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In 1991 the SCA received the meritorious SPWLA technical
achievement award. This award was presented to the Society
of Core Analysts for the 1990 series of papers entitled: "SCA
guidelines for sample preparation and porosity measurement
of electrical resistivity samples". Many SCA members contributed
to this series, and this was the first time the SPWLA gave
this award to a chapter. The SCA's Lifetime Achievement Award
is awarded annually to an individual deemed by the SCA Board
of Directors to have made outstanding contributions to the
advancement of core analysis technology. The award is the
SCA's highest honor and the only award for technical achievement.
Since the purpose of the award is to acknowledge technical
achievement, the 1995-1996 SCA Board of Directors has voted
to change the name of the award to Technical Achievement Award. In 2007, the Board of Directors decided to change the name to Darcy Award, in honour of Henry Darcy and his work leading to the Darcy Law.
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| Darcy Award 2010
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John Shafer |
John graduated from a small liberal arts college, Allegheny, in Pennsylvania with a BS in chemistry. Before going to graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, he taught chemistry and math at high school and junior college for two years in Ghana, West Africa, as a US Peace Corps Volunteer. He obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry in the fall of 1970. For the next forty years John worked/consulted to oil companies: 8 years at Occidental Petroleum (CA), one year at Arco (AZ), 19 years at Exxon (NJ & TX) and the last 12 years as a consultant. During these 40 years he has worked in the broad area of chemistry and mechanics of porous media, initially with the mining industry and for the past 25 years with the energy industry (coal, oil shale, & petroleum). The first 18 years of John’s career were as an extractive metallurgist (base/previous metals and uranium); towards the end of this time span he worked on synthetic fuels (oil shale) and coal with a focus on environmental issues. With the demise of the Coal and Synthetic Fuel research at Exxon Production Research in 1988 he was transferred to the Reservoir Division, Core Analysis Section. John took this opportunity in change in work focus to return to graduate school (nights) to obtain a Master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering.
John retired from Exxon in the spring of 1998 and immediately started consulting to Reservoir Management Group as a subcontractor to Exxon Exploration Company (EEC) supporting the log analysis group by providing core analysis support for their fields around the world. After two years at EEC he consulted to Conoco for two years and for the past seven years he consulted to Devon Energy. At Devon as part of an asset evaluation team he provided core analysis and rock mechanics support for their ultra deepwater fields in the Lower Tertiary GoM until early 2010 when Devon sold off their entire offshore interests world wide. During the past 22 years, John has provided core analysis/formation evaluation technical support to West Africa and GoM E & P projects involving core analysis data integration with the log analyst, the geologist, and the reservoir engineer. In the late 80’s and early 90’s he was Exxon’s representative for DEA 23 Filtrate Invasion During Coring research project at TerraTek and Exxon’s representative for rewriting of API’s RP40.
John was SCA president from 1996-1997, a member of the SCA Board from 1994 to 1998 and again from 2005 to 2009, and has been a member of the technical committee for the past 17 years. Since retiring from Exxon he has co-authored ten papers/ workshops presentations at SCA and seven at SPE, SPWLA, and AAPG. His most recent interests have been investigating the impact of true reservoir conditions on rock mechanics and fluid flow measurements.
John is currently semi retired (again) with part time consulting to Noble Energy’s GoM projects. He and his wife, Christie, recently moved from Houston to 80 miles north of Seattle to be near both their sons and families.
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| Darcy Award 2009
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Odd Hjelmeland |
 Odd Hjelmeland recently left ResLab, Reservoir Laboratories AS, a company he started in 1986 and has up to 2009 served as Managing Director. Odd Hjelmeland was born in Selje, Norway in 1949. He graduated from Montanistischse Hochscule in Leoben, Austria as a petroleum engineer in 1974. From 1975 to 1977 he was a research associate at the Technical University of Trondheim (NTNU) He then joined Sintef Petroleum Institute were he first worked as a researcher, then became research supervisor of core- and fluid analysis. From 1981 until 1982 Odd Hjelmeland was visiting researcher at the Petroleum Recovery Institute in Calgary. He was senior Scientist and Department Manager at Sintef from 1984 to 1986.
Hjelmeland’s research at Sintef was in the field of capillary and flow behaviour of porous media. He was leading several larger research programmes for the growing oil business in the young oil nation of Norway. He was also initiating and leading large studies in the field of Improved Oil Recovery for governmental bodies. He was Norway’s representative in IEA’s Steering Group for research on IOR. Hjelmeland earned a PhD degree in reservoir engineering at NTNU in 1985. His thesis work was on wettabilty phenomena of reservoir systems.
He designed equipment for studying these phenomena at high pressure and temperature. He was able to prove that it is crucial to measure or take into consideration the effect of temperature, pressure and live reservoir systems when studying flow in reservoir systems.
Based on the need for high quality services within core and fluid analysis, Hjelmeland decided to form a commercial company. He started ResLab in 1986 and had a tough start-up time since the oil price dropped to 12 USD per barrel 2 weeks after starting. The company survived and had in 2007 about 350 employees with laboratories in Norway, UK, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Iran, Brazil, and Mexico. The company was acquired by Weatherford in 2007 and Hjelmeland continued as manager until 2009.
