Robert C. Martinez
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.