience as a geoscientist in development, production, operations, and research & technology. His experience includes carbonate reservoir characterization and modeling and performance prediction. Fermin is an expert in natural fractures, karst related excess permeability, structural geology, and geomechanics (wellbore stability, pore pressure, rock mechanics). He has experience mentoring and developing technical competencies in junior geoscientists. Dr. Fernandez-Ibanez received his BSc in Geology and PhD in Geology and Geophysics both from the Universidad de Granada.
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James Granath, PhD
James Granath, PhD
Dr. James W. Granath is a consulting structural geologist based in Denver, Colorado, who has worked in academia as well as minerals and petroleum exploration. Since 1976 he has taught at SUNY Stony Brook and spent 18 years in Conoco in research, international exploration, and new ventures. In 1999 he opened a consulting practice focused on structural geology and tectonics as applied to exploration problems, interrupted only by brief periods with Forest Oil and Midland Valley Exploration in Denver. He is a member of AAPG, AGU, GSA, and RMAG, and a certified petroleum geologist. He is the author of numerous research papers and co-edited several multi-author compendia. His expertise lies in seismic interpretation and integration with structural analysis, fracture analysis, regional synthesis, and prospect and play evaluation. Current research interests include intraplate block faulted terrains, both extensional and compressional, regional tectonics of Africa, and the Kurdistan thrust belt. He holds his PhD from Monash University in Australia, and a BS and MS from of University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Jim is currently on the Graduate Faculty at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.
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Laurie Green, MSc, PG
Laurie Green, MSc, PG
Principles of Mapping with Petrel© was designed by SCA Senior Geologist and Training Instructor Laurie Green. Laurie has extensive international and domestic experience as a geophysical interpreter, geomodeler and project manager in conventional and unconventional assets for both E&P and service companies. She has broad expertise in computer-based mapping and modeling systems as an interpreter, programmer and technical trainer. Laurie has performed integrated field studies for global clients using different software systems and understands how computer-generated maps can be used and mis-used in real-world projects.
Laurie received her BS in Geological Sciences from Cornell University and her MSc from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is a registered Professional Geoscientist in the state of Texas.
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Ursula Hammes, PhD
Ursula Hammes, PhD
Dr. Ursula Hammes is currently Adjunct Professor at the Department of Geological Sciences, Texas A&M University and President of Hammes Energy & Consultants teaching and assessing various shale oil/gas systems. Dr. Hammes has 25+ years of experience in the oil and gas industry and academia in Europe and USA in positions ranging from exploration, development, research, and management. She has provided advanced consulting in shale-gas/oil systems and has taught industry short courses and in-house training courses for oil companies and universities.
Dr. Hammes obtained her Diploma at the University of Erlangen, Germany, and her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her graduate studies specialized in carbonate depositional environments, sequence stratigraphy, carbonate diagenesis, and rock-water interactions. Her background is diverse ranging from exploration, exploitation and business development for various oil/gas companies, conducting research as Research Scientist and Principal Investigator for the State of Texas Advanced Resource Recovery project and leading research and advising students at the University of Potsdam, Germany, Texas A&M University, and Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Ursula is past president of the Energy and Minerals Division (EMD) of AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists), served as president of the Gulf Coast Section of SEPM (GCSSEPM), serves as senior associate editor for the AAPG Bulletin, and has been chair and moderator of many conventions and sessions. She is a world-known expert in assessing shale oil/gas systems from basin to nanoscale and sequence stratigraphy and reservoir characterization of carbonates and siliciclastics. She teaches core workshops and short courses in shale reservoir analyses and carbonate sequence stratigraphy, reservoir characterization, and sedimentology.
Expertise: Expert in mudrock/shale analyses from basin to nanoscale Sequence stratigraphy of carbonates and siliciclastics Teach core workshops and short courses in mudrock analyses and carbonate sequence stratigraphy and sedimentology
Courses
- Shale Reservoir Core Workshop: Sedimentologic and Stratigraphic Assessment of Organic-Rich Mudrocks
- Shale Reservoir Workshop: Analyzing Organic-Rich Mudrocks from Basin to Nano-Scale (2 day)
- Shale Reservoir Workshop: Analyzing Organic-Rich Mudrocks from Basin to Nano-Scale (4 day)
- Shale Reservoir Workshop: Analyzing Organic-Rich Mudrocks from Basin to Nano-Scale (5 day)
Dimitrios Hatzignatiou, PhD
Dimitrios Hatzignatiou, PhD
Dimitrios G. Hatzignatiou is Professor in Petroleum Engineering at University of Houston. He holds a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Tulsa, and has over 30 years of combined academic and industry experience having taught at four universities, worked in various technical and management positions with a major service company, and consulted with the oil & gas and energy industries. He joined the Petroleum Engineering faculty at University of Houston in 2016 after serving for twelve years as Chief Technical Director and Center of Oil Recovery (COREC) Professor in Norway. He has developed and managed several applied and research projects related to Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) both in Europe and USA. He was a European Association of Engineers and Geoscientists (EAGE) CCS lecturer, and served as chairman of the 2015 EAGE International Workshop on CCS. He was a board member of the European Network of Excellence on the Geological Storage of CO2 (CO2GeoNet), and Norway representative on the European Network for Research in Geo-Energy (ENeRG). Dr. Hatzignatiou has organized and served on several SPE Technical Committees, is an Associate Editor of the SPE Reservoir Engineering journals, and is serving as reviewer in numerous scientific journals. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a European Engineer (EURING).