Hjelmeland stresses that ResLab’s contribution to the advancement of core analysis technology is a team effort of ResLab professionals and staff. From the beginning an emphasis was placed on offering the best services available. The commercial services were supplemented by research projects for oil companies and for internal developments. Odd Hjelmeland was leading several research projects, among others Chalk Research Programmes for the North Sea Oil Companies in the period from 1989 to 1999. He served as a distinguished lecturer in the topic of core analysis for SPE during 1997 to 1999. In 2001 Odd took an MBA degree in Strategic Management at the Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen. Hjelmeland has several papers in international journals and conferences.
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| Darcy Award 2008
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Marc Fleury |
 Marc Fleury is currently a senior scientist in the petrophysics department of Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP). Marc Fleury was born in 1959 in Mulhouse (France). He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) as a physicist, and earned a Ph.D. in Fluids Mechanics from University Joseph Fourier I in Grenoble (France) in 1988. From 1988 to 1992, he worked in the field of Physical Oceanography in Baltimore (USA) and Victoria (Canada). During this period, his studies were devoted to the modelization and measurements of vertical mass or heat transfer due to small scale turbulence in the upper part of the ocean (such as the laboratory study of the effect of the earth rotation on turbulent mixing), or due to salt-heat double diffusive instability processes occurring in very specific oceanic regions. Back to Europe, he joined IFP in 1992 and started studying capillary properties of porous media, a key aspect for hydrocarbon production.
Taking advantage of the large experience of IFP leading scientists such as R. Lenormand, L. Cuiec and D. Longeron, he could quickly contribute to the renewal of the core analysis sciences occurring in that decade. Using his experimental skills, he is at the origin of several innovative devices to measure centrifuge capillary pressure curves and resistivity properties; he has 3 award papers from the SCA technical committee in 1996, 1998 and 1999. His studies on resistivity properties of carbonates highlighted the complexity of these formations and the uncertainties of oil in place estimations, and this subject is still an area of active fundamental and applied research. He also contributed to better integrate core and log data, in particular resistivity and NMR. With the growing interest for NMR, he started using this technique in 1998 and probably will never stop. He contributed to the understanding of NMR surface relaxivity and wettability and proposed a new wettability index based on relaxation time measurements. He was also involved in the characterization of emulsions and measurements of oil viscosity using NMR. Along with university professors, he supervised 3 Ph.D. students. He authored and co-authored more than 60 papers (including 25 SCA papers) and has about 20 patents concerning core analysis measurement techniques and fluid characterization. He is currently involved in applied research program dealing with carbone sequestration.
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| Darcy Award 2007
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Gerald Hamon |
 Gerald Hamon is currently expert for Petrophysics with TOTAL. He graduated from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon (France) in 1976 with a degree in civil engineering. After an exciting two years period in Senegal, where he was involved in two-phase flow characterisation of soils in very remote villages, he earned his PhD in Fluid Mechanics in 1980 from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (France). Gerald joined ELF in 1980 as a research engineer in the Core Analysis group. From 1986 to 1995, he worked in a variety of senior technical positions, including field development in the North Sea, and special expertise in the evaluation and numerical simulation of naturally fractured reservoirs. In his current position, he is actively involved in working with TOTAL’s assets to design and implement data acquisition programs as well as in reviewing data related to formation evaluation and recovery processes for reserves evaluation. Gerald is also leading or supervising several research projects in enhanced oil recovery and formation evaluation.
He has served as a member of the SCA technical committee since 1997. He authored or co-authored thirty-five SCA, SPE and IOR conference papers on the subjects of recovery mechanisms and numerical simulation of naturally fractured reservoirs, characterization and SCAL analysis of heterogeneous or tight samples, two-phase rock-typing, gas trapping, depressurisation of near critical and heavy oils, three phase flow, field wide wettability variations, application of pore network modelling to two-phase flow simulation. Gerald co-supervised seven PhD students to date and teaches courses on formation evaluation and recovery processes in TOTAL as well as in several universities in France.
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| Technical
achievement award 2006
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Ioannis (John) Chatzis |
 Ioannis (John) Chatzis was born in Evia –Greece in 1949 and immigrated to Canada after completing high school in 1967. In the period 1970-1979 he studied at the University of Waterloo and earned all his degrees in Chemical Engineering (B.A.Sc. (1974), M.A.Sc. (1976), Ph.D. (1980)). His graduate studies were supervised by Professor Dullien and the published works contributed to the use of advanced network models of pore structure and invasion percolation concepts for modeling capillary and transport phenomena in porous media. Right after his graduate studies he joined the New Mexico Petroleum Recovery Research Centre (PRRC) as research engineer and worked in Dr. Norman Morrow’s group for about 3 years. While at PRRC he advanced his skills on photo fabrication techniques for making glass micromodels and made use of them for explaining and characterizing the detailed structure of residual oil in water-wet porous media, pore scale immiscible displacement mechanisms, the role played by pore structure and bulk film flow in of the wetting phase in pore corners. He contributed in the development of correlations of residual oil saturation with capillary number in porous media and relative permeability at reduced residual oil conditions. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Waterloo as a faculty member in 1982 and continued researching various topics relating to capillary and transport phenomena in porous media with applications to oil recovery. He was a founded member of the Porous Media Research Institute (PMRI) at the University of Waterloo in 1985 and served as head of the Chemical Engineering Department for the period 1996-2002. As an academic and researcher he has supervised 14 PhD students to date with four of them being well-established professors in Canadian universities and 3 others in their country of origin.
