SPE Stephen A. Holditch Visionary Leadership Award

The Stephen A. Holditch Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes individuals that have devoted significant time, effort, thought, and action and have demonstrated exceptional visionary leadership resulting in a lasting and momentous impact on the Society of Petroleum Engineers and/or the oil and gas industry.

View past recipients.

Eligibility Requirements

The conditions of eligibility are as follows:

• Candidates who are living professional members of the Society of Petroleum Engineers shall be eligible to receive the award.
   
• Deceased members may not be nominated for SPE Awards. If a previously nominated candidate dies after 1 January in the year of presentation, and if duly selected for the award, the presentation shall be made posthumously in accordance with special procedures to be prescribed by the SPE Board of Directors. Posthumous award presentations are otherwise prohibited.
   
• The recipient of the Stephen A. Holditch Visionary Leadership Award shall be ineligible for any other SPE major award for a period of five years. If nominated for the other awards, nominators will be informed as to the ineligibility of the candidate. Additionally, the nominators will be required to resubmit the nominations with updated materials covering the intervening five years.
   
• No member of the award selection committee shall be eligible to receive the Award during and for a period of 24 months after the expiration of his term of service on the award committee.
   
• No officer or member of the International Board of Directors of the Society shall be eligible to receive the Award during and for a period of 24 months after the expiration of his term of service on the Board.
   
• No recipient of SPE Honorary Membership shall be eligible to receive the award.
   
• The award may only be presented to an individual for truly outstanding achievement.
   
• Past recipients of the award are ineligible to receive it a second time.
   
• Self-nominated candidates are not eligible.

Nominations

• Nominations will be accepted only from current members of the SPE International Board of Directors. The board member nominator of record will champion their candidate.
   
• Professional SPE members may make candidate suggestions to their regional director or technical director or any current member of the SPE International Board of Directors.
   
• Each nomination shall be accompanied by a full and complete statement of the reasons for proposing the candidate, with a record of the candidate's professional and industrial achievements in sufficient detail to enable to the committee to pass judgment on the candidate's worthiness to receive the award. 
   
• The nomination will be accompanied by letters of recommendation supporting the nomination from colleagues familiar with the candidate’s body of work.
   
• The deadline to receive nominations for consideration in a given cycle of eligibility is 15 February of the given year. Eligible candidates will be added to the Active Candidate List. 
   
• Nomination proposal and letters of recommendation are collected by the Awards and Recognitions Manager. A coversheet is prepared, and the packet of materials will be presented to the Board Committee on Member Programs for review.
   
• All eligible nominations received will be presented to the Board Committee on Member Programs by the posting date for the board meeting at which the candidates will be reviewed and approved.
   
• Nomination materials are confidential. The nominator may have access to the nomination form or support letter he or she provided but shall not have access to the other endorsements in the packet. Nominees cannot have access to the nomination packet. SPE will not release information about the nomination packet except to the members of the committee and to the members of the SPE Board of Directors, except during adjudication when access will be limited to the committee. 

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SPE Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award

(No longer available)

The SPE Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award recognized contributions to SPE and the E&P industry that exhibited such exceptional devotion of time, effort, thought, and action as to set them apart from other contributions. This award was given to relatively few individuals whose contributions to the industry stood out even above their excellence of services to SPE.