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Susan Howes, PE, PHR
Susan Howes, PE, PHR
Susan Howes joined SCA in August 2016 as Vice President of Engineering. In 1982, Susan began her career with Anadarko as an Engineer in Denver, Colorado. Through the years she held a variety of engineering positions of increasing responsibility. In 2007, she joined Chevron as Horizons Program Manager and afterwards moved into their Reservoir Management function providing functional leadership that resulted in improved production and reserve trends.
Susan has coauthored several papers and articles on the topics of uncertainty management, risk management, and talent management for SPE conferences and publications. She is past chair of the SPE Soft Skills Committee, previously served as SPE Regional Director for Gulf Coast North America, is a recipient of the SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal and serves on the US Advisory Council. In 2018, she was selected as an SPE Honorary Member in 2018. Howes holds a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Texas.
As of January 2023, Susan has taken on the role of President for SCA after serving in the Vice President of Engineering role since 2016. Susan is responsible for maintaining the highest technical quality standards for SCA's recruitment, consultancy and training services. Additionally, she participates in the direction, administration, and coordination of SCA's operations, manages technical projects, and serves as the company's primary liaison to the engineering community through her continued involvement in the SPE and other organizations.
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Jerry Jensen, PhD
Jerry Jensen, PhD
Dr. Jerry Jensen is a part-time research engineer at the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas at Austin. From 2007 to 2018, he held the Schulich Chair in Geostatistics at the University of Calgary's Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. Prior to 2007, Jerry held faculty positions at Texas A&M (1998-2007) and Heriot-Watt (1985-1997) Universities and worked as a field engineer for Services Techniques Schlumberger (1973-1977) and Gearhart Industries (1977-1983). Jensen has taught industry short courses on geomechanics, well log interpretation, geological statistics, reservoir characterization, and petrophysics.
Jensen received a BSc in electrical engineering from the U. of Birmingham (UK) in 1973 and a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from the U. of Texas at Austin in 1986. He is author or co-author of over 100 publications, including the books "Statistics for Petroleum Engineers and Geoscientists" (2000, Elsevier) and "Applied Reservoir Engineering and Characterization" (2014, Gulf). He has research and teaching interests in inter-well connectivity, petrophysical analysis of unconventional reservoirs, and strategic sampling for reservoir analysis and modeling. Jerry was an SPE distinguished lecturer in 2011-2012 on the topic of inter-well connectivity.
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Shah Kabir
Shah Kabir
Shah Kabir is an adjunct faculty member at the U. of Houston and is the proprietor of CS Kabir Consulting. He has 40 years' experience in the industry, having worked for Hess, Chevron, Schlumberger, Arco, and Dome petroleum. He has published over 130 papers and has received Honorary Membership of SPE and AIME (2016) and SPE Reservoir Description & Dynamics Award (2010), among others.
He has served SPE in many capacities including in the editorial board of three journals, books committee, and co-chairing several Forum series meetings. Besides teaching a plethora of in-house courses in his career, Kabir has also offered courses for SPE and guest lectured at Stanford, Texas A&M, U. of Southern California, and U. of Houston since 2004. His expertise includes: 1. Transient pressure- and -rate testing; 2. Wellbore fluid- and heat-flow modeling and 3. Multiple aspects of reservoir engineering.
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Larry W. Lake, PhD
Larry W. Lake, PhD
Dr. Larry W. Lake is a professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin where he holds the Shahid and Sharon Ullah Chair. He holds B.S.E and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Arizona State University and Rice University, respectively. Dr. Lake is the author or co-author of more than 100 technical papers, four textbooks and the editor of three bound volumes. He has served on the Board of Directors for the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), won the 1996 Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal of the AIME, the Degoyer Distinguished Service Award in 2002, and has been a member of the National Academy of Engineers since 1997. He won the SPE/DOE IOR Pioneer Award in 2000.
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William W. Little, PhD
William W. Little, PhD
William Little, Ph.D. comes to SCA with 14 years' experience teaching university courses in sedimentary geology and geological mapping and 16 years conducting geological mapping. He received a Doctorate in geology from the University of Colorado-Boulder and M.S. and B.S. degrees in geology from Brigham Young University. Dr. Little has held various roles in academia, currently as a professor at Brigham Young University – Idaho and previously at the University of Missouri – Rolla, Drury University, Moberly Area Community College, and Front Range Community College. At BYU – Idaho, he teaches sedimentology and stratigraphy with heavy emphases on recognition of ancient depositional systems and sequence stratigraphy, along with geomorphology and is the field camp director. He previously taught graduate courses in advanced geological mapping at UM – Rolla and worked as a mapping geologist for the Missouri Geological Survey.
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Silviu Livescu, PhD
Silviu Livescu, PhD
Dr. Silviu Livescu joined the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin in September 2021, after a successful technical career with Baker Hughes and ExxonMobil, authoring 38 US patents and patent applications and more than 90 papers and articles. Dr. Livescu is a distinguished member, a former distinguished lecturer, and the 2020-2023 Data Science and Engineering Analytics (DSEA) technical director of SPE, and the editor-in-chief for Geoenergy Science and Engineering (formerly the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, the most cited oil, petroleum, and natural gas journal on Google Scholar). Dr. Livescu was a lead author of the "Future of Geothermal in Texas" report, and has introduced the first geothermal engineering class at the University of Texas at Austin, with outstanding feedback from his students.