He has been active with the Society of Core Analysis since 1991 with numerous presentations and assisted in organizing the very successful SCA 2005 conference held in Toronto, Canada. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 journal papers and over 100 papers in conference proceedings on subjects relating to fluid flow in porous media, pore structure characterization and core analysis techniques. In the area of core analysis, he has published work on apparatus design and data analysis techniques related to measurements of breakthrough capillary pressure, scaling the mercury porosimetry capillary pressure curves using the breakthrough capillary pressure, the magnitude and detailed structure of residual oil after waterflooding, relative permeability measurements using NMR, x-ray CT scanning, developed experimental techniques of oil recovery using gravity assisted inert gas injection and heavy oil recovery techniques using vapor extraction. His current research activities are focused on fundamentals and novel techniques for heavy oil recovery using vapor extraction, pore structure characterization of vuggy porosity carbonates using rate controlled porosimetry, relative permeability of the wetting phase at low saturations and mathematical modeling using network models of pore structure.
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| Technical
achievement award 2005
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Douglas W. Ruth |
 Douglas
Ruth was born and raised
in Manitoba, Canada. He
received his baccalaureate
in Mechanical Engineering
from the University of Manitoba
and a Master’s degree
from the same institution.
After working for two years
as a research engineer developing
novel air conditioning systems
for automobiles, he attended
the University of Waterloo,
obtaining a PhD while studying
the problem of heat loss
from solar collectors. His
first appointment after
his graduate studies was
at the University of Calgary
where he first applied his
knowledge of fluid flow
to the problem of transport
phenomena in porous media.
He left the University of
Calgary for Petro-Canada
Research where he worked
on in-situ recovery processes
for Athabaska Oilsands.
He moved from Petro-Canada
to GEOTECHnical resources
where he became involved
with both basic and supplemental
core analysis. While at
GEOTECH he co-authored and
co-taught an intensive course
on core analysis. He also
helped pioneer the advanced
centrifuge capillary pressure
analysis techniques and
reduction of displacement
experiments to determine
relative permeabilities
as standard methods in a
service company setting.
He returned to the University
of Manitoba in 1987 where
he has served terms as Department
Head of Mechanical Engineering,
Associate Dean, and Dean
of Engineering. He has been
active with the Society
of Core Analysis since the
second year of its existence.
He has served for over a
decade on the Technical
Committee, as well as the
board including terms as
VP (Technology) and President.
He has published over 50
journal articles and has
presented over 40 conference
papers on the subjects of
mathematic solutions methods,
apparatus design, data analysis
techniques, and experimental
programming, as applied
to topics including solar
energy, petrophysics, heat
transfer, and fluid mechanics.
In the area of core analysis,
he has published work on
apparatus design and data
analysis techniques related
to porosity, permeability,
capillary pressure, and
relative permeability. In
addition to his research,
he has developed and marketed
software to do analysis
of capillary pressure and
relative permeability data.
This software is in use
in countries around the
world.
Douglas and Beverly Ruth
have been married for
35 years, have three grown
children, and the most
intelligent and handsome
grandson in the world.
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| Technical
achievement award 2004
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Ken Sorbie |
 Ken
Sorbie has a degree in Chemistry
from Strathclyde University,
Glasgow (1972) and a D.
Phil. in Theoretical Chemistry/Applied
Mathematics from Sussex
University, Brighton (1975).
After a postdoctoral position
at Cambridge University
working on semi-classical
quantum mechanics followed
by some teaching experience,
Ken worked at the AEE Winfrith
laboratory for the UK Department
of Energy on petroleum engineering
research for 8 years. Here,
he led a theoretical and
experimental group working
on a range of research and
applied problems associated
with reservoir simulation,
flow in porous media and
improved oil recovery. In
1988, Ken joined the Department
(now Institute) of Petroleum
Engineering at Heriot-Watt
University where he is a
Professor. The main research
areas in which Ken is active
are: Reservoir Characterisation:
particularly on the physics
of interaction of small
scale heterogeneity with
capillary forces and various
numerical upscaling techniques.
Oilfield Chemistry: Ken
has worked on the prediction
and prevention of oilfield
mineral scale deposits since
1988 and has launched several
JIPs in this area. The latest
such project is the Flow
Assurance and Scale Team
(FAST) JIP is sponsored
by about 20 oil and service
companies. Fundamentals
of Multiphase Fluid Flow
in Porous Media: This is
the study of the basic physics
and chemistry of multiphase
flow in porous media e.g.
the modelling of wettability
in porous media, the theoretical
basis of relative permeability
in mixed wet systems, network
modelling of immiscible
and near-miscible three
phase (gas/oil/water) flow.
Ken has published over 200
technical papers on oil
related research and has
written a book on polymer
flooding (in 1991). These
papers are listed on Ken’s
area of the Institute website
www.pet.hw.ac.uk from where
they can all be downloaded
as pdf files.
Ken’s teaches Reservoir
Simulation on the resident
Heriot-Watt Masters classes
as well as teaching more
specialised research level
short courses on: Oilfield
Scale; The Fundamentals
of Flow Through Porous
Media; IOR; and Three-Phase
Flow in Porous Media.
