Robert C. Martinez
Sept 2018 Chairperson's Message
Robert C. Martinez
Section Members,
Football season is finally here which gives us something else to bicker about in the workplace rather than politics and the weather.
Scholarships
I am please to report that Anabriela Treviño and her Scholarship Committee met and reviewed many applications for the Dallas Section Scholarship program. This 2018-2019 school year we awarded over $47,000 in scholarships to 18 students from 8 different universities. The awards when out last month and we have begun to receive thank you letter and pictures of the recipients. Some have been posted on our site. I am very appreciative of the support of our section and hard work of section officers in their fundraising and volunteering efforts to make this possible. The financial impact these scholarships will have on these young students, that will someday be peers and maybe section members, is great. I’m sure you can think back to when you were an undergraduate student not sure what the future holds, living week to week, eating ramen noodles. Admit it, there’s no shame in eating those $0.10 meals. We did just get out of a downturn, right?
ATCE – September 24th – 26th
As you well know, this year’s SPE Annual Technical Conference is right here in Dallas on September 24-26th, 2018 at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center. If you haven’t already registered, please do. The link is http://www.atce.org/register. Tell them Robert sent you. (Just kidding, you don’t get any special treatment for that; you might get run out)
I want to personally that you for answering my call for volunteers last month. We filled a big percentage of the slots needed to pull off ATCE. The main need we have right now it tour guides for our high school and middle school students on Wednesday the 26th. If you are so inclined, please contact me. You will need to be registered for ATCE to volunteer for this.
Awards
Our Section is fortunate to have a high number of very experienced and knowledgeable members and we are happy to announce that 2 members have been recognized by SPE International at this month’s Annual Technical Conference, September 24th through 26th.
Terry Palisch
Distinguished Service Award
Recognizes contributions to the Society of Petroleum Engineers that exhibit such exceptional devotion of time, effort, thought, and action as to set them apart from other contributions and thereby create an indebtedness of the Society to the contributor.
Terry has served the Dallas Section throughout the years in many capacities (including being 2013 Chair). Additionally, he has assisted hundreds in their preparation for technical papers for SPE. I have been very fortunate to have crossed paths with him over the last 10 years.
Scott Sheffield
Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold Medal
Established by AIME in 1932 and is awarded for distinguished achievement in mining administration, including metallurgy and petroleum. Such achievement is marked by leadership, ethical conduct, support of innovation or administrative changes at senior management levels such that companies or industries were impacted positively during their time in such management positions.
Scott has been a prudent supporter of the Dallas Section while at Pioneer Natural Resources. Pioneer continues to have more section members than any other organization and we are very appreciative of their commitment. Pioneer has not only produced leaders for our section, they also host our monthly board meetings.
Another one of our members is also receiving a SPE Regional award in Completions Optimizations and Technology.
David Wesson
Completions Optimization & Technology
David’s home section is Southwestern North America, but he is also a member of the Dallas Section. He is Founder, President and CEO of GEODynamics (among other things).
Please join me in congratulating Terry, Scott and David on their accomplishments and recognition.
Last month:
The speaker at our monthly meeting in August was James Harden III which discussed “Oil Price and Valuation”. Our Study Group hosted Jeff Saponja of HEAL Systems where he taught us a bit about “Improved Artificial Lift Design to Reduce Operational Costs and Risks”. Our YPs hosted a networking event on Thursday, August 9th from 6:30pm at Sherlock’s in Addison.
Looking ahead:
On September 19th Tanner Wood with CoreLab ProTechnics will discuss “Interwell Communication Study of Upper Wolfcamp and Middle Wolfcamp wells in the HFTS” at our section meeting. For this meeting we will be supporting “SPE Cares”, a SPE Community Service initiative. We will be conducting a school supply drive aimed at supporting local schools participating in STEM. Bring $20 worth of school supplies (notebooks, binder, folders, pens, pencils, sharpies, highlighters, calculators, etc) to the next meeting and you get in for free. Please re-register so we can get our lunch count right or you may be stuck eating glue sticks and erasers.
We will not be having a study group or YP meeting this month due to the ATCE conference.
This year’s Annual “Shoot for your School” Clay shoot will be Thursday, December 6th at Elm Fork. We have multiple sponsorship levels available. Please contract John Tabor for more info @ 214-707-1981 or JohnGTabor@gmail.com
We will be kicking off our advertising campaign soon. If you are in the service industry, I highly suggest getting with Joseph Fu (Joseph.Fu@pxd.com) as soon as possible. Slots are limited.
As always, we are looking for suggestions on how to improve our section and advance our profession. If you have any ideas, don’t hesitate to contact me. My email is Robert.Martinez@TitanRockEP.com and my door is always open.