Dr. Livescu holds BS and MSc degrees from the University "Politecnica" of Bucharest, Romania, a PhD degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Delaware and was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Energy Resources Engineering Department at Stanford University.
Courses
Oscar Lopez-Gamundi, PhD
Oscar Lopez-Gamundi, PhD
Dr. Oscar Lopez-Gamundi has close to 30 years of worldwide experience in pathfinding, play trend definition, prospect generation and execution. He has extensive expertise in onshore and offshore exploration in areas including Latin America, Gulf of Mexico, and Africa. He served on a part-time basis as an Assistant Professor in Sedimentology at the University of Buenos Aires where he had previously received both his Bachelor's degree equivalent and Ph.D. in Geology. The bulk of his career was then spent holding various high-level positions with Texaco, Chevron, and Hess. He has instructed various industry courses, given convention presentations, and has more than 100 publications on sedimentology, basin analysis, and oil and gas exploration. He is also fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Drawing from his wide-ranging experience in both the industry and academia, Dr. Lopez-Gamundi instructs a five-day course for SCA entitled "Carbonate Sedimentology and Sequence Stratigraphy". This course covers the basic concepts of carbonate sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy with emphasis on their practical applications for oil and gas exploration, appraisal, and production. All concepts are illustrated with examples of outcrop well-log, core, and seismic data. The final objective is to provide course participants with the tools and methodologies to effectively predict the pressure and quality of reservoir, source rock and seal.
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D. Nathan Meehan, PhD, PE
D. Nathan Meehan, PhD, PE
Dr. D. Nathan Meehan is President of an energy advisory firm and Senior Technology Advisor for a leading oilfield data analytics firm where he advises on energy transition issues. He was formerly President of Gaffney, Cline & Associates, and a senior executive at Baker Hughes, Occidental Petroleum and Union Pacific Resources. He served as the 2016 President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Meehan holds a BSc in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, an MSc in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University. He is an SPE Honorary Member and the recipient of the World Oil Lifetime Achievement Award and Petroleum Economist magazine's Legacy Award. He served as Chairman of the Board of the CMG Reservoir Simulation Foundation and twice as a Director of the Computer Modelling Group, Ltd., as Director of Vanyoganeft Oil Company, as Director of Pinnacle Technologies, Inc., as a Director of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and as a Director of JOA Oil & Gas BV. He serves on the boards of the University of Oklahoma Board of Visitors for the Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, the University of Texas and Saint Francis University petroleum engineering departments and the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences. He is an appointed member of the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission, has served on the National Petroleum Council and is a widely published author. Dr. Meehan is a licensed professional engineer in four states. Meehan was recently elected to become a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
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Luis Mendoza
Luis Mendoza
Luis Mendoza is a Fellow per the Society of Decision Professionals (SDP). He has engaged with integrated, independent, national, and oil field services companies on a variety of DADQ projects including offshore development planning and concept select, E&A VOI, renewable energy, R&D technology maturation, and many various economic evaluations.
Luis also leads training courses on fundamentals of and advanced topics in DADQ (including VOI) and has presented at several industry and discipline events.
He holds a bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University, a master’s in systems engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington, and PhD coursework at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Robert 'Bob' Merrill, PhD
Robert 'Bob' Merrill, PhD
Robert Merrill, Ph.D. has over thirty years of industry experience. He has worked for American Stratigraphic Company, Cities Service Company, Occidental, Unocal and Samson in various domestic and international exploration and staff positions. In these positions he has explored a variety of basins, including extensional basins, fold and thrust belts and foreland basins both from a regional context as well as prospect generation. Geographic areas outside North America in which he has exploration as well as acquisition experience include Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the North Sea, and Central Europe. He has experience generating and evaluating prospects in both conventional and unconventional clastic reservoirs, including fractured reservoirs and tight gas sands as well as carbonates. In his positions he participated or was responsible for implementing probabilistic methods to prospect evaluation and reserves estimation and using this information for comprehensive portfolio management.
Robert has been involved with evaluating and optimizing the geological and geophysical workflow to reduce cycle time from the origination of an idea to prospect drilling. He has taught in-house courses on a range of subjects including structural geology, basin analysis and plate tectonics and geology for engineers. He has served as Secretary and President of the American Institute of Professional Geologists, is active in the American Association of Petroleum Geologists where he co-edited the Giant Fields of the Decade 1990 – 2000 and edited Source and Migration Processes and Techniques for Evaluation and was the Technical Program Coordinator for the 2006 AAPG Annual Meeting in Houston. He is currently a Director of the Houston Geological Society. He has also published papers in subjects as diverse as risk analysis, deep, overpressured gas in the Green River Basin and origin and migration of oils, Wyoming/Utah/Idaho Overthrust belt. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, a Chartered Geologist with the Geological Society and has served on committees for the American Geological Institute.
Dr. Merrill was honored in 2024 with two AAPG awards: the Robert H. Dott Sr. Memorial Award and the AAPG Honorary Member Award. Additionally, he received the SEG Foundation's Sally Zinke Individual Impact Award. Dr. Merrill has his Ph.D. and M.S. from Arizona State University and his B.A. in Geology from Colby College.