Ken also consults internationally
for many oil and service
companies and, in the
last year or so has worked
with companies and organizations
in Brazil, Venezuela,
Russia, Abu Dhabi, Saudi
Arabia, Malaysia, Libya,
USA and countries in Western
Europe. He was an SPE
Distinguished Lecturer
in years 2000-2001 on
the subject of Oilfield
Scale and he was elected
a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh (FRSE)
in 2001. The award of
the 2004 Technical Achievement
Award of the Society of
Core Analysts (SCA) is
a huge personal honour
since the recipient list
of this award contains
several of Ken’s
most admired all-time
researchers in the area
of flow through porous
media. |
| Technical
achievement award 2003
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Stanley Culver Jones |
 Stan
Jones obtained a BS degree
(1956) from Washington State
University, and MS (1959)
and Ph.D. (1962) degrees
from the University of Michigan,
all in chemical engineering.
While at the U. of M., he
co-authored an AGA Monograph
with D. L. Katz and others
on storage of natural gas
in aquifers. Stan joined
Marathon Oil Company’s
Denver Research Center in
1962, where he made technical
contributions to enhanced
oil recovery using micellar-polymer
flooding, developed procedures
and designed equipment to
obtain and interpret water/oil
relative permeability data
at elevated temperature
and pressure, and developed
theory and apparatus to
measure Klinkenberg permeability
and gas slippage factor
and Forchheimer inertial
coefficient, all from a
single pressure falloff
run. Stan developed equations
that accurately fit the
reduction of PV or permeability
with increasing confining
stresses on core plug samples.
The technique has been extended
to calculate bulk volume
rock compressibility under
uniaxial strain conditions
from PV-stress data. He
took early retirement in
1986 to join Petrophysical
Services, Inc., which soon
became part of Core Laboratories’ R & D
group. There, Stan helped
to automate and commercialize
the unsteady-state Klinkenberg
permeameter, and to design
and develop a fast, transient-pressure
probe permeameter, for which
he won a Litton Industries
Advanced Technology Achievement
award in 1992. He received
the SPE Formation Evaluation
Award in 1997, and was a
principal author of Section
6, Permeability, in Recommended
Practices for Core Analysis,
RP 40, 2nd Ed., API, Feb.
1988. Stan consulted for
Baker Hughes (formerly Western
Atlas Logging Services)
in the design and analysis
of downhole oil field tools
from 1994 to 2000. He proposed
a faster method for making
gas, pulse decay permeability
measurements in ultra-low
permeability (less than
0.001 md) core plug samples.
Time savings often amount
to several hours per sample,
and measurements have proven
to work well. Stan has 49
U.S. patents and more than
200 foreign patents—on
enhanced oil recovery processes,
and design of various instruments
for rock analysis. |
| Technical
achievement award 2002 -
Jill Sutherland Buckley |
 Jill
Sutherland Buckley is a
Senior Scientist at the
New Mexico Petroleum Recovery
Research Center where she
heads the Petrophysics and
Surface Chemistry Group.
She has a PhD in Petroleum
Engineering from Heriot-Watt
University and degrees in
chemistry (BS from UCLA,
MS from New Mexico Tech).
She joined the PRRC in 1977
while still a master’s
student and studied surfactants
and polymers for IOR applications
as the PRRC’s first
laboratory technician. In
1983 she began working with
Norman Morrow on the problems
of crude oil wetting properties
that are still a major focus
of her work.
The chemical complexity
of crude oils makes them
difficult to study in
any systematic way. Jill
recognized that it is
possible for one crude
oil to have very different
effects on the wetting
of a core and that the
composition of the aqueous
phase influences the
range of ionic interactions
by which crude oil components
adsorb or deposit to
alter surface properties.
Asphaltene stability
is another important
factor that can have
a dramatic effect on
wetting. Jill’s
work in this area has
helped to dispel the
mythology that has long
limited progress toward
understanding asphaltene
stability, providing
tools for characterizing
oils and predicting the
onset of instability
over a wide range of
conditions of temperature,
pressure and composition.
Jill’s first involvement
with the SCA was an invited
lecture at the 4th Annual
SCA conference in 1990.
Since then she has served
the SCA as a member of
scientific committees,
as VP Technology for
the SCA conference in
Calgary in 1997, and
as President in 1998-99.
She has served as guest
editor for two special
issues of the Journal
of Petroleum Science
and Engineering on reservoir
wettability. She is also
active in SPE, serving
as an SPE Distinguished
Lecturer in 1998-99,
Review Chairman for SPE
REE (1996-98), member
of the SPEJ editorial
board, and Program Chairman
for the 2003 Oilfield
Chemistry Symposium. |
| Technical achievement
award 2001 - Paul F. Worthington |
 Paul Worthington has been awarded the Distinguished Technical Achievement Award in recognition for his contribution to the scientific developments in core analysis and services to the core analysis industry.
From 1972 to last year, Paul has published 70 papers - all of them concerned with the evaluation of reservoir properties from cores and wireline logs - a remarkable record of dedication to the International community of core analysts and worthy of the SCA's Distinguished Technical Achievement Award. He has made significant contribution to the theory of shaly sand electrical properties and improved log interpretation of shaly formations.
