Reservoir Technology Symposium

President CMG Petroleum Consulting Ltd.

Dr. Nathan Meehan has 40 years of global experience in reservoir engineering, reserve estimation, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well expertise. He serves as President at CMG Petroleum Consulting Ltd. Previously he was Senior Executive Advisor to Baker Hughes, Vice President of Engineering for Occidental Oil & Gas and General Manager E&P Services for Union Pacific Resources. Meehan is 2016 President of the Society of Petroleum (SPE) Engineers.

Dr. Meehan earned his BSc in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology, his MSc in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and his PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University. Dr. Meehan previously served as Chairman of the Board of the CMG Reservoir Simulation Foundation and as a Director of the Computer Modelling Group, Ltd., Vanyoganeft Oil Company, Pinnacle Technologies, Inc., the Society of Petroleum Engineers and JOA Oil & Gas BV. He is an SPE Distinguished Member of and the recipient of SPE’s Lester C. Uren Award for Distinguished Achievement in Petroleum Engineering, the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal and the SPE Public Service Award. He serves on the Board of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Strategic Energy Institute and the petroleum engineering advisory boards of the University of Texas, Penn State University and the University of Houston. He is an appointed member of the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission and widely published author. Dr. Meehan is a licensed professional engineer in four states

VP Subsurface Excellence and the Chief Petroleum Engineer, Shell Global

Liz graduated from Imperial College London in 1995 with a degree in Maths, and completed an MBA course in 2002.  She joined Shell in 1995 as a reservoir engineer and undertook assignments in the Netherlands, Angola, Nigeria and Brunei in hydrocarbon development, business, functional and leadership roles before assuming her current position of VP Innovation and Digital for Deepwater in 2019.  Through all these roles Liz maintained her passion for efficiency - creativity, competitiveness and commitment are the order of the day – and for staff development.

Outside work Liz has a variety of interests, from choral singing to amateur dramatics (both currently largely on hold due to COVID) and sport including running and netball.  She lives in the US with her husband, daughter, dog and cats.

Professor, University of Houston

Dr. Christine Ehlig-Economides is Professor and Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished University Chair at the University of Houston.  Prior to her current position, Ehlig-Economides taught at Texas A&M University for ten years and worked twenty years for Schlumberger.

While at A&M, she managed research in production and reservoir engineering in conventional and shale reservoirs and helped the petroleum engineering department to grow and evolve to a broader energy scope.

Ehlig-Economides was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2003 and was a member of the National Academy of Science Committee on America’s Energy Future and the NRC Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (BEES). She chaired The Academies of Medicine, Engineering, and Science in Texas (TAMEST) shale task force in 2017. She currently is a Board member for QRI. She became an Honorary Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2018.

Ehlig-Economides earned a Bachelor of Arts in Math-Science from Rice University, a Master of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Kansas, and a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from Stanford University.

VP Subsurface Engineering, Occidental

Cameron Rempel is VP of Subsurface Engineering at Occidental, where he leads teams of experts that drive innovation and provide simulation and optimization support for Oxy’s assets around the world. After graduating from Colorado School of Mines with a BS in Petroleum Engineering, he began his career at Anadarko (now Oxy), where he was the engineering manager on one of the company’s first shale operations in the Maverick Basin. In his 25 years at the company, he has worked in nearly every aspect of upstream operations, from conventional to unconventional, exploration to production to EOR, automation and safety to budgeting. He has managed projects in North Africa, Europe, the US, and South America and has become a champion for the training and development of engineers.

Founder & CEO, Resermine Inc.

Dr. Ashwin Venkatraman is the Founder and CEO of Resermine with a unique mix of domain experts who have worked in academia and industry. Ashwin has worked in Shell for over 12 years (India, Netherlands and Houston) in various roles in project management, reservoir engineering and technology deployment. Dr Venkatraman served as Associate Professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geological Engineering at University of Oklahoma in 2019-2020. He has also held post-doctoral appointments (3 years) in Princeton as well as at Institute of Computational Sciences at UT Austin where he led next generation modeling for reservoir characterization.

