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Vol. 58 No. 12

December 2006

SPE News

SPE To Open Office in Moscow

The SPE Board of Directors has approved establishing an office in the Russia/Caspian region, where membership has grown from 138 members in 2000 to 762 members at the close of 2005. The Russia/Caspian region includes the countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Sakhalin, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. There are currently nine SPE sections active in the region.

Plans call for the office to be set up in Moscow for the purpose of expanding membership, encouraging local members’ participation in regional and global activities, and promoting greater use of SPE services and materials, including www.spe.org and the SPE Certification program, throughout the area.

The recommendation to create the Moscow office was made by the SPE New Offices Task Force and approved at the January 2006 meeting by the Board Committee on Finance and Administration. The recommendation and approval to form this office are based on the SPE Board policy adopted in 1994 that states that new offices will be considered in metropolitan areas where SPE membership is 15% or more of the total SPE membership or in areas where the existing services network is unable to provide a level of service comparable to that offered to SPE members elsewhere. The new office also will raise the Society’s profile and promote membership growth in the region.

SPE Young Professionals were recognized as finalists in the Best Youth Education Program category during the Petroleum Economist's first awards ceremony in London. The category highlighted companies and programs that have made significant contributions to the development and implementation of educational activities that introduce young people to energy industry careers. Representing SPE at the event were (back row, from left) Anthony Onukwu, Léon Beugelsdijk, Leo Roodhart, John Furniss, and Jesus Bronchalo;(middle row, from left) John Donachie, Clara Altobell, and Becci Elson; and (front) Niki Bradbury.

Texas Tech Wins Outstanding Student Chapter Award

The SPE Student Chapter from Texas Tech U. was recognized as the 2006 Outstanding Student Chapter at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio. The award came largely in recognition of the chapter’s outstanding contributions to the community around the school and its maintaining a strong, cohesive organization during significant changes in their department’s administration. The chapter also won Student Organization of the Year at Texas Tech.

Finalists for the award included the U. of Ibadan, Istanbul Technical U., King Fahd U. of Petroleum and Minerals, Malaysia U. of Technology, and Pennsylvania State U.

The U. of Ibadan chapter hosted a quiz competition among high school students as part of its “Catch-Them-Young” outreach program. Winning students and their teachers were invited guests at the chapter’s annual dinner and awards banquet.

At Istanbul Technical U., students worked to build community and professionalism among members. One of their proudest accomplishments is an agreement with the Chamber of Petroleum Engineers in Turkey to offer certified short courses that will allow graduates to become engineering managers at filling and service stations.

Besides hosting a visit by 2005 SPE President Giovanni Paccaloni, King Fahd U. focused on volunteerism, including hosting a beach cleaning day to get the message to the public that petroleum engineers care about the environment. In addition to maintaining a very active chapter, the group worked to establish the Middle East Student Council to pull together representatives from the growing programs in that region.

The students at U. Teknologi Malaysia sponsored 22 events over the year, including participation in the Shell Inter-Varsity Student Paper Presentation Contest. The students helped publicize that event to all universities in the country through a Web site, mailings, and mass media.

At Pennsylvania State, the chapter focused on growth, largely in membership and visibility. Attendance at chapter meetings almost doubled over the preceding year and there was a similar increase in attendance at ATCE. Revitalization of interest in the group has spread to include students from other colleges and organizations on campus, and fundraising has increased significantly during the past year.

Colorado School of Mines Wins 2006 Petrobowl

Colorado School of Mines’ student team won the 2006 Petrobowl Championship by beating Marietta College in the final round during the fifth annual competition at the 2006 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio. Fourteen student chapters participated in this year’s competition, organized by the Gulf Coast Section Emerging Leaders Program. The Petrobowl competition, sponsored by Petroskills, matches four-person teams from participating universities with each other to answer questions ranging from the fundamentals of petroleum engineering to current events in the oil and gas industry.

Students From Rice, Stanford, Alberta Win International Student Paper Contest

Guarav Bhatnagar, a doctoral student at Rice U.; Lisa Stright, a graduate student at Stanford U.; and Krystina Vidiuk, an undergraduate student at the U. of Alberta, won first place in their respective divisions at the 2006 International Student Paper Contest. The contest was held during the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio.

Bhatnagar’s project developed contour plots that are relatively insensitive to changes in seafloor depth, temperature, and geothermal gradient. Their high quality makes the plots ideal base cases for providing quantitative information about the possible types of hydrate accumulation at any given location without performing any numerical simulations.

Stright developed a methodology in which shale drapes are accurately upscaled and history matched to production data while maintaining the geological concept that describes the drape geometry. Her coupled model of cell centers and cell edges enables more flexible reservoir modeling, opening up the potential for modeling and history matching complex geological features effectively at the scale where they are relevant, without additional computational cost of flow simulation.

Vidiuk used a compositional simulator to model the flow of an H2S gas front through aquifers that might be used for disposal of the gas. She found that parameters such as the absolute permeability anisotropy ratio and location of well perforations have little effect on the quality of the model, but relative permeability and capillary pressure curves must be more thoroughly investigated to predict the outcome of the gas injection.

At the doctoral level, Hervé Gross of Stanford placed second and Eider Niz-Velasquez of the U. of Calgary placed third. At the graduate level, Elkin Arroyo of Texas A&M U. placed second and Tarek Hamida of the U. of Alberta placed third. At the undergraduate level, Brittani Zalenski of Texas A&M U. placed second and Jorge Rodrigues of U. Federal do Rio de Janeiro placed third.