Biography
I have a Ph.D. and an MS degree in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering from Penn State University. My BS degree was also in Petroleum Engineering. I have 21 years of petroleum industry experience and 9 years of academic research and teaching experience. I developed technology for evaluating multiple hydraulically fractured wells in shale reservoirs through reservoir simulation and completed several reservoir simulation projects in unconventional shale plays in North America, South America and the Middle-East. I have a broad range of reservoir engineering experience - from rock petrophysics, SCAL, material balance to unstructured-grid based reservoir simulation of both conventional and unconventional plays. I taught Petroleum Engineering at Texas Tech University (TTU) from 2006 to 2012 and before joining TTU, I held the position of Science Specialist in the Upstream R&D Division of Saudi Aramco Research & Development Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where I was also a group leader in the Petrophysics Unit. I also taught Petroleum Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) in Golden, Colorado, where I also co-directed two of their industry-sponsored research consortia. I developed several laboratory procedures in petrophysical CT-scanning, a new area in core analysis. I currently hold four US patents. I have co-authored about 100 technical papers and more than 80 technical reports and 4 US Patents. My research interests are in the areas of unconventional reservoir simulation, hydraulic fracturing with true representation of hydraulic fractures in reservoir models, reservoir characterization, hydrocarbon phase behavior, multiphase flow in porous media, pore networks and CO2 Sequestration/EOR. I am a long-time member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). I served as a technical editor for the SPEREE journal for several years. I served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2013-14. I was actively involved with TTU’s High Performance Computing Center (HPCC) and I played a key role in receiving the 100-license Petrel/Eclipse software donation ($42.5 Million) from Schlumberger for TTU in October, 2009. At TTU I served on several departmental and multidisciplinary teams and committees. In my latest role I worked as Chief Technical Advisor for Halliburton’s North America Innovation and Technical Solutions Team (RezSol), which performs unconventional reservoir simulation projects in order to provide optimized solutions for fracture placement and well spacing for unconventional shale reservoirs through reservoir simulation.
Ph.D. in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 1994. Dissertation: “Three Phase Dynamic Displacements in Porous Media” (sponsored by Argonne National Lab, advisors: Dr. Abraham S. Grader and Dr. Paul J. Hicks).
M.S. in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 1992. Thesis: “A Comparative Study of the Performance of Two-Phase Relative Permeability Models in Reservoir Engineering Calculations” (sponsored by Penn State, advisors: Dr. Turgay Ertekin and Dr. Paul J. Hicks).
Diplôme d’Ingénieur in Petroleum Engineering, Algerian Petroleum Institute, Boumerdes, Algeria, 1982. Thesis: “Analysis of the Possibility of Using Diamond Bits in the Second Phase of Drilling of Hassi Messaoud Wells” (sponsored by Sonatrach, advisor J.L. Perdue).
Location
Richmond, Texas, United States