URTeC 2023 Speakers List

Amy Henry Eunike Ventures URTeC Speakers Amy Henry is the CEO/Co-Founder of Eunike Ventures and owner of Henry CPA Group LLC, a local CPA firm for small businesses. Eunike Ventures is a Hybrid Accelerator that provides selected start-ups with a venue to connect with their formal alliance of operators, who will potentially field test their new technologies. EUNIKE provides hands-on support, working with selected start-ups through the process, sharing their experience and connecting them with an extensive network of subject matter experts, advisors and investors. Extensive and multi-faceted skill set with a focus on commercial/finance/new business development in the Energy Industry with more than 23 years of proven International Upstream Experience (IOC, NOC, and Big 4 Consulting) in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia portfolios. Portfolio of work in Upstream includes both Conventional and Unconventional E&P business, including Integrated Gas/LNG projects. Worked with organizations such as PETRONAS, Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Gas & Power, Shell Upstream International, Shell E&P Technology & Research including its Joint Ventures, Shell Services International), Ernst & Young LLP, and Arthur Andersen.

Ben Dell Kimmeridge URTeC Speakers Ben Dell is a Managing Partner of Kimmeridge, a private equity firm focused on unconventional oil and gas asset investments. He is closely involved in the screening of new geological opportunities and in the negotiation and execution of investment strategies. Mr. Dell is also an independent Chairman of Civitas Resources. Prior to founding Kimmeridge, Mr. Dell was Senior Equity Research Analyst for Oil and Gas Exploration and Production at Stanford C. Bernstein, where he was ranked first three times in the institutional investor Research Survey for covering of E&Ps. Mr. Dell was also ranked for Natural Gas and for Oil Services and Equipment coverage. Mr. Dell joined Sanford C. Bernstein in 2003. Prior to joining Bernstein, Mr. Dell was employed at British Petroleum in its M&A and finance group. Before moving into the finance field, Mr. Dell held positions as an exploration geoscientist across several of BP’s regional business units.

Clay Gasper Devon Energy URTeC Speakers Clay Gaspar was appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer in January 2021 following Devon’s merger with WPX Energy. He is responsible for Devon’s geosciences, reservoir, production, drilling, completions, facilities, field operations, environmental, health and safety and ESG functions. Gaspar most recently served as president and chief operating officer of WPX Energy and served on the company’s board of directors. He joined WPX in 2014, previously serving as senior vice president and chief operating officer and senior vice president of operations and resource development. Prior to joining WPX, he worked for Newfield Exploration, Anadarko Petroleum and Mewbourne Oil serving in a number of technical and leadership roles. Gaspar is a registered professional engineer and a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University and a master’s degree in petroleum and geosciences engineering from the University of Texas.

Rob Fast Hess Corporation URTeC Speakers Oil is in the fast family blood! Rob is the fourth of five generations producing energy fueling the worlds’ prosperity. His Grandad was a cable tool dresser, and his father pumped the world’s first hydra frac in 1947 and was honored as a Legend of Hydraulic Fracturing in 2006. Rob has more than 3 decades of experience spanning 5 continents formerly with ExxonMobil and Hess Corporation where he currently serves as Chief Technology Officer. Rob’s passions beyond energy and technology include sailing, surfing, travel and food!

Thomas Blasingame Texas A&M URTeC Speakers Dr. Tom Blasingame is a Professor in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station Texas. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Texas A&M University — all in Petroleum Engineering. In teaching and research activities Blasingame focuses on petrophysics, reservoir engineering, diagnostics / analysis / interpretation of well performance, unconventional resources, and technical mathematics.

Rick Walker Mobil/XOM/BHP URTeC Speakers After graduating from the University of Oklahoma, Rick began his career developing an understanding of the petroleum industry in engineering roles with The Superior Oil Company. After an acquisition by Mobil Oil, he worked domestic onshore and offshore properties, also spending time in Germany modeling one of the earliest multi-frac horizontal wells. Rick spent six great years in the Permian Basin working projects from tight gas to CO2 flooding, followed by a unique role as “Reservoir Engineering Technoscout”, linking industry research to technical needs of business units. One merger later, he became part of ExxonMobil, working Reservoir Engineering aspects of Venezuelan heavy oil, Canadian Atlantic offshore projects, tight gas developments, and offshore Angola. After retiring from ExxonMobil, he spent six years with BHP Billiton in technical and leadership positions, primarily focusing on reservoir engineering aspects of unconventional reservoirs. He treasures the friendships developed through these four decades, and always enjoyed working with and mentoring newer engineers, sharing learnings and mistakes. He is currently enjoying his latest life adventure, country life in the Texas Hill Country.

