Practical Techniques for Screening Deepwater Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration Prospects

S. M. (Sam) Avasthi, PE, PhD, is Chairman and CEO, and Director of Engineering,  EOR/IOR, and CCUS, at Avasthi & Associates, Inc., a worldwide energy consulting company headquartered in Houston, Texas ( www.AvasthiConsulting.com ). In addition to providing strategic direction and leadership to the company, that he founded in 1990 and that now provides full-service, multi-specialty, integrated consulting services to the worldwide oil & gas industry for onshore and offshore (shallow and deep water), conventional and unconventional/shale, oil, gas, gas-condensate/volatile oil, and heavy (and extra heavy) oil field evaluation, development, and optimization (to maximize oil & gas recovery and project profitability), as well as for improved oil recovery (IOR) / enhanced oil recovery (EOR), CO2 EOR, CCUS / CO2 geosequestration, carbon management, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and related projects, he is active in consulting and training in his areas of technical expertise. 

Dr. Sam Avasthi has over 50 years of worldwide oil & gas industry experience in petroleum engineering, reservoir engineering and simulation/modeling, CO2 EOR project design, evaluation and optimization; revitalizing mature oil fields, and related projects. He has been providing consulting services to the worldwide oil & gas industry since the early 1970s; and has been involved in conducting reservoir engineering and simulation studies of some of the major EOR/IOR projects.

Dr. Sam Avasthi has lectured extensively, around the world, on numerous topics in his areas of technical expertise. He is a co-instructor of several popular public training courses taught under the auspicious of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE): ‘Practical Aspects of CO2 Flooding EOR’, ‘Geological Sequestration of CO2’, ‘Practical Aspects of Thermal EOR’, ‘Practical Aspects of Shale EOR’, ‘Optimizing Gas Fields using Integrated Asset Modeling (IAM), and Introduction to Optimizing Shale Gas and Tight Oil Fields’, ‘Practical Reservoir Surveillance and Management Techniques for EOR/IOR Projects’, ‘Practical Techniques for Screening Deepwater Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration Prospects’.

Dr. Sam Avasthi is an engineering alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines), Imperial College London, and Texas A&M University (where he earned a Ph.D. degree in Petroleum Engineering). He was a Research Fellow in Chemical Engineering at Rice University; and worked for several years in senior-level petroleum engineering and consulting positions with major integrated global energy and consulting companies before founding Avasthi & Associates, Inc. in 1990. He is a licensed Professional Engineer (P.E.) in Texas, a Legion of Honor member of SPE, and a Technical Editor for four SPE publications (SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering Journal, SPE Production & Operations Journal, SPE Journal, and Oil & Gas Facilities). He can be contacted by email ( Sam.Avasthi@AvasthiConsulting.com ), or at LinkedIn [ Dr. S. M. (Sam) Avasthi, P.E. 

Luiz C. Amado, PhD, an expert in reservoir engineering, PVT/ compositional simulation, and Integrated Asset Modeling (IAM), works with ENI Petroleum as a Senior Reservoir Engineer.

Amado has over 20 years of oil and gas industry experience, working with Shell, Petrobras, Ecopetrol, Nexen Petroleum and Schlumberger. He started his career as a Senior Reservoir Engineer with Schlumberger, where he was involved in conducting reservoir engineering and simulation studies of onshore gas and gas-condensate fields in Mexico. During his 10-year career with Shell, as a Senior Reservoir Engineer, he worked on several projects in UK, Brazil and USA. In UK, he was involved in reservoir engineering and simulation studies, and operations, in the Southern North Sea gas and gas-condensate fields. He was responsible for development of the Leman field integrated system model to carry out reservoir engineering tasks in support of operations, field monitoring and optimization. As part of the Leman field IAM study, he was involved in the compressor upgrade project and debottlenecking study for the integrated surface network. He was also responsible for reservoir engineering studies of Bijupira and Salema fields in Brazil. As a Senior Reservoir Engineer for Shell in Houston, he worked on deepwater reservoir engineering projects in GOM (Llano field), and at exploration areas in Brazil (Santos, Campos and Espirito Santo basins), as well as on projects in other areas in South America and South Caribbean. As a Senior Reservoir Engineer for Petrobras America, Dr. Amado worked on reservoir engineering projects to evaluate prospect opportunities in Pliocene, Miocene and Lower Tertiary plays of GOM, and reservoir engineering studies for Hadrian project and Cottonwood gas-condensate field, both in the deepwater GOM. He also worked as a Lead Reservoir Engineer for Ecopetrol America, providing reservoir-engineering support to evaluate opportunities in Pliocene, Miocene and Lower Tertiary plays of GOM and K2 field in GOM. He also worked as an Appraisal Reservoir Engineer for Nexen Petroleum, providing reservoir-engineering support to evaluate opportunities in GOM.

Amado holds a BS in civil engineering from Federal Fluminense University, Brazil; an MS in petroleum engineering from Campinas State University, Brazil; and a PhD in petroleum engineering from the University of Leoben, Austria. He is a long-standing member of SPE, and has served on several SPE technical committees and conference boards. He is a co-instructor of two popular SPE training courses: ‘Optimizing Gas Fields using Integrated Asset Modeling (IAM), and Introduction to Optimizing Shale Gas and Tight Oil Fields’, and ‘Practical Techniques for Screening Deepwater Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration Prospects’. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

S. M. (Sam) Avasthi, PE, PhD, is chairman and CEO, and director of engineering and EOR/IOR, at Avasthi & Associates, Inc., a worldwide energy consulting company, headquartered in Houston, Texas. In addition to providing strategic direction and leadership to the company that he founded in 1990, and that now provides full-service integrated consulting services to the worldwide oil and gas industry for onshore and offshore, conventional and unconventional/shale, oil, gas, gas-condensate/volatile oil, and heavy (and extra heavy) oil field evaluation, development and optimization (to maximize oil and gas recovery and project profitability), he is active in consulting and training in his areas of technical expertise.

Avasthi is an engineering alumnus of the Indian School of Mines, Imperial College London, and Texas A&M University (where he earned a PhD in petroleum engineering). He was a research fellow in chemical engineering at Rice University, and worked for several years in senior-level petroleum engineering and consulting positions with major global integrated oil and gas producing and consulting companies before founding Avasthi & Associates, Inc. in 1990.

Avasthi is a registered professional engineer (PE) in Texas, a Legion of Honor member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), and a technical editor of the SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering Journal, SPE Production & Operations Journal, and the Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology. He is a co-instructor of several popular courses taught under the auspices of SPE, including, Practical Aspects of CO₂ Flooding EOR, Geological Sequestration of CO₂, Practical Aspects of Thermal EOR, Practical Reservoir Surveillance and Management Techniques for EOR/IOR Projects, Optimizing Gas Fields using Integrated Asset Modeling (IAM), and Optimizing Shale Plays, and Practical Techniques for Screening Deepwater Offshore Oil & Gas Exploration Prospects.