Courses
Hal Miller
Hal Miller
Hal Miller is the Chairman of Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC's Board of Directors after serving as President for 10 years. During that time, he was responsible for managing SCA's global operations and guiding the company's strategic direction. Prior to joining SCA in 2004 as Vice President of Operations, Hal spent a total of 26 years working at Conoco and ConocoPhillips. He held a variety of positions including operations, exploration, and human resource management at the business unit level, and corporate level skills management for the geoscience and reservoir engineering disciplines. Hal received his undergraduate degree in 1974 from Williams College in Massachusetts and his M.S. in Geology in 1977 from the University of Colorado, where he serves on the Department of Geosciences Advisory Board.
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Siddharth Misra, PhD
Siddharth Misra, PhD
Prof. Siddharth Misra is an Associate Professor in Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Texas A&M University. He is a researcher and educator in the field of subsurface monitoring for the exploration and production of subsurface earth resources. He authored two books: "Machine Learning for Subsurface Characterization" and "Electromagnetic Data Interpretation for Subsurface Characterization".
His journey in oil and gas industry started with Halliburton in 2007. In 2018, Dr. Misra was recognized as the U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Awardee. For his technical contributions to geophysics and subsurface engineering, he has received several international awards, such as SEG J. Clarence Karcher Award, SPWLA Young Technical Professional Award, SPE Gulf Coast Formation Evaluation Award, and EAGE Arie Van Weelden Award. Dr. Misra holds a Bachelor of Technology in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and a Ph.D. in petroleum and geosystems engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.
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Amalia Olivera-Riley, PhD
Amalia Olivera-Riley, PhD
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Mark Olson
Mark Olson
Mark Olson (BS and Msc, Degrees in Geology from the University of Wyoming) has over 25 years of experience in technical and leadership positions in Development, Exploration and Technology groups.
Mark began his career as a Clastic Stratigraphic specialist in Upstream Technology of Phillips Petroleum/ConocoPhillips and then moved into several technical and leadership positions globally in Development and Exploration before returning to the technology organization as Manager of the Sedimentology & Stratigraphy Group. He moved to Apache Corporation in 2015 as the Geological Manager for Exploration & Production Technology before becoming Suriname Geoscience Lead on the exploration phase that led to numerous discoveries. Mark then became Director of Geology where he was responsible for the organizational structure, training, career development and technical assurance for all geologists in Development and Exploration worldwide.
Throughout his career, Mark has developed a broad range of experience in the integrated evaluation of conventional and unconventional reservoirs from Basin Analysis to Reservoir Characterization in numerous basins and depositional systems worldwide (onshore, offshore, high temperature/high pressure, tight gas, heavy oil). He has led classroom & field-based training in subsurface characterization for > 500 geoscientists/engineers and defined competencies and training curriculum for geoscience career development.
Courses
- Clastic Sedimentology, Stratigraphy and Reservoir Characterization with Core Workshop (3 days)
- Clastic Sedimentology, Stratigraphy and Reservoir Characterization with Core Workshop (4 days)
- Clastic Sedimentology, Stratigraphy and Reservoir Characterization with Core Workshop (5 days)
- Modern Depositional Systems as Analogs for Subsurface Characterization Field Course
Karen Olson, MS
Karen Olson, MS
Karen Olson has her own consulting firm, Olson & Turner Enterprises LLC, specializing in completion designs and optimization in unconventionals, EGS and offshore deepwater GOM. Ms. Olson has been a Completion/Reservoir Engineer for over 40 years, starting her career as a Frac Engineer for The Western Company of North America. She has also worked at Holditch and Associates, Mobil, BP and Southwestern Energy where she was the Technology Director.
Karen holds a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from LSU and a MS degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M. She has been honored as a Distinguished Alumni Graduate in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M and currently serves on the Texas A&M Petroleum Engineering Department Industry Advisory Board. Karen is also a Member of the Utah Forge STAT committee and the past SPE Completions Technical Director (2021-24) on the SPE International Board of Directors. She was a SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2018-19 on Freshwater Neutral in unconventional reservoirs. Mrs. Olson serves on a variety of SPE conferences and Workshops organizing committees and is a Distinguished Member of SPE.
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William K. 'Bill' Ott, PE
William K. 'Bill' Ott, PE
Bill Ott is an independent, international petroleum consultant based in both Houston and Singapore. An SPE Distinguished Lecturer 2007 – 08, he has conducted technical petroleum industry courses worldwide and written numerous technical papers relating to well completion and workover operations, including co-authoring the popular World Oil Modern Sandface Completion Practices Handbook and World Oil Downhole Remediation for Mature Oil & Gas Fields. Mr. Ott has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri and is a registered professional engineer in Texas.
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PK Pande, PE
PK Pande, PE
PK Pande, PE is focused on value added strategic and operational projects for the upstream and midstream oil and gas industry.
His deep knowledge and world class expertise encompasses delivery of commercial / technical solutions for gas injection, EOR-CO2, CCUS, new and mature field development, unconventional resources, conceptual studies, and systems integration. He has exceptional expertise in reservoir characterization, EOR and IOR, field development, exploration appraisal, new technology implementation, organizational development, and strategic planning.
