Jablonowski

I would like to welcome our subscribers to the January 2013 issue of SPE Economics & Management. SPE E&M covers a wide range of topics of interest to petroleum engineers, managers, and others involved in the energy business, including resource and reserve evaluation, portfolio and asset management, project valuation, strategic decision making and processes, uncertainty/risk assessment and mitigation, systems modeling and forecasting, benchmarking and performance indicators, information and knowledge management, digital energy, and petroleum economics.

We begin 2013 with many changes to the Editorial Board. The journal's first Executive Editor, Frank Koch, has sailed into retirement, literally (Frank is on an Antarctic cruise as I write this). Under Frank's leadership from 2009–2012, the journal migrated from semi-annual to quarterly publication, published 60 peer-reviewed articles, and increased circulation to 1,100 subscribers. Congratulations to Frank and his editorial team on this accomplishment!

As the new Executive Editor, it is my goal to build on this track record of success. The Editorial Board will continue to publish timely, high-quality articles to make the journal an outlet of choice for authors, and will remain responsive to suggestions from our readership.

The first item on the Executive Editor to-do list last fall was to organize the Editorial Board. Readers will recognize these names from the previous board: Steve Begg (University of Adelaide), Reidar Bratvold (University of Stavanger), James Crompton (Chevron), John Howell (Portfolio Decisions Inc.), and Wumi Iledare (Louisiana State University). Thank you to these gentlemen for carrying on in this role. Your expertise and editorial experience is much appreciated.

In addition, the Editorial Board has been enlarged to increase its diversity with respect to subject matter expertise, sectors and company types, and geography. I am very pleased to announce our new Associate Editors: Ellen Coopersmith (Decision Frameworks), Benoit Couet (Schlumberger), James Dyer (University of Texas at Austin), Victor Koosh (Caesar Systems), Steve Letros (Shell), Mohammad Mian (Saudi Aramco), Neeraj Nandurdikar (Independent Project Analysis), Curtis Phillips (Consultant), Brian Putt (Chevron), Astrid Sorenson (Statoil), and Luigi Saputelli (Frontender). Thank you to our new Associate Editors for agreeing to serve SPE and the journal.

I am very excited about the team we have assembled and about the journal's prospects. In my next Executive Summary, I will review the results from the journal's recent reader survey and will share more of the Editorial Board's plans. Comments and suggestions for improvement are always welcome, especially for special issue topics. Please feel free to contact me at c.jablonowski@shell.com.

I will close with some background information about me. I am employed by Shell E&P Company in Houston. I first joined Shell in 1991, but during a 13-year hiatus from Shell starting in 1998, I worked for the US government as an energy/political economist, for IPA as a benchmarking consultant, and most recently at the University of Texas at Austin on the faculty of petroleum and geosystems engineering. I rejoined Shell in 2011, and in my current position, I work on research and applications in cost engineering and risk analysis, with emphasis on well engineering. My passion is research-to-practice--that is, bridging the gap between scholarly research and implementation--and I will emphasize this interest in my work with the journal.