In 1988 he was first involved with the SCA as part of the subcommittee convened to draw up SCA measurement guidelines for the measurement of the electrical resistivity of rock samples, subsequently published in the Log Analyst. During this period he was asked by SCA Board to convene lunchtime meetings in Europe. He responded by suggesting the EUROCAS concept. He was appointed SCA European Director and given the go ahead for EUROCAS I, acting as Chairman of Conference and of Technical Committee. Conference theme was to be "Accuracy and Precision in Reserves Estimation".
First SCA European Core Analysis Symposium held in London in May 1990. The 150 attendees returned a profit to the SCA. All 29 papers were peer reviewed with help of a technical committee. The edited proceedings were published as "Advances in Core Evaluation" by Gordon & Breach in the autumn of 1990.
The second SCA European Core Analysis Symposium was held in London in May 1991. It had the theme "Reservoir Appraisal". Once again he chaired the conference and co-chaired the technical committee with Daniel Longeron. All 25 papers were peer reviewed by the technical committee. Longeron and he edited the proceedings, which were ultimately published as "Advances in Core Evaluation II" by Gordon & Breach in autumn 1991.
The third SCA European Core Analysis Symposium was held in Paris in September 1992. It had the theme "Reservoir Management". This time the technical committee was co-chaired with Catherine Chardaire-Riviere and 23 papers were peer-reviewed by the technical committee and published by Gordon & Breach in 1993. By this time the three volumes of Advances in Core Evaluation formed a synergetic library, which has proved useful to many over the years
Since 1994, he has served on various SCA technical committees, but anyone organising three conferences back-to-back deserves a rest from frontline SCA duty, the period of effort being recognised for what it did - sustained specialist interest in an important subject. With the ever-increasing use and reliance on simulation, the need for accuracy and precision of core analysis data in reserves estimation has not gone away. |
| Technical achievement
award 2000 - Mehdi Matt Honarpour |
 Dr.
Honarpour received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
in Petroleum Engineering from the University
of Missouri. He is currently a senior staff
with ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company.
Honarpour has served as a reservoir engineer,
geoscientist, experimentalist, core analyst,
project manager, team lead, and petroleum
engineering professor over the past thirty
years. He has worked on characterization and
management of giant reservoirs in six continents.
He has done extensive work on naturally fractured
carbonates and consolidated/ unconsolidated
sand including those from heavy oil, light
oil, volatile oil, gas-condensate, and dry
gas reservoirs. He chaired the API Quality
Control subcommittee on core analysis and
established a world-wide quality control program
for Mobil. Honarpour has designed several
novel apparatus for relative permeability
and capillary pressure measurement. He was
the 1988 Society of Core Analysts president
and published the first SCANews for the society.
Honarpour has authored several books and over
50 technical papers in the petroleum-related
literature. Honarpour is a registered professional
engineer. |
| Technical achievement
award 1999 - George Jiro Hirasaki |
 George
Hirasaki is A. J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical
Engineering at Rice University. He has a B.S.
from Lamar Tech (1963) and a Ph.D. from Rice
University (1967), both in chemical engineering.
During his 26-year career with Shell Development
Co. and Shell Oil Co. in Houston and Los Angeles,
his first major assignment was to lead the
development of the Shell Group's numerical
reservoir simulator. His subsequent contributions
in enhanced oil recovery include advances
in polymer flooding, thermal recovery, surfactant
flooding, and the use of foam for mobility
control. His investigation of formation evaluation
began in the mid 80's with studies of the
mechanisms wettability alteration, evaluation
of wettability, and application of an automated
centrifuge to measure relative permeability
and capillary pressure. In recognition of
his work at Shell, George was inducted into
the National Academy of Engineering in 1991.
In 1993, George took early retirement from
Shell and joined the Chemical Engineering
faculty at Rice University where he leads
an industrial consortium-sponsored research
program on formation evaluation and foam for
mobility control. His research efforts focus
on fundamental and applied studies related
to several aspects of formation evaluation.
George is as widely recognized for his work
on oil reservoir wettability as he his for
his efforts in characterizing rock and fluid
properties by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).
His research has provided significant insights
into the correlation between deposited asphaltene
patches and wettability alteration. In the
field of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, George's
investigations have shown that NMR relaxation
time relationships for live oils differ from
those of dead oils, that clay minerals can
cause significant internal magnetic field
gradients and that the hydrogen index of live
oils can be calculated using conventional
PVT data. George's continuing efforts to apply
fundamental science to problems of practical
interest are evident both in his research
and in his teaching. It is his emphasis on
combining good science with useful technology
that gives his work such immediate and lasting
value. |
| Technical achievement
award 1998 - Daniel Longeron |
 Daniel
Longeron is a principal research engineer
with 30-year experience at the Reservoir Engineering
Division of Institut Français du Pétrole.
He is presently manager of the "Well Productivity
and Injectivity" group, supervising theoretical
and experimental studies related to near wellbore
flow properties. After his secondary studies,
Daniel enrolled at Institut of Technology
of Besançon, France, where he got a degree
in Micromechanics. Then, he received a degree
in Physics and Chemistry from University of
Paris. After 18 months with the French Air
Force Army where he served as an officer,
he joined, in 1968, the Department of physics
of porous media at IFP to develop activities
on corefloods at reservoir conditions. Finally,
he received a graduate engineering degree
from Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole
et des Moteurs (ENSPM/IFP School). Since that
time, Daniel has worked either on fundamental
and applied studies related to EOR processes
(immiscible and miscible gas injection, waterflooding,
etc.), petrophysics (relative permeabilities,
capillary pressure, electrical properties)
and formation damage. Among the main contributions
to the Core Analysis Science, Daniel participated
to the pionnering work with Charles Bardon
to demonstrate the impact of low IFT on gas-oil
relative permeabilities. Daniel is also wellknown
for his major work on drainage-imbibition
capillary pressure and resistivity measurements.