He has served as Chief Engineer for QEP Resources and Director, Reservoir Technology with Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. He held key reservoir and production engineering technical roles with TOTAL (Petrofina) and British Petroleum (Standard Oil of Ohio). PK served as the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Distinguished Lecturer on the topic, "Shale Resources – A Full Life Cycle Integrated Approach".
Mr. Pande holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and MS in Petroleum Engineering from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.
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Jorge Pastor, PhD
Jorge Pastor, PhD
Dr. Jorge Pastor has 20 years of experience in the oil and gas industry as a Senior Geomechanics Engineer with Schlumberger and then a Principal Geomechanics Specialist with BHP before becoming a Managing Partner of Subsurface Alliance. Jorge received a BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering and PhD in Geomechanics all from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Rio de Janeiro.
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Kevin Pickering, PhD
Kevin Pickering, PhD
With more than 25 years of research experience, Kevin has undertaken research as a shipboard scientist in the Gulf of Mexico (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 96), and offshore Japan (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 131), together with on-land research in Arctic Norway, northern Russia, Newfoundland, Quebec, NE Scotland, southern Britain, SE France, Spanish Pyrenees, SE Spain, Tibet, Japan, Kyrghyzstan, Uzbekistan, California, and New Zealand.
Kevin's research interests are many and varied, with more than 130 research papers, 5 authored / co-authored books and 5 edited books, that include the following topics: Earth surface processes (particularly all aspects of deep-marine sedimentology, stratigraphy and tectonics), surface processes on Venus, global environmental issues, stratigraphy, tectonics and sedimentation, sediment geochemistry and clay mineralogy, particularly relating to deep-marine environments.
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Srini Prasad
Srini Prasad
Srini Prasad is a Petroleum Reservoir Engineering Consultant with extensive Worldwide Upstream Oil & Gas Industry experience with Hess, BP and Oxy. His experience spans exploitation of multiple basins and reservoir/fluid types: Unconventional shale and conventional sandstone/chalk reservoirs; Light oil, heavy oil and gas reservoirs; Bakken, Deepwater Gulf of Mexico, Guyana, Angola, Malaysia, Kuwait, Alaska, Peru, California, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Canada, Libya; Various phases of an asset life cycle including exploration, appraisal, sanction, development, start-up, production, pipelining, recovery enhancement and divestiture.
Mr. Prasad is a business leader with technical focus. He has held a variety of technical, subsurface, commercial, asset and functional leadership positions over his career. He was most recently the Chief Reservoir Engineer at Hess.
He has received multiple awards for Technical and Business Innovation and mentoring colleagues. He holds two U.S. patents and has over 20 presentations & publications covering diverse topics.
Srini obtained his M.S in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston and his B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.
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Bradford E. Prather, PhD
Bradford E. Prather, PhD
Prather graduated from the University of Kansas in 1979 with a BSc in geology. Following graduation he moved to the University of New Orleans to pursue a Master Degree in Earth Sciences, graduating in 1981. Prather then joined the Onshore Division of Shell Oil Company, New Orleans in 1981 as a summer intern and became a full time Exploration Geologist on January 1, 1982. He began his exploration career prospecting for oil and gas in the Smackover and Norphlet plays of onshore Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Over time he moved to the offshore starting in the US Atlantic margin, then to MAFLA (the offshore of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida), and shelf provinces of Louisiana and Texas, eventually he ended up in the deepwater and Gulf of Mexico when he served as Division Geologist. He left New Orleans in 1995 for a 5-year assignment in The Hague, The Netherlands focusing on global deepwater plays. This work eventually led to creation of Shell's Turbidites Research Team (TRT) which he lead until 2008 from locations in Rijswijk, The Netherlands and Houston, Texas. He returned to exploration in the Americas in 2008 as a Geological Advisor and eventually became Regional Chief Exploration Geoscientist in 2009. Upon retirement from Shell in 2014 he joined the University of Kansas as an Adjunct Professor where he teaches courses focused on seismic stratigraphy, petroleum systems and sedimentology.
He is an Associate Editor for the AAPG Bulletin, serves on both the SEPM and AAPG Research committees, and is a referee for many scientific journals. He was a Shore-Based Scientist for IODP Leg 308, which cored the Brazos-Trinity Basin IV in the Gulf of Mexico. Prather currently is the Chairman-elect for Executive Committee of Geology Associates Advisory Board to the Department of Geology at the University of Kansas.
Prather is the recipient of Robert R. Berg Award for Outstanding Research (2009), Erasmus Haworth Most Distinguished Alumni Honors in Geology (2006), AAPG Distinguished Lecturer (2000-2001), Jules Braunstein Best Poster Award (2000), J. C. "CAM" Sproule Memorial Best Paper Awards (1993 and 1994) and W. A. Tarr Leadership Award (1979).
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Jon R. Rotzien, PhD
Jon R. Rotzien, PhD
Jon Rotzien specializes in reservoir presence and quality forecasting in conventional and unconventional drilling programs. Prior to his present posts, he served BP and other supermajor and independent operators in a variety of basins and petroleum reservoir technical training programs. As a business owner and scientist, Rotzien has participated in oil and gas exploratory to development drilling, mapping expeditions, technical competency training and consulting and has served as lead geologist in about one-third of those ventures. He is currently serving as Chair of the Houston Explorers Club. Rotzien received a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Stanford University and a B.A. degree in Geology from Colorado College.
