NEW CHALLENGES, NEW SOLUTIONS TWENTIETH SPE IMPROVED OIL RECOVERY CONFERENCE IOR2016 NEWS Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 April 9-13, 2016, Tulsa, Oklahoma Five iOR 2016 PiOneeRs selected FROm cROwded, distinguished Field There was an embarrassment of riches for the committee tasked with selecting the IOR Pioneer awardees for the 2016 SPE Improved Oil Recovery conference. As was the case in SPE IOR 2014, five candidates made the final cut to be named an IOR Pioneer and to be honored at the 20th SPE Improved Oil Recovery conference, scheduled for April 9–13, 2016, in Tulsa, Okla. In all, 19 distinguished nomi- nees were on the “short” list for SPE IOR 2016, compared with 11 for SPE IOR 2014—which itself was deemed a substantial number of candidates 2 years ago. The SPE IOR 2016 Pioneers are Richard Hutchins, Sada Joshi, Jenn-Tai Liang, Lanny Schoeling, and Ali Yousef. These five IOR Pioneers will be feted at a special recognition luncheon on April 11, 2016, at Cox Business Center in downtown Tulsa— also the site for the conference. Articles on each of the 2016 IOR Pioneers follow this one. The biennial conference, sponsored by the Mid-Continent Section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, is the world’s larg- est gathering of petroleum scientists and oil and gas industry professionals focused on advancing knowledge and technology to improve and enhance oil and gas recovery. Since the inception of the IOR Pioneer award in 1984, when the inaugural Pioneer class of 10 was selected, there have been only five other instances when there were five honorees—and only one such quintet occurred prior to 2000. Now it’s happened for two consecutive SPE IOR conferences—repeating the trend of 2006 and 2008, the only other time that trend has occurred. Over the past 32 years, 72 individuals have been recog- nized as IOR Pioneers, including this year’s group (see table, next page). Noteworthy is the fact that some of the 2016 Pioneers have performed groundbreaking work outside the confines of the more narrowly defined area of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that historically has dominated the Pioneer awards. Advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, included under the broader umbrella term of improved oil recovery (IOR), have revolutionized the oil and natural gas industry by ren- dering hitherto intractable “tight” resources recoverable at viable rates. The five honorees will be recognized at IOR 2016 for their significant contributions to IOR and EOR, according to Dwight Dauben, chairman of the IOR 2016 Pioneer Awards committee. While the number of awardees typically ranges from three to five, the inclusion of 19 nominees apparently helped support a number of awards at the higher end of the range. “All of the 19 candidates had excellent credentials and will once again be considered for 2018, if he or she did not receive the award this time,” Dauben said. He noted that the award recognizes and expresses special appreciation to individuals who have pioneered and made signifi- cant advancement in the technology for improving oil recovery. “I think that improved oil recovery processes will continue to be important for the longer term. The selection of deserving candidates, along with the publicity that surrounds these awards, will help to put a focus on IOR and also encourage others in their involvement in the technology.” “I think that improved oil recovery pro- cesses will continue to be important for the longer term. The selection of deserving candidates, along with the publicity that surrounds these awards, will help to put a focus on IOR and also encourage others in their involve- ment in the technology.” Dwight Dauben, Chairman IOR 2016 Pioneer Committee Dauben Register NOW and $AVE see page 4
Transcript
NEW CHALLENGES, NEW SOLUTIONS
TWENTIETH SPE IMPROVEDOIL RECOVERY CONFERENCE
IOR2016 NEWSVolume 6, Number 1, 2016
April 9-13, 2016, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Five iOR 2016 PiOneeRs selected FROm cROwded, distinguished FieldThere was an embarrassment of riches for the committee tasked with selecting the IOR Pioneer awardees for the 2016 SPE Improved Oil Recovery conference.
As was the case in SPE IOR 2014, five candidates made the final cut to be named an IOR Pioneer and to be honored at the 20th SPE Improved Oil Recovery conference, scheduled for April 9–13, 2016, in Tulsa, Okla. In all, 19 distinguished nomi-nees were on the “short” list for SPE IOR 2016, compared with 11 for SPE IOR 2014—which itself was deemed a substantial number of candidates 2 years ago.