Dr Venkatraman is the recipient of SPE International Technical Award in Data Science and Engineering Analytics (2021). He serves on the editorial board of SPE’s new online journal DSDE (Data Science and Digital Engineering) as well as on the global advisory committee on Data Science and Engineering Analytics. He is the Associate Editor in Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering as well as reviewer in multiple academic journals. He has won the outstanding technical reviewer award in SPE in 2018. Ashwin earned his PhD in Petroleum Engineering from University of Texas at Austin and his BS and MS in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay. He has over 50 technical publications with over 125 citations. He actively teaches SPE course on Reservoir Applications of Analytics and Machine learning in various SPE conferences (URTeC 2020, SPE Middle East Conference 2020, Energy in Data Conference in 2021, SPE ATCE 2021).

Professor, The University of Texas at Austin

Larry W. Lake is a professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin where he holds the Shahid and Sharon Ullah Chair.  He holds BSE and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Arizona State University and Rice University, respectively. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 technical papers, four textbooks and the editor of three bound volumes. Dr. Lake has served on the Board of Directors for the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), won the 1996 Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal of the AIME, the Degoyer Distinguished Service Award in 2002, and has been a member of the US National Academy of Engineers since 1997.   He won the SPE/DOE IOR Pioneer Award in 2000. 

Simulation Design Manager, Occidental

Sriram Pudugramam is a Simulation Design Manager at Occidental in Houston. His team supports the Texas Delaware Basin and Midland Basin Business Units on development planning decisions using geological and simulation modeling. His team also leads the effort for the conception and execution of EOR in Unconventional Reservoirs. His previous role at Oxy was a Reservoir Engineer in the conventional asset where he managed the operations of the most mature CO2 flooded oil field in the Permian Basin. Previously, he also worked at Shell supporting assets in South East Asia and North Africa. Sriram has a Masters in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Sriram is also a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Texas.

Chief Engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Henry (Bud) Johnston joined NREL in late 2015. Previously, Bud worked with Shell for 31 years, most recently as the reservoir engineering discipline lead within international unconventionals at Shell headquarters in the Netherlands. In that role, he was responsible for reservoir engineering technical assurance for international unconventional resource projects.

Senior Reservoir Engineer, Talos Energy 

Bilal Hakim currently serves as a Senior Reservoir Engineer with Talos Energy focusing on deepwater projects. Prior to joining Talos Energy, Bilal worked as a global reservoir engineering consultant working with various U.S and international asset teams to enhance reservoir knowledge and maximize asset value. Bilal's educational background includes a Master's degree in Petroleum Engineering with Emphasis in Smart Oilfield Technology. He’s passionate about reservoir characterization and believes in the value of data in understanding the physics of the reservoir through first principles to maximize value.

Oxy Fellow, Director of LCV Subsurface Evaluation Team

Chia-Fu holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from University of Minnesota and has over 39 years of oil industry experience. Throughout his technical career, he has championed research projects in numerical simulator development, thermal and miscible enhanced recovery methods, novel recovery techniques for tar sands, and proposed innovative strategies for miscible and thermal EOR developments. Chia-Fu has worked on projects around the world, including deepwater Gulf of Mexico. He holds multiple patents on thermal recovery processes and has been published in industry journals on topics ranging from reservoir characterization, field development, and forecasting CO2 flood and steamflood performance to non-Newtonian flow in curved tubes.

Senior Front End Development Manager for CCS, Shell

Roy is from the UK. He joined Shell in 2005 as a geologist in the reservoir modelling team in the Netherlands, after completing a BSc degree at Leeds University and a Masters at Cambridge University. He spent 6 years in HQ working NBD Russia, Kazakhstan and North Sea projects. He then completed overseas postings in Salym Russia, Beijing China and BSP Brunei. Roy came to the GoM in 2018 and since joined CCS in 2021 as Senior Front End Development Manager. Roy is recognized as a Production Geology and Front End well delivery technical authority and has experience in WRFM (including water flood), field development planning (conventional, unconventional and deep water), well delivery appraisal/development/abandonment (>50 wells) and skills in integrated reservoir modelling. Roy used to compete in triathlons, before children and enjoys tinkering with old British motorbikes with the little free time he has now. He has 2 girls, Agatha (5) and Eleanor (3) who keep him very busy.