Announcement of SPE Board Nominees: 2015 SPE President and Slate of Directors

Helge Haldorsen is the nominee for 2015 Society of Petroleum Engineers president. He and seven others make up the slate of Board nominees recommended for SPE Board positions by the society’s Nominating Committee and Board of Directors.

Helge Haldorsen is the nominee for 2015 Society of Petroleum Engineers president. He and seven others make up the slate of Board nominees recommended for SPE Board positions by the society’s Nominating Committee and Board of Directors. These recommendations are based on nominations submitted via SPE’s online nominating process.

2015 SPE President

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Helge Haldorsen is vice president–strategy and portfolio for Statoil Development and Production North America, based in Houston, Texas. He worked for Norsk Hydro in various roles, including chief reservoir engineer, vice president–technology and competence, vice president–exploration and research, senior vice president–international exploration and production, and president–Hydro Gulf of Mexico. Haldorsen has also held various engineering positions at British Petroleum, Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio), and ExxonMobil (Esso). He was a second lieutenant in the Royal Norwegian Navy and professor of industrial mathematics at the University of Oslo.

Haldorsen earned an MS in petroleum engineering from the Norwegian Institute of Technology and a PhD in reservoir engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. He currently serves on the Offshore Technology Conference board of directors and the external advisory board for the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

Technical Director, Drilling and Completions

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David Curry is a Baker Hughes technology fellow, based in London, UK. Prior positions with Baker Hughes include director of drill bit research and technical manager of drilling optimization. He has more than 25 years’ experience in drilling research and technology development, primarily related to drill bits and bit/rock interactions, and to drilling performance improvement. Before joining the oil industry he worked on nuclear power plant integrity.

Curry was named an SPE Distinguished Member in 2010. He is chair of SPE’s Research and Development (R&D) Advisory Committee, past chair of SPE’s R&D Technical Section, and has served on SPE’s Drilling and Completions Advisory Committee, Drilling and Completions Award Committee, and Books Development Committee. He was executive editor of SPE Drilling and Completion, and in 2007 was named A Peer Apart for peer reviewing more than 100 SPE papers. Curry has published more than 40 papers, been awarded eight patents, and coauthored one book. He earned an MA in natural sciences and a PhD in fracture mechanics, both at the University of Cambridge, and is a chartered engineer in the UK.

Technical Director, Projects, Facilities, and Construction

Howard Duhon works as systems engineering manager and principal for Gibson Applied Technology & Engineering (known as GATE), based in Houston, Texas. He has 38 years’ experience in the petrochemical and oil and gas industries, mainly in process design and project engineering roles. For the past 15 years that work has mainly involved deepwater developments and has been focused on managing the interfaces between topsides and other disciplines. He has worked on offshore projects for Noble Energy, BHP Billiton, Shell, Unocal/Chevron, Anadarko, Helix, and British Petroleum.

Duhon earned a BS degree in chemical engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Throughout his career he has had a particular interest in the study of decision theory and in the application of that knowledge to improve project execution.

Director, Eastern North America Region

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Bob Garland is a senior technical advisor for Universal Well Services, based in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He has more than 30 years’ experience in many aspects of the oil and gas industry, including well logging and perforating, as an engineer and operations manager. Garland has also worked in the cementing and hydraulic fracturing phases as a consultative sales engineer.

He has served as board member of SPE’s Pittsburgh Section and is a member of the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists. Garland is a veteran of the US Navy. He earned a BS in civil engineering from Michigan State University and an MBA from Robert Morris University.

Director, Mid-Continent North America Region

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Michael Tunstall is Halliburton’s North American region manager–Easywell technology. He has been with Halliburton for 31 years, serving in a variety of roles including operations, knowledge management, procurement, business development, and account leadership. Tunstall has worked in North and South America land, Gulf of Mexico, and China.

Tunstall earned an associate in arts degree, with high honors from Houston Community College. He has served as SPE Dallas Section education chair and SPE Denver Section chair, and serves on the SPE International Section Activities Committee. Texas Monthly Magazine and the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association recognized Tunstall in 2012 as one of the 14 Best Engineers in Texas. He has coauthored four industry papers.

Director, Canadian Region

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Darcy Spady serves as director of client solutions for Sanjel Corporation’s Canadian business unit. Before this, he was vice president and managing director of Saint Brendan’s Exploration, focusing on the Canadian Maritimes and Europe. Spady also chairs the board of directors of Green Imaging Technologies of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He has previously held executive positions with Contact Exploration and Petroglobe Inc. Spady has also been based in Charleston, West Virginia, USA, and Fredericton, New Brunswick, as part of the Columbia Natural Resources/ Triana Energy team, in various management positions. He has an extensive background in the natural gas and oil industry throughout the US and Canada, having worked for Schlumberger in western Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Atlantic Canada offshore, as well as the Illinois and the Appalachian basins.