The SPE IOR 2016 Pioneers are Richard Hutchins, Sada Joshi, Jenn-Tai Liang, Lanny Schoeling, and Ali Yousef. These five IOR Pioneers will be feted at a special recognition luncheon on April 11, 2016, at Cox Business Center in downtown Tulsa—also the site for the conference. Articles on each of the 2016 IOR Pioneers follow this one.
The biennial conference, sponsored by the Mid-Continent Section of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, is the world’s larg-est gathering of petroleum scientists and oil and gas industry professionals focused on advancing knowledge and technology to improve and enhance oil and gas recovery.
Since the inception of the IOR Pioneer award in 1984, when the inaugural Pioneer class of 10 was selected, there have been only five other instances when there were five honorees—and only one such quintet occurred prior to 2000. Now it’s happened for two consecutive SPE IOR conferences—repeating the trend of 2006 and 2008, the only other time that trend has occurred.
Over the past 32 years, 72 individuals have been recog-nized as IOR Pioneers, including this year’s group (see table, next page).
Noteworthy is the fact that some of the 2016 Pioneers have performed groundbreaking work outside the confines of the more narrowly defined area of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) that historically has dominated the Pioneer awards. Advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, included under the broader umbrella term of improved oil recovery (IOR), have revolutionized the oil and natural gas industry by ren-dering hitherto intractable “tight” resources recoverable at viable rates.
The five honorees will be recognized at IOR 2016 for their significant contributions to IOR and EOR, according to Dwight Dauben, chairman of the IOR 2016 Pioneer Awards committee. While the number of awardees typically ranges from three to five, the inclusion of 19 nominees apparently helped support a number of awards at the higher end of the range.
“All of the 19 candidates had excellent credentials and will once again be considered for 2018, if he or she did not receive the award this time,” Dauben said.
He noted that the award recognizes and expresses special appreciation to individuals who have pioneered and made signifi-cant advancement in the technology for improving oil recovery.
“I think that improved oil recovery processes will continue to be important for the longer term. The selection of deserving candidates, along with the publicity that surrounds these awards, will help to put a focus on IOR and also encourage others in their involvement in the technology.”
“I think that improved oil recovery pro-cesses will continue to be important for the longer term. The selection of deserving candidates, along with the publicity that surrounds these awards, will help to put a focus on IOR and also encourage others in their involve-ment in the technology.”
Dwight Dauben, ChairmanIOR 2016 Pioneer Committee
Dauben
Register NOW and $AVE
see page 4
Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 Page 2
Award’s criteriaDauben, a Tulsa-based petroleum consultant and a 2002 IOR Pioneer honoree, described the basic criteria for being nominat-ed as an IOR Pioneer as early and long-term involvement in the development and/or application of IOR and EOR: “[The term] ‘IOR’ implies processes that improve oil recovery during the secondary and tertiary phases of recovery. It includes the classic…EOR processes that are designed to improve displacement or sweep. These EOR processes include the injection of chemicals, gas, polymers, or the generation of heat into the reservoir. IOR is a broader term that includes not only the classic EOR processes but also any process that results in the improvement of recovery beyond that achieved by standard methods. These include improved waterflooding techniques, use of horizontal wells to improve secondary recovery performance, pres-sure maintenance, gravity-assisted gas- or water-injection, water shut-off, cold production of heavy oil, and the in-situ upgrading of heavy oil. The drilling, logging, and completion of wells are excluded from consideration even though that can impact recovery.”
Additionally, according to Dauben, nominees must be involved in and enjoy industry recognition for their involvement in one or more phases of IOR activity, including laboratory testing, software development or application, project design, field appli-cation, and monitoring of field performance. A prospective IOR Pioneer must also be a member of SPE during that IOR activity and generally have established two to four decades of their career to the development and application of leading-edge technology designed to increase recovery from older oil fields.
32 YEARS OF IOR PIONEERS
Year IOR Pioneers1984 Francis R. Conley, Lloyd E. Elkins, Ted M. Geffen, L.M. Holm, Howard A. Koch, Jr., Fred H. Poettmann, R.