This work has provided significant insights
on hysteresis phenomenon of saturation exponents,
leading to an improvement in log interpretation.
Since his main efforts have been devoted to
improvements of laboratory technology for
providing cost-effective and reliable capillary
pressures and resistivity measurements at
reservoir conditions. In parallel, he has
developed new equipments and procedures for
formation damage assessment and remediations.
He has been involved in a lot of laboratory
studies for more than 20 international operating
oil companies. His research efforts have been
documented more than thirty technical papers
and several patents. His paper, with Marc
Fleury as co-author, "Combined Resistivity
and Capillary Pressure Measurements Using
Micropore Membrane Technique", won the Best
Paper Award at the 1996 International Symposium
of the SCA. Daniel is co-editor with Paul
Worthington of the book "Advances in Core
Evaluation - Reservoir Appraisal". During
15 years he has also been a teaching assistant
at ENSPM/IFP School for specific courses devoted
to multiphase flow, petrophysics and laboratory
data acquisition for reservoir engineering
purposes. As European Director of the SCA
for the period 1991-1993, he was technical
Chairman of the Second European Core Analysis
Symposium held in London (1991) and Chairman
of the Third European Core Analysis Symposium
held in Paris in 1992. Then, as VP-Arrangements
of the SCA in 1995-1996 he was in charge of
the organization of the 1996 International
Symposium of the SCA held in Montpellier,
France. |
| Technical achievement
award 1997 - Norman C. Wardlaw |
 Norman
Wardlaw is a reservoir geologist with 25 years
experience and more than 90 publications on
the flow of oil, gas, and water in reservoir
rocks. His contributions to core analysis
include detailed explanations of the flow
and trapping of fluids on the microscopic
scale and development of microscopic visualization
techniques. Dr. Wardlaw (Ph.D. in Geology
from the University of Manchester) was Professor
of Geology at the University of Calgary for
more than 20 years, serving as Department
Head from 1979-1982. In 1993 he retired from
the University, but not from active participation
in core analysis. His current interests include
quantitative reservoir description at core
and reservoir scales with the aim of integrating
reservoir geology and engineering to predict
reservoir performance. Among other distinctions,
Dr. Wardlaw was a Distinguished Lecturer for
the AAPG (1983-84), was awarded the Diploma
of Honor for outstanding contributions to
the petroleum industry by the National Petroleum
Engineering Honor Society in the US (1990),
and received an award for outstanding research
from the Faculty of Science at the University
of Calgary in 1991. |
| Technical achievement
award 1996 - Norman R. Morrow |
 Dr.
Norman R. Morrow has held a joint appointment
as Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
at the University of Wyoming and Distinguished
Scientist at the Western Research Institute
(WRI) since 1992. Formerly, he was Head of
Petrophysics and Surface Chemistry at the
Petroleum Recovery Research Center at the
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
He has authored or co-authored more than 90
papers on subjects relating to fluid flow
in porous media, including a contribution
to the SPE Distinguished Author Series entitled
"Wettability and Its Effect on Oil Recovery".
He founded the International Symposium Series
on "Evaluation of Reservoir Wettability and
Its Effect on Oil Recovery". The third meeting
in this series, held in Laramie, Wyoming in
September 1995, drew over 100 scientists and
engineers from 14 countries. In 1990 he received
the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology's
"Distinguished Research Award". In 1994 he
received the Independent Petroleum Association
of Mountain States " 1994 Best Advanced Recovery
Project" for his work at WRI. Dr. Morrow has
served on the editorial review committees
of the Canadian journal of Petroleum Technology
and the Journal of Petroleum Science, and
Engineering. |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1995 - Jake Rathmell |
 Early
in Jake Rathmell's 30+ year career he realized
that only by recreating the reservoir in the
laboratory could the processes that occur
there truly be understood. Since that time,
Jake has been an uncompromising advocate for
acquiring uncontaminated core and the use
of reservoir conditions in laboratory experiments.
Most know Jake for coring technology developments,
first in the area of pressure coring and most
recently with low invasion coring. However,
his career has carried him into most of the
reservoir technologies developed during that
time period. Following a BS degree in Chemical
Engineering from Texas Tech University and
a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Tulane,
Jake joined the Research and Development Department
of Atlantic Refining, a predecessor of ARCO.
There he progressed through a number of technical
and management roles culminating in his current
position as Senior Research Adviser. Most
of the early years were spent in EOR. Processes
investigated included steam injection, in-situ
combustion, and miscible gas injection. Jake
initiated ARCO's chemical EOR efforts. He
also championed the formation evaluation effort,
directing those activities for ten years.
Areas of active study include relative permeability,
formation damage, rock mechanical properties,
well log interpretation and reservoir description.
