Technical Program Keynote Speakers
Monday, 26 September ● 0800-1000 hours
SESSION 1: STIMULATION AND PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCEMENT - 1
Joseph A. Ayoub
Reservoir and Production & Completion Domain Career Leader
Schlumberger
Joseph A. Ayoub is the reservoir and production & completion engineering domains career leader for Schlumberger. Prior to that, he held many engineering and operations posts in the US, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Ayoub has taught numerous industry seminars and published more than 25 papers, mainly in the areas of well testing, hydraulic fracturing, and frac and pack. His involvement was instrumental for introducing the pressure derivative method and for launching the frac and pack technique in the GOM in the early 1990. More recently, he led the formation of industry consortiums to investigate many technical challenges in the areas of stimulation and sand control.
Ayoub has an engineering degree and a DEA (master's degree) from Ecole Centrale de Paris. He was named Schlumberger Advisor in 1999 and SPE Distinguished Member in 2005. Ayoub served on numerous SPE committees including as chair, and served as SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 1999.
1400-1600 hours
SESSION 12: RESERVOIR MODELLING - 1
Hamdi Tchelepi
Associate Professor, Energy Resources Engineering, and Co-Director,
Center for Computational Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES)
Stanford University
1630-1830 hours
SESSION 14: RESERVES AND ECONOMICS
Ganesh Thakur
2012 SPE President
Chevron Energy Technology Company (ETC)
Ganesh
Thakur is a world-recognized leader in reservoir engineering & simulation,
secondary recovery, reservoir and well productivity improvement, heavy
oil, horizontal well technology and EOR. He is also known for the emergence
of reservoir management (RM)—in particular waterflooding—as a key interdisciplinary
practice. Thakur has an impressive list of publications and teaching engagements
conducted around the world. His skills and expertise are called upon widely
in the design and operation of RM programs, mentoring technical professionals,
and serving as an ambassador of technical capabilities to National Oil
Companies and Government Ministries. He is an SPE Distinguished Member
and has served as Technical Director – Reservoir for the Board of Directors,
and an SPE Distinguished Lecturer. Thakur has authored 50 technical articles,
three books, edited two SPE reprint series, and presented over 150 lectures/short
courses around the world.
He earned an BS degree in petroleum engineering from Indian School of Mines and MS and PhD degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering, plus an MA degree in mathematics, all from Pennsylvania State University. In addition, he earned an executive MBA degree from Houston Baptist University. He has served as an adjunct professor at USC, University of Texas (Permian Basin), University of Houston, and Houston Baptist University.
1630-1830 hours
SESSION 15: EOR LAB INVESTIGATIONS
S.M. Farouq Ali
PERL Canada Ltd.
S.M. Farouq Ali was born in India and is president of H.O.R. Heavy Oil Recovery Technologies in Alberta. He is an honorary professor at the University of Calgary and professor at the University of Regina. Prior to this, he served for 40 years as professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Alberta and at Pennsylvania State University. He has supervised more than 200 graduate students, authored more than 500 papers, and three books. He serves as consultant to oil companies, and has done more than 300 reservoir studies worldwide.
Ali has been honored for his work on thermal recovery and simulation with awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was awarded honorary doctorates by two major universities in Russia, and also received the Academy’s Kapitsa Gold Medal. In 2007, he received the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ highest award, the Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal for technical excellence. In 2009, he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering
Tuesday, 27 September ● 1330-1530 hours
SESSION 24: RESERVOIR MONITORING AND TESTING - 1
Medhat M. Kamal
Senior Research Consultant
Chevron Energy Technology Company
Medhat (Med) M. Kamal is a Senior Research Consultant and leader of the Dynamic Reservoir Characterization group with Chevron Energy Technology Company in San Ramon, California. Kamal has more than 35 years of industry experience in well testing, reservoir description, and production and reservoir engineering. He is the author of multiple technical articles in SPE journals and has served as a technical editor, review chairman and executive editor of SPE Reservoir Engineering and Evaluation. Kamal is the editor and lead author of SPE Monograph 23 Transient Well Testing.