Vincent Smith, P.L. Terwilliger, L.W. Welch, Jr., Phillip D. White1986 Robert J. Blackwell, Ben H. Caudle, Lincoln F. Elkins, Claude R. Hocott, Michael Prats
1988 E.R. Brownscombe, Elmond L. Claridge, H. Robert Froning, R.L. Reed
1990 W. Barney Gogarty, John P. Heller, Joseph J. Taber
1992 Ted R. Blevins, R.C. Earlougher, Henry J. Ramey, Jr., Arlie M. Skov
1994 J.C. Melrose, Necmettin Mungan
1996 Robert S. Schechter, Lowell R. Smith, Ben Sloat, Fred I. Stalkup
1998 William E. Brigham, C. Robert Fast, George J. Hirasaki, Thomas K. Perkins
2000 Bob Barnett, Larry W. Lake, Richard Nelson, Burton B. Sandiford
2002 Howard Ferrell, S.M. Farouq Ali, W.C. Hardy, W.L. Martin, George L. Stegemeier
2004 Philip J. Closmann, Harry Surkalo, G. Paul Wilhite
2006 Jae H. Bae, Don W. Green, Hossein Kazemi, Franklin M. Orr Jr., Gary Pope
2008 Dwight L. Dauben, Kishore Kumar Mohanty, Kenneth Sorbie, Randall Scott Seright, Michael R. Todd
2010 Wang Demin, Jeffrey A. Jones, Gordon Moore, David Zornes
2012 Chun Huh, Brij Maini, Malcolm Pitts, William Rossen
2014 Betty Felber, Sudarshan Mehta, Karl Miller, Ahmad Moradi, and Norman Morrow
2016 Richard Hutchins, Sada Joshi, Jenn-Tai Liang, Lanny Schoeling, Ali Yousef
Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 Page 3
iOR PiOneeR PROFiles
PiOneeR hutchins deemed a tOP exPeRt in wateR shutOFF, cOnFORmanceRichard Hutchins, Technical Advisor in Schlumberger Ltd.’s Stimulation Fluids Engineering Group, has been lauded as a leading expert in water shutoff and conformance improvement by his peers. He has expertise in polymer and foam-fracturing fluids, fracture conductivity, fluid loss measurement, fracture cleanup, and both lab and field aspects of water control.
“For many years, (Hutchins) has been, without question, one of the very top experts in the world in the area of water shutoff and conformance improvement using polymers and gels,” Randy Seright, Senior Engineer at the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology and a 2008 IOR Pioneer, wrote in his IOR Pioneer letter of nomination for Hutchins. “In my mind, he is certainly Schlumberger’s top asset in these areas.”
Hutchins, who started his career at Unocal in 1975, made extensive advances in the development and application of gels for conformance improvement, especially for high-temperature applications, according to Seright. He also is the inventor of the HPAM-hydroquinone-HMTA gel system.
Additionally, Seright noted, Hutchins’ development of delaying gelation of aqueous polymers at elevated temperatures using novel organic crosslinkers is widely respected throughout the industry. He has also published highly regarded papers in the areas of:
• Polymer flooding.• Inter-well tracer studies.• Fracture-face damage by polymers and fracture clean-up.• Use of foams for well stimulation.
“I have known Rick for 35 years, which is basically his ten-ure in the IOR area. He is a remarkably humble, open, and helpful person, Seright commented. “I have regularly sought and appreciated his advice and knowledge in the area of using polymers and gels for enhanced oil recovery over the past 30+ years. He has also regularly played helpful roles in organizing SPE conferences, forums, and workshops.
“Most of Rick’s work has been directly relevant to field applications, and indeed, many of his papers report results of field application of his ideas. I know that Rick has been extensively involved in field applications throughout the world, both dur-ing his time at Unocal and at Schlumberger.”