Andy Hendricks Patterson UTI URTeC Speakers Andy Hendricks has over 30 years of experience in the global oil and gas industry and has been the President and CEO of Patterson-UTI Energy since 2012 Prior to Patterson-UTI, Mr. Hendricks worked in a number of positions at Schlumberger for 24 years, where he last served as a drilling division President, having lived and worked around the world in both offshore and onshore regions. As CEO at Patterson-UTI, he has focused on transformation through investments in people and technology, growth through strategic acquisitions, improving diversity in recruiting & leadership and also enhancing the company’s sustainability and ESG position. Mr. Hendricks attended Texas A&M University, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering, and then began his career working on an offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico for Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company (currently Diamond Offshore). Mr. Hendricks is the current and also a past Chair of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, IADC Contractor of the Year in 2021, a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, an energy contributor on CNBC and has testified on energy matters with the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in Washington D.C.

Hannah Chittenden Diamondback Energy URTeC Speakers Hannah Chittenden is a Senior Staff Geophysicist at Diamondback Energy based in Midland, TX. Hannah has more than a decade of experience in acquisition & processing of microseismic data and has interpreted and analyzed passive seismic datasets from every major shale basin in North America. Her role at Diamondback focuses heavily on developing novel workflows for analysis and interpretation of completions monitoring data and she works directly with geologists and engineers across multiple departments. Hannah serves on the Science Advisory Committee for the Center for Injection and Seismicity Research (BEG) and has helped lead industry efforts for best practices related to induced seismicity response and mitigation in the Permian Basin and other parts of the world. Hannah holds an Honors B.Sc. in Geoscience from McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) and a M.Sc. from the University of Bern (Switzerland) where she studied Tectonics. Following her graduate studies and research work, she moved back to Ontario where started her career at Engineering Seismology Group (ESG) in 2013. While at ESG, she gained thousands of field hours as a geophysical analyst on hydraulic fracturing sites and later moved into a team lead position, specializing in processing and advanced data analytics. She has presented and authored a number of papers focusing on completions geophysics and its application to subsurface challenges in unconventional plays. Hannah has been at Diamondback Energy since 2019.

Luis Baez ConocoPhillips URTeC Speakers Luis Baez is the Permian Basin Joint Venture Manager in Midland Texas for ConocoPhillips. Luis graduated as a Geologist in Liverpool England and has over 22 years of experience in the unconventional industry from Coal Seam Gas and Tight Rock reservoirs. He has worked unconventionals across all the Lower 48. In addition, he has worked on projects in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Austral-Asia. Luis was the founding chairman of URTEC where the value of multi discipline collaboration and integration a key foundation to success in Unconventionals and the Oil & Gas Industry has been. Throughout his career, working with Majors to Independents, from multi-national to NOC’s, understanding how to work both in a multifunctional, multigenerational, and a diversity of operating entities is very critical to the future of this industry.

David Fulford EIV Resources URTeC Speakers Nicholas Fulford trained as an engineer and has spent his career focused on the natural gas value chain before more recently focusing on the Energy Transition and carbon management. Nick spent much of his early career with British Gas/Centrica and in the 1990s was instrumental in the restructuring of the gas and power sectors in the UK, which he then developed in a US and Canadian context after managing the acquisition of Direct Energy. A deep involvement in the LNG sector has provided Nick with a practical understanding of the complexities of project structuring, transfer pricing, and risk allocation along the value chain, which he has recently been applying to the emerging business models associated with CCUS and related carbon pricing and credit revenues. His current focus is advising clients on the economic and commercial risks associated with CCS, and how these can be appropriately managed between the emitter, the transmission and storage entities, and major lenders who are now seeking to deploy capital in the industry.

Eric Bryan DeGolyer & MacNaughton URTeC Speakers Eric Bryan has a diverse background given his brief time within the industry. He joined DeGolyer and MacNaughton (D&M) as a Project Reservoir Engineer in 2020. At D&M, Bryan has done several technical RTA based studies and year-end reserve estimations. Bryan grew up in Colorado and attended the Colorado School of Mines to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering, where he graduated Cum Laude. During his time there, he had an internship with an operator every summer. This allowed him to see many sides of the industry, from working as a pumper in Wyoming to analyzing the drawdown effects within the Bakken. Bryan also started Bryan Property Management, LLC to assist with the student housing shortage in Golden, Colorado. Bryan then attended Texas A&M University, receiving a Master of Science degree in Petroleum Engineering. His research primarily focused on production forecasting and diagnostics in unconventional reservoirs. This led to a methodology that assists with poor quality production data, which has since been integrated into D&M’s internal software and workflow. He has presented his technical papers at multiple SPE conferences and unconventional workshops. Upon graduation, he worked as a Production Engineer for Marathon Oil and then joined D&M in 2020.