Jake is best known, however, for his research
in core technology. He was the first to apply
pressure coring to a reservoir gas cap with
compositional analysis of the recovered hydrocarbon
phases. He experimented with large-diameter
pressure core barrels. Since 1987, Jake has
focused on low invasion coring, developing
the core bits, mud systems and coring protocol
to minimize mud filtrate invasion. The technology
has been invaluable to measurement of initial
water saturation from cores and for the first
time has provided core samples free of filtrate
contamination. His research efforts have been
documented in eighteen technical papers and
a patent. ARCO has honored his efforts numerous
times with technical achievement awards, most
notably for formation evaluation in the Prudhoe
and Kuparuk fields and for his low invasion
coring technology. |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1994 - Louis Cuiec |
 After
his secondary studies Louis Cuiec enrolled
at University of Rennes, in western France,
from which he graduated with a degree in chemistry
in 1962. Then, he received a graduate engineering
degree from Ecole Nationale Superieure du
Petrole et des Moteurs (ENSPM), in 1964. Finally,
in 1968, he received a Ph D from the University
of Paris, in Kinetics and Catalysis. Since
that time, after some "holidays" in the French
Army, Louis Cuiec has worked at Institut Francais
du Petrole, in the Reservoir Engineering Department,
for the last 25 years on various projects
related to Special Core Analysis. When he
started his work to define procedures to restore
original surface properties of unpreserved
core samples, most of the Reservoir Engineering
community considered that all reservoirs were
water wet. Now, reservoir engineers consider
that most reservoirs are not strongly water
wet. Louis is partly "responsible" for this
change. His research has been related to the
problems encountered by a core sample from
the reservoir to the laboratory (influence
of oil-based and water-based muds, influence
of oxidation of crude oils etc.) and to solutions
of these problems (cleaning procedures, influence
of aging time, comparison preserved/restored
samples, influence of thermodynamic conditions
on wettability, etc.). He has also done research
to understand more about the role of acids,
bases, resins and asphaltenes on rock/fluid
interactions, and to investigate the water/oil
spontaneous displacement phenomenon. His work
has resulted in 33 papers, and participation
in the book edited by N.R. Morrow, his old
friend. He has also been involved in a lot
of studies for more than 20 international
oil companies. He has been asked to be technical
editor for the SPE and for the Journal of
Petroleum Science and Engineering. He is now
Manager of the IFP project group "Physico-chemistry
for Oil Recovery". |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1993 - Dare Keelan |
| [no
picture available] Dare Keelan is a
native Texan, who graduated from Texas A&M
University in 1951 with degrees in both Petroleum
and Geological Engineering. He joined Core
Laboratories in 1955, after serving in Korea
as a pilot in the United States Air Force.
His technical experience includes detailed
reservoir engineering, mathematical model
development for study of fractured limestone
reservoirs, and laboratory measurements of
rock properties and their application. Dare
is a registered professional engineer, and
member of SCA, SPWLA, SPE, Tau Beta Pi and
Pi Epsilon Tau. He is the author of numerous
technical publications relating to rock properties,
and he was a contributor to the SPE Distinguished
Author series. He has presented rock property
seminars world-wide to over 5000 members of
the petroleum industry and serves as a consultant.
He is currently the Executive V.P. of Core
Laboratories, now a division of Western Atlas
International. He has management responsibility
for Core's company wide quality effort, and
represents Core management with Russian, Chinese
and Mexican operations. |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1992 - Bob Purcell |
 Bob
Purcell was born in Taylorville, IL, in 1918.
He obtained his bachelor's degree in chemical
engineering and masters degree in chemistry
at Rice University and did additional graduate
work at the University of Michigan under one
of the first API fellowships. After WWII Bob
joined Shell Development Co. in January 1946
at the Bellaire Research Center in Houston,
TX. He had a long and distinguished career
at Shell, serving both as Director of Basic
Research and Director of Production Research
at the Bellaire Research Center. In 1965 he
became division production manager for Shell
Oil's Eastern Division of the Houston area
before returning to research at the Bellaire
Research Center. For 36 years at Shell, Bob
conducted research m the fields of petrophysics,
rock mechanics, and geophysics. His work on
mercury capillary pressure measurements is
a classic and established this method as the
fundamental petrophysical tool for studying
pore structure. He was the first to demonstrate
the interrelationships between capillary pressure
curves and permeability, and also studied
relative permeability formation resistivity
factor and resistivity ratio. After returning
to the Bellaire Research Center, Bob worked
in rock mechanics and hydraulic fracturing.
Hs pioneering research on earth stresses and
pore pressures have had a major impact on
drilling problems and borehole stability.
He was also active in the early quantitative
uses of seismic amplitudes for reservoir evaluation.
Bob retired from Shell in 1983. |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1991 - Bob Blackwell |
 Bob
Blackwell originally entered college in chemistry
at West Texas State. Later, he changed majors
and colleges and obtained a physics-mathematics
B.A. degree from Texas Christian University
in 1947. In 1953, Bob earned his Ph.D. in
physics from University of North Carolina
and served as Assistant Professor in the physics
department. Bob decided that teaching was
not his future and joined the Humble Oil and
Refining Company (Houston, Texas) in 1954.
He stayed with this organization through all
of its name changes and retired from Exxon
Production Research in 1986. To continue the
advancement of petroleum engineering science,
Bob served as Visiting Professor at the University
of Texas (Austin) in the Petroleum Engineering
Department during 1987 and 1988. Dr. Blackwell
was involved in a wide range of activities
during his approximately 32 years with Exxon
Production Research and its predecessors.
