News

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) recently honored Dr. Kenneth Gray with the the SPE Drilling Engineering Award at SPE’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held 8-10 October in San Antonio, TX.

The SPE Drilling Engineering Award recognizes outstanding achievements in or contributions to the advancement of petroleum engineering in the area of drilling and completions.
Dr. Gray built a research center and conducted pioneering research on bit tooth impact mechanics under pressure and 3-D rock behavior under 3-D stresses, developed techniques for simultaneous measurement of rock parameters for variable stress paths, designed core bits for the Apollo Space Program, and introduced concept of Dynamic Density Control for improving HSE footprints of every drilling rig on land or water.

“It is an honor to recognize Ken for his commitment and dedication to the oil and gas industry with the SPE Drilling Engineering Award. SPE international award winners were nominated by their colleagues and selected by their peers for their achievement and contributions and it’s my pleasure to congratulate them on receiving this prestigious international award from SPE,” said Ganesh Thakur, 2012 SPE President.

UT PGE PhD student Mahdy Shirdel won first place in the SPE International Student Paper Contest held at the organization’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio. He presented on: “Development of a Coupled Wellbore/Reservoir Simulator for Damage Prediction and Remediation.”

The paper contest competition started at the local level, here at UT – Mahdy was in the Top two of 12 participants. Then he placed first out of eight in the regional contest in Baton Rouge and finally competed at the international conference taking the highest honor in a pool of seven participants.

This a major accomplishment for Mahdy - the department is proud to have an international PE star conducting innovative and game-changing research.

Drs. Bommer and Podio just launched their new book, The Beam Lift Handbook, through the Petroleum Extension Service (PETEX™) of the Division of Continuing and Innovative Education at The University of Texas at Austin.

This essential textbook and field handbook, has outlined the goals and best practices for production beam lift systems. Using extensive graphics, illustrations, and mathematical equations, this one-of-a-kind technical manual fully covers the important aspects of beam lift systems and potential complications in daily operations. For more information, visit the PETEX website. 

UT PGE is headed south to San Antonio for the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) alumni reception. Last year’s event in the Rocky Mountains was well received by former students, so this year we are excited to have the UT PGE family on the River Walk! Please join us for drinks, passed appetizers and mingling with fellow alumni, current students and faculty.

Monday, October 8, 2012
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Grand Hyatt, 600 E. Market St.,
Room “Texas D,” San Antonio, TX

Questions: Contact
Katharine Grieve at 512-471-3269

Drs. Srinivasan and Balhoff both received prestigious national awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). Dr. Srinivasan was selected as the winner of the SPE Faculty Pipeline Award for 2012. The award is given to a faculty member in petroleum engineering who has developed innovative techniques to recruit Ph.D. students into a PE program who have a preference for going into academia rather than into the industry. With PGE’s talented Ph.D. pool, it is clear Dr. Srinivasan’ s efforts have been quite successful.

Dr. Balhoff was selected for the SPE Teaching Fellow Award for 2012.  In the pilot program, SPE is recognizing PE faculty who have developed innovative techniques to teach petroleum engineering students. The techniques Dr. Balhoff has demonstrated are different teaching methodologies in class, innovative ways of interacting with the industry, presentation material which combines the fundamental knowledge students require, the technological advances the industry has made, and better methodologies to interact with the students. Thanks to Dr. Balhoff PGE students receive strong teaching, resulting in enhanced learning.

The third annual UT PGE Distinguished Alumni Reception and Dinner is set for Friday, November 9 at The Driskill Hotel. The Reception will begin at 6:00 p.m., and the Dinner at 7:00 p.m. The UT PGE Alumni Reunion will take place Saturday, November 10, at 8:30 a.m. at the UT PGE Department on the UT Austin campus.

The 2012 Distinguished Alumni honorees, include:

To purchase tickets or sponsor the event, please visit the Always #1 website.

Ayaz Mehmani, was the 2012 winner of the Procter & Gamble Student Award for an outstanding student poster presentation at the 4th International InterPore Conference on Porous Media & Annual Meeting at Purdue University.

Mehmani, a PhD candidate in the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department advised by Dr. Maša Prodanović, presented a poster titled: “Investigating gas permeability in shales using multi-physics and multi-scale network modeling” coauthored by Drs. Prodanović and Javadpour of UT Austin. Mehmani impressed the awards committee by successfully combining multiscale 3D pore network models with novel transport equations for gas transport on nanoscale that result in nonlinear, pressure dependent permeability estimates and shed light on nanometer scale control on transport properties.

In addition to his solid research and presentation skills, Mehmani is also a Statoil Graduate Fellow, has a GPA of 4.0 (on 4.0 scale), is fluent in five languages and is also active in UT Austin student organizations.

Two popular student organizations within UT PGE are the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and American Association of Drilling Engineers (AADE). Both organizations elected a talented senior to take the reins this fall.

UT PGE is thrilled to welcome the class of 2016. The undergraduate students started their college journey around the 2012 London Olympics and will close the books with the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Drilling for oil and gas is more complex than ever before. Wells are diving into ultra-deep water, with water depths greater than 10,000 feet and wells exceeding 35,000 feet in measured depth, where robots roam and humans don’t exist.