Career pathIn his 19 years with Unocal, initially in California, Hutchins focused on production chemistry and EOR research (foam, steamflooding, pressure transient measurements, inter-well and single-well chemical tracers, polymer flooding, and water shutoff). Of his Unocal tenure, he spent 2 years in technology support groups (Texas) servicing worldwide requests.
Hutchins’ current projects for Schlumberger in Sugar Land, Texas, are in product development and include managing the water control portfolio, developing new products for water control and frac fluids, and mentoring in his areas of expertise. He also provides help to operating company representatives and Schlumberger field personnel.
CredentialsA member of the 25-Year Club of SPE, Hutchins serves as an SPE Associate Technical Editor for the Production & Operations journal and has served on the organizing committee or as a committee co-chair at several SPE conferences throughout his career.
He currently chairs an American Petroleum Institute subcommittee setting standards for long-term fracture conductivity mea-surement. He also has served as a Technical Editor for the SPE Journal, the Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, and Applied Polymer Science.
“For many years, Richard Hutchins has been, without question, one of the very top experts in the world in the area of water shutoff and conformance improvement using polymers and gels.”
Randy Seright, IOR 2008 Pioneer
Hutchins
Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 Page 4
Hutchins is a registered professional engineer, chemical branch, in Texas and California and in the petroleum branch in Texas. He has co-authored 19 papers, holds more than 45 US patents in his areas of expertise, and is the recipient of multiple awards for creativity and innovation at Unocal and Schlumberger.
He is a member of both the Alpha Chi Sigma chemistry fraternity and Tau Beta Pi national engineering honor society.
Hutchins holds a BS degree from Arizona State University and an MS degree from the University of Southern California, both in chemical engineering.
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sada JOshi: FROm wORldwide hORizOntal well guRu tO iOR PiOneeRAdvances in horizontal well technology, alongside those in hydraulic fracturing, have revolutionized the upstream petroleum industry by enabling the viable development of tight oil and natural gas resources.
Sada Joshi is a pioneer in the truest sense of the word when it comes to horizontal well technology; it could be stated quite literally that he wrote the book on the subject—his Horizontal Well Technology textbook (PennWell Books) is the standard in the field.
Adding to his status as a pioneer is his development of the “Joshi Equation” formula used worldwide for predicting pro-duction rates from horizontal wells, as well as methodologies for calculating decline curves and well-testing equations for horizontal wells. Joshi also developed one of the first water-floods using horizontal wells in the US.
S.M. Farouq Ali, a 2002 IOR Pioneer, in nominating Dr. Joshi for IOR Pioneer status, noted that he has designed and completed more than 200 horizontal wells in 36 countries: “I believe this is an unsurpassed accomplishment that has vastly contributed to an increase in oil production and opened the way to the application of horizontal wells in other oil recovery methods, ranging from polymer flooding to in situ combustion,” Farouq Ali also noted that Joshi designed the first waterfloods using horizontal wells and developed well-testing equations for these wells.
“I believe that an IOR Pioneer Award is long overdue to Dr. Joshi. I say that having known him for more than 30 years and closely watched his accomplishments. He focused on horizontal wells in the early 1980s, when hardly anybody had heard about them. Today horizontal wells have revolutionized oil production, and Dr. Joshi has played a vital role in their development.”
Career pathDr. Joshi founded Joshi Technologies International Inc. (JTI) of Tulsa, Okla., in 1988, after having worked as a researcher for 9 years with Phillips Petroleum Company. He currently serves as the company’s president.
JTI, with exploration and production operations in the US, India, Colombia, and Ecuador, is also a petroleum consulting company, specializing in horizontal well technology and reservoir evaluation. It is a leader in consulting and training in over 30 countries.
Dr. Joshi has completed more than 200 consulting projects in 36 countries and conducted more than 100 short courses on res-ervoir aspects of horizontal wells worldwide.
CredentialsDr. Joshi was named by Hart Publishing as one of “The 100 Most Influential People of the Petroleum Century” for his pio-neering technical contributions and promotion of horizontal drilling. He served as General Chairman of the 19th SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference in 2014 and was named an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 1995–96.
In addition to his industry-standard textbook on horizontal well technology, Joshi is a co-author of Geological Aspects of Horizontal Drilling, published by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), in addition to dozens of other peer-reviewed professional publications.