He is a past SPE Distinguished Lecturer and winner of many society awards, including the Cedric K. Ferguson Medal, the SPE Distinguished Service Award, and the Texas Petroleum Engineer of the Year Award. He has served on and chaired multiple SPE committees, including the Text Book and Monograph Committees, the first SPE Board Committee on R&D and the first SPE R&D conference. Kamal holds a BS degree from Cairo University and MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University all in petroleum engineering. He has served on the SPE Board of Directors as the Regional Director of the Western North America Region.
1600-1800 hours
SESSION 27: FACILITIES
Cosan Ayan
Reservoir Engineering Advisor
Schlumberger
Cosan Ayan is a Reservoir Engineering Advisor for Schlumberger Oilfield Services, based in Dubai. Currently, he is the Reservoir Domain Head for Schlumberger Wireline and had similar headquarters positions for Data and Consulting Services and Testing Services. During his 20 years with Schlumberger, he held Reservoir Engineering positions in Dubai, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Aberdeen, Houston and Jakarta.
Ayan has a BS degree from Middle East Technical University-Ankara and an MS and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University-College Station all in petroleum engineering. He is the author of more than 50 technical papers on transient testing, reservoir monitoring and reservoir engineering and has several patents on interpretation, downhole tools and acquisition techniques. He has been on several technical committees for SPE and served as a SPE Distinguished Lecturer during 2006. Currently, he is the Executive Editor-Formation Evaluation of the SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering Journal.
1600-1800 hours
SESSION 29: PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT
Craig W. Van Kirk
Professor
Colorado School of Mines
Craig W. Van Kirk is a professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, and Special Advisor to CSM’s President. He joined CSM as a professor in 1978 after 11 years in the petroleum industry worldwide. In 1980, he became Department Head of PE, and served in that capacity for 27 years before stepping down in 2007. He has three degrees in Petroleum Engineering including a Doctorate.
Prior to his present position at CSM, he spent eleven years in the global petroleum industry in the areas of reservoir engineering and simulation, supplemental recovery, integrated reservoir management, production forecasting, and economic optimization. Van Kirk has provided both written and oral testimony to the US Congress and other government agencies on topics of national and global energy concerns. He is involved in several areas of research, has published articles and monographs on reservoir management and related topics, and is active in several professional organizations.
1600-1800 hours
SESSION 30: RESERVOIR MONITORING AND TESTING - 2
Fikri J. Kuchuk
Schlumberger Fellow
Schlumberger
Fikri J. Kuchuk, a Schlumberger Fellow, is currently Chief Reservoir Engineer for Schlumberger Testing Services. Previously, he was Chief Reservoir Engineer for Schlumberger in Middle East and Asia, and before he was Senior Scientist and Program Manager at Schlumberger-Doll Research Center, Ridgefield, Connecticut, US. He was a consulting professor at the Petroleum Engineering Department of Stanford University from 1988 to 1994 and taught Advanced Well Testing. He has an MS degree from the Technical University of Istanbul, and MS and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, California, all in petroleum engineering.
He has published more than 150 papers in science and engineering journals and contributed chapters for a few books on fluid flow in porous media, formation evaluation, pressure transient well testing, production logging, wireline formation testers, horizontal and multilateral well placement and performance, permanent reservoir monitoring, water conformance and control, and reservoir engineering and management. He has also co-authored 2 books titled Pressure Transient Formation and Well Testing, Volume 57: Convolution, Deconvolution and Nonlinear Estimation (Developments in Petroleum Science) and Transient Well Testing by SPE.
Wednesday, 28 September, 0800-1000 hours
SESSION 31: GEOMECHANICS
Mark D. Zoback
Benjamin M. Page Professor of Earth Science and Professor of Geophysics, Department of Geophysics
Stanford University
Mark D. Zoback is the Benjamin M. Page Professor of Geophysics at Stanford University. He is also co-director of the Stanford Rock Physics and Borehole Geophysics industrial consortium. Zoback conducts research on in-situ stress, fault mechanics, and reservoir geomechanics.
He is the author of a textbook titled Reservoir Geomechanics and was co-PI of SAFOD, the scientific drilling project that drilled and sampled the San Andreas Fault at 3 km depth. He is the 2008 recipient of the Walter H. Bucher medal from the American Geophysical Union. He was a co-founder of GeoMechanics International in1996, where he was Chairman of the Board until 2008. He currently serves as a senior adviser to Baker Hughes, Inc.
