SPE Flow Assurance Technical Section
Chairman’s Message
Welcome to the SPE Flow Assurance Technical Section!
The purpose of the Flow Assurance Technical Section (FTS) is to further the objectives of the SPE in providing a forum for the free discussion of matters relating to flow assurance, to establish consensus on industry best practices, and to promote these practices widely. In other words, we want to provide a forum to help and serve flow assurance and related discipline engineers.
The FTS was founded in 2014 and we are now entering our 6th year. I have held various roles on the section executive committee since its foundation and I am honored to act as the section Chair in 2020. On behalf of the entire 2020 leadership team, I would like to thank all the section officers over the past six years. Their dedicated and tireless efforts solidified the foundation for the ongoing growth and relevance of FTS.
Membership in FTS has grown steadily in recent years and stabilized at around 2500 members in 2019. The section membership is distributed globally as outlined the following figure. Recognizing the global nature of FTS membership, we have established a new organizational structure that includes 8 Regional Champions who will be working to expand the reach of the Section to all of our global membership in 2020. I personally look forward to working the leadership team and the Regional Directors to continue and expand on these globalization efforts in 2020. In addition, we continue with a full schedule of our popular monthly lunch&learns/webinars, a joint SPE/AIChE workshop and we will actively promote panel and technical paper sessions on the full range of flow assurance topics at SPE conferences.
Finally, I would like to thank all our volunteers and FTS members who have contributed to the vitality of the section by sharing ideas and building the communities technical expertise. I strongly encourage everyone with the desire and passion, regardless of being a committee member or not, to actively participate in FTS.
Looking forward to an exciting 2020,
On behalf of the 2020 leadership team,
John Nighswander
Chairperson, SPE Flow Assurance Technical Section