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Robello Samuel, PhD
Robello Samuel, PhD
Dr. Robello Samuel has been a Chief Technical advisor and a senior Fellow, working with Halliburton since 1998. Dr. Samuel began his career working on rigs as a field and drilling engineer for nine years with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. Since then he has developed more than 30 years of experience in domestic and international oil/gas drilling operations. He is the recipient of several awards including the Gulf Coast SPE Drilling Engineering Award, SPE International Drilling Engineering Award, SPE Distinguished Membership Award and the Distinguished Lecturer award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Dr. Samuel has taught on the faculty of various universities and holds an adjunct professor appointment (concurrently) for the past 18 years, at the University of Houston and 5 years at the University of Southern California, LA. He has published more than 215 technical papers, holds 72 US patents, and 95 worldwide patens. Dr. Samuel serves regularly as a keynote speaker at major conferences and corporate forums and is regarded as one of the world's most influential contributors to advancement of research and practice in drilling engineering. Dr. Samuel's unique blend of skills with broad experience as a field engineer, thinker, thought leader, innovator, researcher, educator and educationist has given him the ability to author thirteen drilling books. He holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering as well as MS and PhD degrees in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Tulsa. Dr. Samuel also received the SPE/AIME Honorary Membership award in 2021.
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Selim Shaker, PhD
Selim Shaker, PhD
Selim S. Shaker received a B.Sc (honor) in Applied Geology, and a M.Sc and Ph.D. in Geology from ASU, Egypt. He also received a diploma in Hydrogeology from Prague University (UNESCO).
With over 35 years in the oil industry, he started his career in Egypt as a well-site, stratigrapher and structural geologist. During his 30 years of U.S. domestic service his main function as Exploration Geologist was prospects generation in offshore Gulf of Mexico (Shelf and Deepwater) , onshore TX and LA, Egypt, NW Australia, Algeria, Libya, North Sea and China.
After retiring from Phillips Petroleum Co. in year 2000, he consulted for the KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM INC (KSI) to collaborate on building their pore pressure DrillWork software, finalizing the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater DEA-119 study and several domestic and abroad projects (4 years).
He established G.A.S. to focus on pore- fracture pressure prediction, evaluating prospects' risk, geopressure compartmentalization, seal integrity and salt-sediments interaction on leads and prospects worldwide especially in the Gulf of Mexico. Pre and Post drilling risk assessment of a prospect is his specialty.
He has been the first to recognize:
- Geopressure transgression and regression due to compartmentalization.
- Supra and subsalt geopressure models.
- The disparity between predicted pore pressure and measured pore pressure.
- Pitfalls of converting PP from psi to ppg mwe in reservoir rocks.
- The qualification of centroid phenomenon in the subsurface geopressure.
- His new method of NCT (normal compaction trend) calculation.
Dr. Shaker has published 48 papers and articles regarding the application of geopressure in exploration and drilling. He taught several geopressure courses to the AAPG, SEG, HGS, SCA and multiple In-House courses for domestic and abroad clients. He is an active member of AAPG, SEG, CSEG, AADE, EAGE, HGS and GSH. He was the Chair of the pore pressure session AAPG 2014 and a Chair of the AAPG Deepwater Geoscience Workshops 2010-2016.
He is the winner of Gordon I. Atwater Award, GCAGS 2015 for his paper "A new approach to pore pressure prediction, Gulf of Mexico."
Courses
Robert F. Shelley, PE
Robert F. Shelley, PE
Mr. Shelley has over 40 years of experience with well completion, hydraulic fracturing design and reservoir evaluation working on numerous well completion projects worldwide including Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. He has multi-fractured horizontal completion experience as well, which includes working the Bakken, Barnett, Bone Springs, Eagle Ford, Fayetteville, Granite Wash, Haynesville, Marcellus, Monterey, Montney, Niobrara, Osage, Utica and Wolfcamp.
He has developed a practical low-cost diagnostic test to predict proppant placement and estimate the relative impact of formation discontinuities such as natural fractures on hydraulic fracture propagation. This test has been utilized on thousands of frac treatments performed worldwide to identify problematic proppant placement conditions. He was also an early adopter of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to better understand the interaction of the completion design with the reservoir. In one instance, this type of approach supported completion design modifications which resulted in twice the Granite Wash Gas Production for less cost.
Bob has served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer twice, sharing his knowledge of North American Basins with the world. In 2020-2021, he presented on the topic "Completion Design using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning – Case Histories". In 2015-2016, Bob lectured on the topic "Optimization of Multi-Fractured Horizontal Completions; A New Industry Challenge". In addition, he served on the SPE ATCE Well Completion Committee and was Chairman twice. Bob has published over 40 technical papers, many as lead author, and holds more than 10 patents.
Mr. Shelley has a BS in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University and Business Training from the University Of Oklahoma and East Tennessee State University.
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Robert 'Bob' Shoup
Robert 'Bob' Shoup
Bob Shoup is the Chief Geologist for Subsurface Consulting & Associates LLC (SCA) and the Director for Clastic Reservoir Systems. He is a Board Certified Petroleum Geologist with over 40 years' experience in basin analysis, regional studies, new play generation, and prospect evaluation. Bob began his career at Shell Oil in 1980. His 19 years with Shell were followed by four years working for private oil companies before becoming an independent consultant in 2003. A recognized expert in clastic depositional environments, rift basins, and syndepositional structural systems, Bob is a proven oil finder with a 46% exploration commercial success rate and over 185 MMBOE discovered resources.