Yuxing Ben OXY URTeC Speakers Dr. Yuxing Ben is a reservoir engineer at Occidental, where she develops hybrid physics and data-driven solutions in the subsurface engineering technology group. She was the principal developer of machine learning technology for Anadarko's real-time drilling and hydraulic fracturing platforms. She won the best paper award from URTeC 2019 and was selected as a SPE distinguished lecturer for 2021. She has over 17 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. Her work has resulted in the publication of over 30 papers and the granting of three US patents. She earned a BS in theoretical mechanics at Peking University, and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

Travis Clark Chevron URTeC Speakers Travis graduated from Texas A&M with B.S. in Petroleum Engineering in 2011. From there, he hired on with Chevron as a drilling engineer based in Bakersfield, CA where he worked for 6.5 years performing various field and office roles for the company’s San Joaquin Valley assets. At the end of 2017, he moved into a drilling engineering position based in Houston dedicated to Chevron’s unconventional Permian assets. In 2020, he was selected by Chevron to return to school as a full-time student to study M.S. in Computer Science with a Concentration on Data Science at Rice University. Upon graduating the program in 2021, he returned to work as a data scientist dedicated to Wells (drilling & completions) projects. In 2022, he transitioned into his current role as Wells Data Science Strategist where his goal is to identify and prioritize the data science and analytics opportunities that can provide the highest impact to Chevron’s Wells operations.

Alireza Haghighat S&P Global Commodity Insights URTeC Speakers Dr. Alireza Haghighat is upstream technical specialists’ director for engineering software at S&P Global, focusing on reservoir/production engineering and data analytics. Prior to joining S&P Global, he was a senior reservoir engineer at Eclipse Resources for nearly five years. He was also an adjunct faculty member at Pennsylvania State University (PSU). Dr. Haghighat is coauthor of “Machine Learning Guide for Oil and Gas Using Python” book published by Elsevier in 2021.

Thomas Johnson Halliburton URTeC Speakers Thomas Johnson is Halliburton Operations Manager of the Rockies Area, which is part of the North America Land Region.Mr. Johnson joined Halliburton in 2001 as a technical professional in the Gulf of Mexico Region. He subsequently held roles as Assistant District Manager and District Manager in the Greater Denver Area.

Steve Maddison HESS Corporation URTeC Speakers Steve Maddison is the EHS operations Director for Hess Corporation He Joined Hess Corporation in 2009, previously working for Bhp Billiton in Algeria. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Adult Education and Training and a Master’s in health, Safety and Environmental Law.

Jennifer Charbonneau Chord Energy URTeC Speakers Jennifer Charbonneau is Vice President HSE, Regulatory and Supply Chain for Chord Energy. Jennifer has more than 19 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. During her career, she has held various positions in areas of construction, drilling, completions, facilities, reservoir, and production along with some A&D work. Jennifer has worked in multiple basins across the U.S. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Nicholas Gianoutsos U.S. Geological Survey URTeC Speakers Nicholas J. Gianoutsos has been a Physical Scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since 2007. His current research interests include methane emissions from orphaned wells, produced waters associated with petroleum production, geothermal potential in sedimentary basins, and remote sensing. He earned a M.S. in computer science from Texas Tech University and a B.S. in computer science from West Texas A&M University.

Elena Melchert Podcast Host URTeC Speakers Ms. Melchert is a petroleum engineer with over 40 years’ experience in upstream oil and gas including commercial production operations, R&D, and domestic and international policy development. She was Department of Energy’s DOE Director for Upstream Oil and Gas Research until retirement in 2021. She began her career with “boots in the field” in Bakersfield, CA before rising to manage DOE’s multi-million-dollar research program in oil and gas exploration and production in Washington, DC.

David Tonner Diversified Well Logging URTeC Speakers David Tonner received a Bachelor of Science in geology from the University of Nottingham in the UK and a Master’s degree in Geoscience from Stephen F Austin University, TX. He has over 33 years’ experience in the field of surface logging measurements. Dave’s philosophy is that “Drill cuttings and mud gas molecules are a free by product of the drilling operation. They are messengers from the subsurface that contain vitally important information. Our mission should we choose to accept is to extract the maximum value from them to improved resource extraction economics.” Dave has been an active member of the HGS Houston Geological Society where he chaired the Northsider’s group for over 4 years. He is also a member of SPWLA, AAPG and SPE.

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