He has received the Anson Marston Medal from Iowa State University, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai, and the Oklahoma Governor’s Award for Excellence in Exporting.
In addition to his membership in SPE and AAPG, Joshi is also a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a board member of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, and a member of the US India Business Council.
He holds mechanical engineering degrees from the Walchand College of Engineering (BE), Sangli, India; IIT (Mtech) Mumbai, India; and Iowa State University (PhD).
“Dr. Joshi…focused on horizontal wells in the early 1980s, when hardly any-body had heard about them. Today horizontal wells have revolutionized oil production, and Dr. Joshi has played a vital role in their development.”
S.M. Farouq Ali, 2002 IOR Pioneer
Joshi
Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 Page 6
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distinguished caReeR in academia maRks liang’s PiOneeRing cOntRibutiOnsThe sole representative of academia in the 2016 SPE IOR Pioneer class, Dr. Jenn-Tai Liang continues the representation of the exemplary contributions to pioneering work in EOR and IOR by faculty at the top universities for the petroleum sciences.
Liang is currently a full professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University. Previously, he worked under Dr. Randy Seright at the Petroleum Recovery Research Center of New Mexico Tech and served as director of the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project (TORP) at the University of Kansas. Liang took over this prestigious position from the two founders of TORP, Distinguished Professors Don W. Green and Paul Willhite.
Seright, who nominated Liang this year, Green, and Willhite are all IOR Pioneers as well.
Groundbreaking research
When Liang went to work for Seright in 1988, he quickly became acknowledged as the top expert in the world on dispropor-tionate permeability reduction using gels, Seright said.
“Within his first year at New Mexico Tech, he wrote the definitive paper on “Gel Placement in Productions Wells” (SPE Production & Facilities, Nov. 1993, 276-284),” Seright added. “Over the next few years, he initiated and performed a remarkable series of experiments to elucidate the underlying mechanism for disproportionate permeability reduction. This was an extremely difficult problem to solve. It required proficiency with many challenging experimental techniques, includ-ing X-ray computed microtomography.”
His listed publications document his outstanding work in this area and attest to his status as the pre-eminent expert on this topic, according to Seright: “Even before coming to New Mexico Tech, he generated (as a graduate student) two publications that are still acknowledged as classic papers in the area of gels for conformance control.”
In 2001, Dr. Liang moved to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where he made important contributions in several diverse areas of petro-leum engineering, including N2 and CO2 extraction of hydrocarbons, use of neural networks, and wettability alteration—in addition to continuing his important work on using gels for water shutoff.
While administrator at TORP, Liang initiated a project on the use of nano-technology to deliver timed-release specialty chemicals deep into reser-voirs for EOR and frac applications.
“This work has been exclusively supported by industry and is widely acknowledged as the best effort in the world in this area,” Seright said. “In addition to being an internationally recognized technical expert and an effective administrator, teacher, and tenured professor at the University of Kansas, I would not enjoy the technical reputation that I currently have without relying on the outstanding contributions that Dr. Liang made dur-ing our previous and current collaborations.”
Dr. Liang’s current research focus is on developing promising uses of nanotechnology for IOR applications. Based on drug-delivery technolo-gies from the pharmaceutical industry, his research group successfully developed chemical delivery systems that use nano drug carriers to pro-tect oilfield chemicals from the hostile underground environments with
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“When Liang went to work at New Mexico Tech’s Petroleum Recovery Research Center, he quickly became acknowledged as the top expert in the world on disproportionate permeability reduction using gels.”
the release of entrapped chemicals delayed so that they can be transported to desired locations in the reservoir. Examples of IOR applications include in-depth conformance control, chemical and microbial EOR, flow assurance, and frac fluid cleanup.
CredentialsDr. Jenn-Tai Liang is a full professor in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University and the holder of John E. & Deborah F. Bethancourt endowed professorship there.
Before joining Texas A&M in 2014, Dr. Liang was a full professor in the Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Department at the University of Kansas, where he also served as TORP Director. Prior to that, he worked at the US DOE Idaho National Laboratory from 2001 to 2003 as a program manager responsible for upstream oil and gas research.