Bob is an active contributor in the professional community, currently serving as the AAPG Vice President – Regions. He is a past Chair of the House of Delegates for AAPG, Past President of AAPG's Division of Professional Affairs (DPA), and past Secretary-Editor of the AAPG House of Delegates. He has served on numerous AAPG Committees and was Chairman of AAPG's Mentor, Membership and Student Chapter Committees. He is a recipient of AAPG's and, the DPA's Distinguished Service Award and was granted Honorary Life Membership in the DPA. He currently serves as an ethics lecturer for the DPA, He is a past President of Bangkok's Chapter of the South East Asia Petroleum Exploration Society and is a lifetime member of the South East Asia Petroleum Exploration Society, the Indonesian Petroleum Association and the Malaysian Geological Society.
Courses
- Applied Subsurface Geological Mapping
- Clastic Sedimentology, Stratigraphy and Reservoir Characterization with Core Workshop (5 days)
- Effective Petroleum Systems Analysis
- Geology-Based Topical Contouring Workshops (3 day)
- Geology-Based Topical Contouring Workshops (4 day)
- Geology-Based Topical Contouring Workshops (5 day)
- Mapping & Interpreting Clastic Reservoirs (4 day)
- Mapping & Interpreting Clastic Reservoirs (5 day)
- Project Management for Exploration and Development Projects
- QC Techniques for Reviewing Prospects & Acquisitions
- Quality Assurance/Quality Control Skills in Subsurface Mapping (QAQC)
- Resource Assessment and Risk and Uncertainty Management
Stephen A. Sonnenberg, PhD
Stephen A. Sonnenberg, PhD
Dr. Sonnenberg is a Professor and holds the Charles Boettcher Distinguished Chair in Petroleum Geology at the Colorado School of Mines. He specializes in unconventional reservoirs, sequence stratigraphy, tectonic influence on sedimentation, and petroleum geology. A native of Billings, Montana, Sonnenberg received BS and MS degrees in geology from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. degree in geology from the Colorado School of Mines. He has over twenty-five years experience in the industry.
Steve has served as President of several organizations including the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Rocky Mountain Association of Geologists, and Colorado Scientific Society. He also served on the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from 1997-2003 and was the Chair of the Commission from 1999-2003.
He is the recipient of the Young Alumnus Award, Outstanding Alumnus Award, and Mines Medal from the Colorado School of Mines, Distinguished Achievement Medal from Texas A&M University, the Halbouty Medal from AAPG, distinguished service awards from AAPG and RMAG, honorary membership awards from AAPG, RMAG and the Colorado Scientific Society and most recently the Robert J. Weimer Lifetime Contribution Award from the Rocky Mountain Section of the AAPG.
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Ray Spence
Ray Spence
Ray Spence has supported numerous projects in the upstream and midstream oil and gas business as well as portfolio planning, manufacturing and country entry strategy. Ray's expertise lies in strategic planning, decision framing, uncertainty modeling, and probabilistic analysis. As an educator, Ray has taught Decision and Risk Analysis, Value of Information, and Game Theory to clients around the world.
Ray has a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Houston and is pursuing coursework in sustainability. He is the 2020 – 2021 President of the Houston Chapter of the Society of Decision Professionals and currently serves on the executive committee.
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Subsurface Alliance
Subsurface Alliance
Subsurface Alliance (SA) consists of a network of subsurface specialists that uses a Team-of-Teams approach to efficiently solve problems that have a direct business impact in today's fast-paced and evolving energy industry. Subsurface Alliance is lead by Ewerton Araujo, PhD, Jorge Pastor, PhD, and Fermin Fernandez, Ibanez, PhD.
SA uses state-of-the-art geoscience and engineering tools together with specialized workflows to deliver world-class models and superior consulting and training services.
Courses
Ali Tura
Ali Tura
Ali Tura is Professor of Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) with over 30 years of industry experience prior to academia. Dr. Tura was Geophysical Senior Fellow at ConocoPhillips, Geophysical Advisor at Chevron, and 4D subject matter expert at Shell. He has also been part of the global exploration review teams for ConocoPhillips and Chevron. Dr. Tura is currently Chief Scientist at Tulip Geosciences consulting on global project reviews and geophysical technology implementation with several energy companies in addition to providing courses. He is also co-director of the industry consortium Reservoir Characterization Project (RCP) at CSM which is entering its 40 th year with around 20 industry sponsors. Dr. Tura's expertise is in reservoir characterization and monitoring, rock physics and AVO, multi-component and time-lapse seismic, CCUS, fiber optics, machine learning, and compressive sensing acquisition and processing. He was SEG Distinguished Lecturer in 2021 and received the Best Paper Award at SEG-IMAGE conference in 2021 (out of over 700 industry/vendor/academia papers). Dr. Tura serves on multiple SEG and SPE committees related to reservoirs, research, CCUS and technical committees for organizing various international conferences.