0800-1000 hours
SESSION 32: I-FIELD
Iraj Ershaghi
O P Milligan Professor and Director, Petroleum Engineering Program
University of Southern California
Iraj Ershaghi is the Omar B. Milligan Professor and Director of the Petroleum Engineering Program at USC. He is also serving as the USC Executive Director of the Center for Smart Oilfield Technologies at USC. He has a B.S. degree in petroleum engineering from University of Tehran and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from USC. Prior to joining the faculty at USC in 1972, he worked for AGIP-SIRIP, Signal Oil and Gas Company and California State Lands Commission. His areas of research and publications are reservoir characterization, well testing and improved recovery processes.
He has been the recipient of SPE's Distinguished Faculty Award, Distinguished Member Award, Western North America Distinguished Service Award, Technology Transfer Award for Development of the Smart Oilfield Technology Curriculum and Western Regional North America Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award. As a fellow of Institute for Advancement of Engineering, he received the Outstanding Educator Award of American Association for Advancement of Engineering and the Outstanding Educator Award of Orange County Council of Engineers and Scientists. He served as SPE's Distinguished Lecturer during 2007.
1030-1230 hours
SESSION 33: UNCONVENTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES IN E&P: A CANDID REACH TO OTHER FIELDS
Mazen Y. Kanj
PE Specialist with the Reservoir Engineering Technology Team (RETT)
Saudi Aramco
Mazen Y. Kanj is a PE Specialist with the Reservoir Engineering Technology Team (RETT) of Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Research Center (EXPEC ARC) He is also the Focus Area Champion on reservoir in situ sensing and intervention technologies at Saudi Aramco. Before joining Saudi Aramco in 2003, he was a senior research scientist at the Poromechanics Institute of the University of Oklahoma, Norman. He was an invited member of the poromechanics committee of the engineering mechanics division of the American Society of Civil Engineers and associate editor for the SPE Journal. Mazen earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and a PhD degree from the University of Oklahoma, all in civil engineering.
Mettin Sitti
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Mettin Sitti is currently a professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and the director of the NanoRobotics Laboratory. He received his PhD from University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1999, and was a research scientist at University of California at Berkeley until 2002. His research interests include micro/nano-robotics, miniature mobile robots, biologically inspired micro/nano-systems, and micro/nano-manufacturing.
He was appointed as the Adamson Career Faculty Fellow in 2007. He received the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2005. He was elected as the Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society for 2006-2008. He was the Vice President of the Technical Activities in the IEEE Nanotechnology Council for 2008-2010, and he is the co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Micro/Nano-Mechatronics and an associate editor for the IEEE Trans. on Robotics and ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Roland N. Horne
Professor-Energy Resources
Stanford University
Roland N. Horne is the Thomas Davies Barrow Professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, and was the Chairman of Petroleum Engineering from 1995 to 2006. He holds BE, PhD and DSc degrees from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, all in engineering science.
Horne has been an SPE Distinguished Lecturer, and has been awarded the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty, the Lester C. Uren Award, and the John Franklin Carl Award. Horne is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and is also an SPE Honorary Member.
Ulrich B. Wiesner
Spencer T. Olin Professor
Cornell University
Ulrich Wiesner studied chemistry at the University of Mainz, Germany, and UC Irvine, CA, gaining his PhD. He spent two years postdoc at the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle de la ville de Paris (E.S.P.C.I.), France.
He joined the Cornell University, NY, MS&E faculty in 1999 as a tenured associate professor, became a full professor in 2005, and since 2008 is the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering.
1030-1230 hours
SESSION 37: ADVANCED COMPLETION SYSTEMS
Mark Johnson
Senior Artificial Lift Consultant, EMPC Subsurface Engineering & Operations Support
ExxonMobil
Mark Johnson has more than 32 years of experience with ExxonMobil. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas in 1978. Over the course of his career, Johnson has developed a diverse background in subsurface engineering that includes expertise in the areas of artificial lift systems, tubing design, completions & workover design, and well surveillance and productivity analysis. He has held key technical and leadership positions in the Production and Global Services organizations, and he has provided expert technical advice to operations in over 13 countries.
Johnson has been actively engaged in the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the American Petroleum Institute (API), and the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), participating in committees related to artificial lift. In 2010, Johnson was named Senior Artificial Lift Consultant for ExxonMobil Production Company where he is the senior technical advisor in the company for Artificial Lift.