Before moving to Idaho, he was a researcher at the New Mexico Tech Petroleum Recovery Research Center from 1988 to 2001.
Dr. Liang’s current research focus is on developing promising uses of nanotechnology for improved oil recovery applications. Based on drug-delivery technologies from the pharmaceutical industry, his research group successfully developed chemical delivery systems that use nano drug carriers to protect oilfield chemicals from the hostile underground environments with the release of entrapped chemicals delayed so that they can be transported to desired locations in the reservoir. Example applica-tions in improved oil recovery include in-depth conformance control, chemical and microbial EOR, flow assurance, and hydraulic fracturing fluid cleanup.
Dr. Liang has been awarded 6 US patents, with 5 more pending for his work in this area. He was recently selected as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer for the 2015-2016 lecturer season.
Dr. Liang received his PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and MS in mineral engineering from the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He also holds a BS degree in applied chemistry from Tamkang University in Taiwan.
eOR Field aPPlicatiOn successes maRked schOeling’s Path tO iOR PiOneeRBeginning one’s career as a petroleum engineer at one of the world’s leading research centers for EOR—the Tertiary Oil Recovery project (TORP) at the University of Kansas—certainly helped provide an opportunity to forge a pioneering career in the field for Lanny Schoeling. Bringing value to his employers with field applications delivering millions of barrels of incremental oil solidified that pioneer career.
And the Army veteran rose to the occasion, eventually garnering the endorsement of fellow IOR Pioneer and TORP co-founder Don W. Green.
“At the University of Kansas, Schoeling was involved with the application of gelled-polymer technology for conformance control,” Green noted in his IOR Pioneer nomination letter for Schoeling. “While in that position he led the development of a technology-transfer program for independent operators that became a national model.”
In subsequent work for Shell E&P, Schoeling helped develop an in situ thermal recovery process for oil shale that led to co-inventor status on several patents.
With work at Shell and later at Kinder Morgan, Schoeling focused on CO2 EOR projects, identifying CO2 flood candi-dates and developing technologies to improve efficiencies in CO2 floods.
“On example is the implementation of gel technology at SACROC, one of the largest miscible CO2 projects in the world,” Green said. “Implementation of this gel technology has resulted in millions of incremental barrels.”
“At the University of Kansas, Schoeling was involved with the application of gelled-polymer technology for confor-mance control. While in that position he led the development of a technolo-gy-transfer program for independent operators that became a national model.”
Don W. Green, 2006 IOR Pioneer
Schoeling
Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 Page 9
Green also noted Schoeling’s implementation of surfactant technology solutions and NGL miscible flooding in Texas’ giant Yates oil field.
CredentialsLanny Schoeling is the vice-president of engineering and technical development for Kinder Morgan CO2 Company and has more than 30 years of experience in technical and managerial positions in the energy industry.
At Kinder Morgan, Schoeling has hired and developed world-class teams, including an operational excellence team, the SACROC development team, a research and development subsurface team that identifies cutting-edge EOR solutions, and a geological and geophysical team consisting of geologists, petrophysicists, and geophysicists.
Schoeling was the chief reservoir engineer for unconventionals at Shell E&P from 2001 to 2006, responsible for developing and managing the commercial reservoir development team. From 1997 to 2000, at Shell and Kinder Morgan, he identified CO2 candidates throughout the US and was part of the technical team that supported the purchase of SACROC. Prior to his position at Shell, Schoeling was the director of the North Mid-Continent Regional Lead Organization, a part of the Petroleum Technol-ogy Transfer Council, and an EOR engineer for the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project.
Schoeling holds a doctorate in engineering, MS in chemical engineering, and a BS in chemistry. He is a professional engineer in Texas and Kansas, and is in the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Hall of Fame at the University of Kansas.
Schoeling was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 1996. He has authored numerous SPE papers and was the technical chairman of the Tulsa IOR Conference in 2010.