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Julia Smith Wellner, PhD
Julia Smith Wellner, PhD
Julia Smith Wellner is a marine geologist at the University of Houston. Julia received her bachelor's degree from Bryn Mawr College, her master's degree from the University of Alabama, and her Ph.D. from Rice University in 2001. Following her graduation from Rice, she worked for five years as a post-doctoral fellow and lecturer in the Department of Earth Science there. She is now Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Co-Director of the Geoscience Learning Center at the University of Houston. Her primary research interest is in Antarctic glacial history and marine geology and she has completed six field seasons offshore Antarctica on the icebreaker RV/IB Nathaniel Palmer. She also works in the Gulf of Mexico and Texas coast on projects related to coastal change and sediment budgets.
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James J. Willis, PhD
James J. Willis, PhD
James J. Willis received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geology from the now University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 1989 and 1990, respectively, and his Ph.D. as a National Science Foundation research fellow at Baylor University, Waco, Texas, in 1993. From 1994-1996, he studied planetary tectonics as a NASA-funded postdoctoral fellow at Southern Methodist University. In 1996, he returned to UL–Lafayette, where he was awarded in 1997 the Hensarling-Chapman Endowed Professorship in Geology. He began independent consulting activities in 1991, and in 2001 left academia for full-time consulting for clients ranging from one-man shops to supermajors. He rejoined UL–Lafayette as an adjunct professor from 2011–2018.
James is an active researcher, receiving several million dollars in grants from federal, state, and industry sources, presenting numerous talks, including a 2019 AAPG Levorsen award, and publishing on a diversity of geoscience topics, including a Grover E. Murray Best Published Paper award in 2017 and co-author of the inaugural GCAGS/GCSSEPM Transactions Best Student Paper award in 2018. He served as the GCAGS Publisher since 2006 and in various GCAGS/GCSSEPM Transactions editing capacities since 2006, including the 2014 and 2017–2020 Editor (named Permanent Transactions Editor in 2017), and Managing Editor since 2011, receiving a GCAGS Distinguished Service Award in 2018 and Honorary Membership in 2023. He served as the General Chair for GeoGulf 2020 (70th GCAGS/GCSSEPM Convention), the 1st hybrid geoscience conference in the world. He is a Past President and Honorary Lifetime Member of the Lafayette Geological Society and served as its Editor and Publisher from 2002-2018. In 2018, he founded the Willis School of Applied Geoscience, reformulating decades of industry-training experience to provide alternative opportunities for graduate-level education. In 2020, he received an Honorary Membership from GCSSEPM. He also joined the LSU faculty as an adjunct professor in 2020. In 2021, he co-founded the Society of Applied Geoscientists and Engineer (SAGE), serving as its President, General Chair for the SAGE 2022 Convention & Exposition, and Vice-Chair for the Benghazi International Geoscience & Engineering Conference 2022 (BIGEC 2022).
Courses
Lesli J. Wood, PhD
Lesli J. Wood, PhD
Dr. Wood joined the faculty at Colorado School of Mines in January 2015 as a Professor and the Robert Weimer Endowed Chair in Sedimentary and Petroleum Geology, where she is director of the Sedimentary Analogs Database and Research Program (SAnD). Prior to joining CSM, Dr. Wood held positions at the University of Texas at Austin, Amoco Production Company and Arco. She received her doctorate in 1992 from Colorado State University following her MS work at the University of Arkansas. Dr. Wood specializes in quantitative seismic geomorphology of clastic basins, structural and sedimentary system interactions, submarine mass failures, petroleum geology, mobile shales and geomorphology of Mars. She has served as SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology national Secretary-Treasurer, the GCSSEPM President and is active in the Geological Society of America, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Geological Society of Trinidad and Tobago. She also served as a member of the Ultra-Deepwater Advisory Committee for the U.S. Secretary of the Department of Energy and sits on the RPSEA Board of Directors and the RPSEA GECO2 advisory board. She serves as an Associate Editor at Geosphere and Interpretation. Dr. Wood has published widely on the nature of modern and ancient deep- to shallow-water systems around the world and has won numerous best paper and poster awards, including AAPG's Sproule Award and the 2014 EAGE Norman Falcon Award as co-author of the Best Paper in Petroleum Geosciences. Lesli is also the recipient of the AAPG's Robert R. Berg Outstanding Research Award in 2022. She, her wife and her pig are very pleased to be relocated back to the Rocky Mountains after 23 years in Texas.
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Jamie Woolsey
Jamie Woolsey
Jamie is a consulting geologist with 18 years of experience in petroleum exploration, development, and production of both unconventional and conventional plays throughout multiple basins in the US. Jamie has interpreted over a thousand horizontal wells in numerous basins and formations for various operators. Jamie received her B.S. and M.S. in Geology from the University of Arkansas. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas where she teaches subsurface geologic mapping and assists in mentoring the IBA team. Jamie currently serves as President of the AAPG Mid-Continent Section.
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Christopher K. Zahm, PhD
Christopher K. Zahm, PhD
Chris Zahm, PhD brings over 25 years of expertise in structurally complex fractured reservoir systems, gained through his work in both industry and academia. He has led numerous field trips and workshops, sharing his extensive knowledge on the subject. As an Adjunct Professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences, Chris taught Petroleum Basin Analysis to graduate students, fostering the next generation of geoscientists.
His research focuses on characterizing and modeling natural fracture systems in subsurface reservoirs across the globe, including regions such as the U.S. Permian and Rocky Mountain Basins, Alaska, the North Sea, Indonesia, offshore Brazil, Bolivia, the Bahamas, and the Middle East. Chris holds a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.Sc. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. from the Colorado School of Mines.