Sincerely,
Robert C. Martinez, P.E.
August Newsletter
Better late than never they said; and this being the oilfield, I didn’t want to “hurry up and wait”.
It is a pleasure to introduce myself as this year’s SPE Chairman for the 2018-2019 term. Welcome to the June through August e-Newsletter and my first installment of the Chairman’s message for the SPE Dallas Section. Although June 1st marks the beginning of a new year for the Section, your board has been working feverishly behind the scenes to bring you the best technical information, speakers and networking possible.
I’d like to thank Rob Bruant and the 2017-2018 Dallas Section board for their leadership and hard work over the last year. While we are excited to have several board members remain with us another year, we are thrilled to see several new faces on the board. This year the Section will continue to provide quality educational programs via our monthly section and study group meetings, our YP members will continue to grow and mentor the younger members of the section, our sports and social committees will provide quality programs to allow members to network as well as raise funds for scholarships, we will continue to provide significant scholarship and networking opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students in the region. We also will promote a positive image of our industry in our schools and community. One of the ways we can do that is to volunteer and there will be several opportunities to do so.
To recap the beginning of our year:
We started out the year with a bang on June 20 in Trevor Rees-Jones where led us on a “Walk down the Road of the Shale Revolution” along with some history on Chief Oil & Gas. It was one of highest attended meetings since I’ve been a part of SPE in Dallas.
On June 4th we had our annual golf tournament at Firewheel golf course followed by the annual summer conference “Emerging Technologies in Unconventional Development” on 27th of June at Brookhaven. These two events are very important to our section and help accomplish our goal of disseminating technical information to our members and raising money for scholarships. Special thanks to our board and committee members who volunteer their precious time to make these a success.
Our monthly meeting on July 18th was Don Fry, a consulting geophysicist, who spoke to us about “New Concepts for Drilling and Completion.” Last week we had Dr. Stephen Molina, the UT Dallas Energy Management Program Director, come speak to our study group about the U.S. Energy Independence. We are looking forward to working with UTD and meeting their Energy Management Program students at upcoming SPE monthly meetings.
Our Young Professionals group, the lifeblood of the organization has really come on strong and we are excited what the future holds for the section. Being a middle aged guy, it was fun being invited to share a few “Don’t do this / This didn’t work out to well for me / That was dumb” moments at the monthly YP networking event. If you are a young professional, I hope you make it out to get to know others in the same boat as you. If you are old like me, the YP’s can surely learn from our mistakes and I hope you consider sharing your experiences with them. We hope the rest of you will come out in support of the section and help us grow to our largest membership yet.
Looking ahead:
On August 15th James Harden III will discuss “Oil Price and Valuation” at our section meeting. The talk will discuss what's moving oil prices and potential scenarios of oil prices. The cost of capital and public company equities' relationship to oil prices will also be discussed. On August 29th, we will learn about “Improved Artificial Lift Design to Reduce Operational Costs and Risks” from Jeff Saponja (CEO, HEAL Systems) at the Study Group meeting. Our YPs will also be hosting a networking event on Thursday, August 9th from 6:30pm at Sherlock’s in Addison.
This coming year:
While the success of our section is certainly related to the hard work of the Section Board and Committee chairs, the biggest part of our success is dictated by you, the members of the section. One of my main priorities this year will to grow the section and bring more members to our meetings and events. We currently have over 1500 paid members in our section. After looking at our section data, something was very apparent to me. Over half of our membership is within retirement age in the next 5 years. That tells me if we don’t grow the section, (and fast) we stand to dwindle into sub 1000 members.
That should never happen in Dallas of all places. There was a show named after our city that created the oilman stereotype - but unlike those stars who had no clue how to pull a well or find the key to the v-door, our section membership is incredibly talented. It is my hope this year that everyone in the section will assess these talents and look for at least one opportunity to volunteer and help us achieve our outreach and growth goals. Take a look at the annual membership year over year.
As you can see, the downturn knocked us in the head pretty good. I need your help to turn this around. You can start by renewing and if you can read this chances are you already have. Please encourage your friends and engineers that aren’t getting this to come to a meeting and see what great technical info we put out and networking opportunities we provide.
Speaking of opportunities to help: Did you know we are the home team for ATCE this year? This year’s SPE Annual Technical Conference is right here in Dallas on September 24-26th, 2018. We will be needing some help and as the home team I hope we can depend on many of you to show up in force. Please contact me or any of the section leadership for how to get involved, we can most certainly use the help.
As always, we are looking for suggestions on how to improve our section and advance our profession. If you have any ideas, don’t hesitate to contact me. My email is Robert.Martinez@TitanRockEP.com and my door is always open.
Sincerely,
Robert C. Martinez, P.E.