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YOuseF’s ‘smaRt wateRFlOOd’ bOOsts PROductiOn in wORld’s laRgest Oil FieldHaving the world’s largest oil field as your playground doesn’t necessarily daunt a petroleum engineer with pioneering instincts.
Dr. Ali al-Yousef leads the IOR/EOR research program at Saudi Aramco, where he pioneered and patented Smart Water flooding. This innovation has revolutionized oil production in Saudi Arabia, contends S.M. Farouq Ali, who nominated Yousef for the IOR Pioneer award.
“This process has been successfully field-tested. It utilizes the existing water injection infrastructure so that the capital costs are minimal,” Farouq Ali said in his nomination letter. “I know of no other instance where the research findings were so quickly tested and proven in the field.”
Dr. Yousef was the first to carry out research on the injection water chemistry effects on carbonates, which constitute the majority of the reservoirs in Saudi Arabia, including Ghawar field, the world’s largest, where the Smart Water technology is being applied, according to Farouq Ali. He supervises a team of more than 50 scientists and engineers working on this and related recovery methods.
Career PathWith more than 24 years’ experience in upstream research and technology, Yousef is the team leader of Saudi Aramco’s IOR/EOR program under the umbrella of the Saudi state oil company’s Upstream Advanced Research Center.
Since joining Saudi Aramco, he has been involved in applied research projects on IOR, waterflooding, and EOR. He played a pivotal role in planning, developing, and implementing the EOR roadmap for the company. He is currently leading more than 30 EOR scientists, engineers, and technicians, all dedicated to development of various EOR processes including SmartWater, CO2, and chemical EOR technologies as well as other novel processes.
CredentialsAuthor of more than 60 papers, Dr. Yousef holds 8 patents and has received the Saudi Aramco CEO Excellence Award on his research. He also received the ADIPEC Best Oil and Gas Innovation and Technology Award for the SmartWater flood in the Middle East/North Africa region in 2011.
He has chaired several SPE workshops and forums, helped organize several petroleum engineering-related conferences, and taught courses on IOR, EOR, and waterflooding.
Yousef has a BS in chemical engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, and an MS and PhD, both in petroleum engineering, from the University of Texas at Austin.
“Dr. Ali al-Yousef’s patented Smart Water flooding innovation has revolu-tionized oil production in Saudi Arabia."
S.M. Farouq Ali, 2002 IOR Pioneer
Yousef
Volume 6, Number 1, 2016 Page 11
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Michael L. Wiggins Petroleum Engineering ConsultantDwight Dauben Dauben Int’l Energy Conslts.Betty Felber ConsultantSada Joshi Joshi Technologies International, Inc.Mohan Kelkar The University of TulsaW.F. Lawson The University of TulsaDwight Rychel ConsultantPhil Schenewerk Consultant
PLANNING COmmITTEE
Technical Program Chairman Dane Cantwell, Legado EnergyRegistration Chairman Dwight Rychel, Consultant
Registration Coordinator Kristi Lovendahl, ConsultantComputers/Networking Jack Coursey, Sarco SolutionsFinance Chad Roller, Mid-Con Energy Operating, LLC
Reports Monica Song, ConsultantPublicity/Advertisements Robert Williams, Consultant
Webmaster, Publications, Graphics Kristi Lovendahl, ConsultantConference Logo, Graphic Design Greta Creekmore, Cimarex Energy
Pioneer Awards Dwight Dauben, Dauben Int’l Energy Conslts.Continuing Education Chirag Patel, Joshi Technologies Int’l Inc.Arrangements Doug Norton, Warren American Oil Co.Food/Socials Buck Walsh, ConsultantSponsorships Dwight Rychel, ConsultantGeology Field Trip Norm Hyne, The University of TulsaTU Student Support Mohan Kelkar, The University of Tulsa
TU Student Support Scheduling Tomas Fernandez, The University of TulsaTU Student Support Scheduling Sarah Shackelford-Haseley, The University of Tulsa
IOR Administrative Assistant Kristi Lovendahl, ConsultantSPE Meetings Manager Brannon Jahnke, SPESPE Conference Program Manager Barbara Majefski, SPE
