ABSTRACT

This Lecture is designed to raise ethical awareness and to develop insights in SPE members into the significance of the preamble and the twelve canons in SPE’s Code of Conduct.  An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility is paramount to every SPE member working in the petroleum industry. However, the ethical dilemmas members experience while progressing through their career stages can vary in nature and complexity, spanning a broad spectrum from issues for students, for individual contributors or issues encountered at managerial and executive level positions. Common ethical issues include expert witness testimony, employment, competitive bidding, confidentiality, conflict of interest, copyrights, intellectual property, data selection and management, operating standards, regulations, reserves booking, third party opinions, corruption, plagiarism, and citations of others’ work. Ethical behavior is required to manage professional relationships with stakeholders including contractors, vendors, partners, land owners, competitors, governments, regulatory agencies, employees, management and coworkers.   Members will take away from this Lecture a toolkit to enable them to make better decisions when faced with an ethical dilemma.

SPEAKER BIO

Susan Howes, PE, PHR, is Vice President Engineering at Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC, in Houston, Texas, where she maintains technical quality standards for consultancy, recruitment and training services. A Petroleum Engineering (PE) graduate of the University of Texas (UT), Howes started her career at Anadarko, holding roles in reservoir engineering, business development, corporate engineering, and HR. Howes joined Chevron as Manager of the Horizons Program and served as Reservoir Management Consultant at Chevron providing functional leadership that resulted in improved production and reserve trends. Howes is an industry leader in talent attraction, development, and retention. Howes serves on the Colorado School of Mines PE Department Program Advisory Board, the Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council BOD, the Society of Women Engineers – Houston Area Nominating Committee, and previously chaired the UT PGE Distinguished Alumni Committee. She chairs the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) US Advisory Council and the SPE Management Technical Section.  Howes served as SPE Regional Director for Gulf Coast North America, received the SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal, is an Honorary Member of SPE, and was a SPE Distinguished Lecturer for 2019-20. Howes received the 2020 Woman of Excellence award from the Federation of Houston Professional Women.