His first assignment was in the area of drilling
research and related production technology;
however, in 1955, he began his research on
miscible displacement mechanisms including
microscopic dispersion or mixing of miscible
floods in porous media followed by his studies
of the adverse impact viscous fingering and
reservoir heterogeneities can have on recovery
efficiency. Bob's investigations of capillary
pressure and relative permeability hysteresis
phenomena in fractured reservoirs was initiated
in the late 50's. These effects were found
to be particularly important in reservoirs
such as Spraberry, in which solution gas drives
are followed by a waterflood. Bob's studies
in this area resulted in H. L. Stone's development
in 1962 of Exxon's first computer simulator
having the capability of modelling both capillary
pressure and relative permeability hysteresis
effects. Bob continues to be very active in
core analysis where he is currently documenting
the effects of core geometry and heterogeneity
on centrifuge capillary pressure measurements
and other data analysis |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1990 - Ben Swanson |
 Ben
Swanson was born in Austin, Texas in 1929.
He started college at the University of Texas,
and after serving one year in the Navy, joined
Shell Development Company's Bellaire Research
Center in 1951. Attending college at night,
he completed his BS in Physics from the University
of Houston in 1955. For 38 years at Shell
he conducted research on petrophysical properties
of reservoir rocks, fluid flow, wettability,
and tar sands. From his first assignment in
Gus Archie's Technical Services Group, Ben
went on to become senior staff research physicist
and project leader of petrophysical core research.
He had research assignments dealing with various
aspects of well logging, rock mechanics, and
core analysis. He was an exchange scientist
at the Rijswijk Exploration and Production
Research Laboratory, the Netherlands, from
1969 to 1970. He is widely known for his work
on determining saturation and permeability
of rock samples using mercury capillary pressure
curves and on studying pore structure and
fluid distribution through comparisons of
mercury-air and oil-water capillary pressure
data. He introduced such basic core analysis
techniques as hydrostatic weighing in toluene,
initial residual counter current imbibition,
and capillary diaphragm I-Sw measurements.
With E.C. Thomas, he developed methods of
measuring petrophysical properties of unconsolidated
sands. In later years, Ben studied the influence
of microporosity and crude wetting on electrical
resistivity behavior. With Herb Yuan, he introduced
rate-controlled porosimetry for resolving
pore-space characteristics. In 1989, Ben retired
from Shell after a distinguished career. |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1989 - Frank Jones, Jr. |
 Frank
Jones was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1928.
After several moves, his family moved to Tulsa
where he finished high school in 1942. The
Monday morning after graduating from high
school, Frank began his career with Amoco
in the core analysis laboratory. Shortly thereafter,
he began his studies at the University of
Tulsa. World War 2 intervened and Frank spent
three years in the Army Signal Corp. In 1946,
he rejoined Amoco in the core analysis group
where he worked while completing his degree
in 1952 in Chemistry at the University of
Tulsa. After graduation, he was transferred
to the Drilling Fluids research group where
he worked for about five years on the interactions
of drilling fluids with reservoir rock. He
invented the methylene blue analysis test
for bentonite in drilling fluids (now a longstanding
API standard method). He also studied the
interactions of coring fluid filtrates with
core material to determine potential wettability
alterations that could occur. As a result
of his interests in reservoir engineering,
he was transferred back to the core analysis
group where he worked on: wettability, electrical
properties of rocks, relative permeability,
stress effects on permeability and especially
on tight gas sands. In 1980 he received the
Best Applied Research Award from the Rock
Mechanics Committee of the National Research
Council. In 1981, Frank retired from Amoco
and immediately started F.0. Jones and Associates,
a consulting and core analysis equipment manufacturing
firm. He remains a vital force in core analysis
worldwide. |
| Lifetime achievement
award 1987 - Bill Hensel Jr. |
 Bill
Hensel was born in Dallas, Texas in 1927.
He served in the U.S. Coast Guard during World
War II as a Control Tower Operator and joined
Sun Oil Company in 1951 as a technician in
the Core Analysis Laboratory. Bill attended
Dallas College of SMU majoring in Industrial
Engineering. In 1955 Bill was placed in charge
of Sun's Core Analysis Lab. For the next 17
years this lab provided conventional and special
core analysis services for Sun's domestic
and foreign operations. Of particular significance
was the development of standard assaying procedures
for the Athabasca Tar Sands and the then popular
oil shales. This group also developed a high
temperature retorting procedure that industry
adopted as a standard for an improved summation-of-fluids
porosity method. Bill authored the definitive
paper documenting the technique. Starting
in 1972 Bill directed a group of professionals
whose responsibility was to provide interface
services between Sun's various technical and
engineering functions and commercial vendors
offering reservoir rock property testing procedures.
In this regard he was directly involved in
the planning and on-site supervision of special
coring and testing programs. In 1985-86 he
served on the first SCA Board as Secretary/Treasurer
and was elected to Vice President of Technology
for the 1986-87 term after which he retired
from Sun Exploration & Production Company,
now Oryx Energy. Bill has published some 10
papers and holds two patents dealing with
oil field equipment/procedures. He is a senior
member of the SPWLA and the SPE and serves
as a technical editor for each. |
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