Spady earned a BS in petroleum engineering from the University of Alberta and is a registered petroleum engineer in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and New Brunswick. He is a past chair of the SPE Calgary Section.

Director, North Sea Region

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Carlos A. Chalbaud is a senior reservoir engineer at GDF Suez Exploration and Production UK, working on operated assets in the southern North Sea and nonoperated high-pressure/high-temperature assets in the central North Sea. Previous responsibilities within the company were providing reservoir engineering support to new venture projects and assisting in the coordination of the oil and gas reserves and resources corporate booking process and training.

Chalbaud is a member of the SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Advisory Committee. He previously served on the SPE Student Development Committee. He is currently secretary and membership officer of the SPE London Section and previously served as a section officer in the SPE France Section. He is a recipient of the 2012 International Young Member Outstanding Service Award, the 2011 Outstanding Young Member Service Award for the South and Central Europe Region, and a 2012 London Section Service Award. He has served as an editor for SPE’s The Way Ahead magazine and chaired young professional sessions at SPE’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition and Offshore Europe. He has coauthored seven technical papers. Chalbaud earned a BS degree in chemical engineering from Simón Bolívar University at Caracas, Venezuela; and an MS degree in petroleum engineering from the French Institute of Petroleum (IFP) School and a PhD in engineering from École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers—both in Paris.

Director, At-Large

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Liu Zhenwu is senior advisor at the Advisory Center, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). He has more than 30 years’ experience as a professional in China’s oil and gas industry, particularly in R&D management and technology innovation. From 1976 to 1994, he held various positions in the Xinjiang Petroleum Administration, including petroleum engineer, chief engineer, and president of the Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development. Liu then served as division chief and vice managing director, Bureau of Science and Technology at CNPC. From 2000, he served as director-general of CNPC’s Science and Technology Management Department. From 2007 to 2009, he served as deputy chief technology officer at CNPC. He became vice president of CNPC’s Advisory Center in 2009.

Liu serves in many professional associations, including as chair of SPE’s Beijing Section, and council member of the China Petroleum Society and of the China Association for International Science and Technology. He has chaired major natural gas and heavy oil forums and conferences, and served as technical committee chair of the 2010 International Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition in China and executive committee member for the third and fourth International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC). Liu currently serves as co-advisor for the 2013 IPTC Conference Program Committee. He earned a PhD in petroleum engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Scotland, and is also an honorary professor at China Petroleum University.

 

 

How Board Members Are Nominated

Anyone can nominate a candidate for a Board position. The nomination period opens in September each year, and runs through 1 December for the position of president, and through 15 December for other open Board positions.

Next year’s list of open positions, nominee qualifications, and nomination forms, as well as further submission guidelines, will be available sometime during September at this location: http://www.spe.org/about/nominate.php. The process involves filling out an online nomination form and attaching supporting documents that include a CV, résumé, and letters of support.

About the Board of Directors

SPE is governed by a 27-person Board of Directors composed of member representatives from around the world. Each of SPE’s regions and Board-endorsed technical specialties are represented by a director. These directors, together with two at-large directors, the president, president-elect, immediate past president, and vice president of finance, constitute the SPE Board of Directors.

About the Election Process

Submissions made using the online process are reviewed by the Nominating Committee. This committee is chaired by the immediate past president and meets in January to make recommendations for the available positions. The 12-member 2013 Nominating Committee Roster can be viewed at http://www.spe.org/about/docs/nominatingroster.pdf.

Nominating Committee recommendations are submitted to the Board of Directors for ratification at its March meeting. Members can consider the Board-approved nominees through biographical information provided via www.spe.org and through the article you are reading, which is mandated to appear in the April issue of the Journal of Petroleum Technology.

The SPE Constitution provides for these nominees to stand as elected unless SPE members nominate additional candidates by 1 June. Additional nominations require a petition from at least 1% of SPE membership or, for regional director nominees, 1% of the region’s membership (with no more than 75% of the petitioners from any one section). The Constitution also specifies provisions for a ballot election if any qualified petitions are received by 1 June.

If the Board slate is elected, the person nominated president would take office as president-elect at the close of the society’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (held this year in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 30 September–2 October). The other nominees would begin 3-year terms at this time as well.