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He graduated from The Pennsylvania State University in 1972 with a B.S in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering. He joined Texaco in New Iberia, LA in August of that year. He has held positions of from Division Remedial Manager, Division Drilling Manager, and Area Production Manager and Operations Manager in many global locations. A reorganization in 2000 resulted in a title change to Senior Drilling Advisor and with responsibilities for drilling operations in China, Angola, Nigeria, and Kazakhstan with oversight responsibilities for joint operations in Trinidad, China, Australia, and the Philippines. Jim elected to retire from ChevronTexaco in February 2002. Since then he has consulted for several domestic companies as a drilling engineer and drilling superintendent prior to joining SEPI to provide expertise to a major oil company for Drilling Performance Improvement. Jim's technical specialties include contracting, drilling performance and operations management, and establishing and managing remote drilling organizations. Jim has also been directly involved in drilling multidisciplinary collaborative process development, and training. Training has included hazards and risk assessment for hazards and risk management.
He has a B.Sc. in Mineral Engineering from the University of Alberta, with a specialization in Petroleum Engineering, and is a professional engineer with the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA). Ken has a varied background of experience in the development of reservoirs as a production and drilling engineer in many global locations; land and water. Ken has consistently progressed in exploration and development working for most major oil companies of the world, NOC's, and upstream service providers. He has developed expertise in process driven project development of oil and gas reservoirs, and drilling engineering and operations. He has been a valued team member of oil and gas field development projects, as a production engineer, drilling engineer and project leader. Through this experience he has developed expertise in drilling and completion engineering for land and offshore environments, managed pressure drilling and deepwater drilling.
Rick graduate from the University of Tulsa as Petroleum Engineer in 1978. His career spans over 35 years experience as an international drilling and completions project manager / engineer. Drilling experience includes, but not limited to Managed Pressure Drilling & Underbalanced Drilling Engineering & Simulation, Supervision of 4 Phase Separation, Closed and open loop systems, UBD Fluids include: Foam, Gasified Fluids with Gas and Nitrogen. Land and Offshore (Barge and Jack-ups). Conventional Oil & Gas wells (1200 feet to 17,500 feet). Horizontal wells, including the use of underbalanced and multi - lateral technology. Completion experience encompasses perforating wells with wireline and tubing-conveyed guns, both balanced and underbalanced, Electric and slick line well entry with various down hole tools, Formation stimulations: fracturing with oil, water, CO2 and N2, including combinations of the three phases, Coiled tubing workovers, shifting down hole tools and "drill-outs", designing and installing artificial lift systems, including electrical submersible systems and VSD's, Planning and installation of various down hole completion tools (e.g. packers, profiles and plugs, and sliding sleeves. Expertise includes planning and execution of drilling and completion operations in many global locations.
Received his PhD in Petroleum Engineering in January 1971 from the U of Tulsa. He has worked almost his entire career in all aspects of drilling and completion operations worldwide. He spent 23 years with oil companies and 14 years as an independent consultant. He has vast experience on numerous types of wells from management, design and site supervision. This includes land and all types of offshore rigs in various worldwide environments. He has worked on teams for specialized drilling operations, i.e.: HPHT, well control and relief wells. His technical skills include: well drilling and completion design and planning, contracting, permitting and drilling organizational planning. He has taught and training numerous drilling courses in the industry and has been an expert witness on many legal cases concerning drilling.
Dr. Azar is a professor emeritus of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Tulsa. He served as acting chairman of the Petroleum Engineering Department in 2001. Professor Azar is a world-renowned lecturer and researcher in drilling engineering. As a Director of drilling research, he is accredited to building one of the world's most comprehensive and top drilling program in the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Tulsa,. Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has lead his graduate students to pioneering research work in areas of cuttings transport in directional well drilling, drill bit and drillstring dynamics. He is closely associated and worked with all major oil/gas companies, worldwide. He is the author and/or coauthor of four textbooks and over sixty publications in refereed technical journals. He has served as a member of the SPE Education and Professionalism Technical Committee, SPE Student Chapter advisor, SPE Career Guidance and Student Development Committee, Technical reviewer, Committee Chairman/Member on the "SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty", Committee Chairman/Member on the "AIME Mineral Industry Education Award" and Member of Editorial Advisory Board of Offshore. Dr. Azar has received the 1998 SPE Drilling Engineering Award and the 1997 SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty. He was elected as SPE Distinguished Member for the year 2004. He was inducted into the U.S National Academy of Engineering in Washington D.C, 2004. He is registered professional engineer and a member of SPE. His areas of interest in teaching and research include: wellbore fluids hydraulics, wellbore mechanics, drill bit mechanics, drillstring mechanics, and well control mechanics in application to vertical, directional, horizontal, multilateral, coiled tubing, under-balanced and slim hole drilling.
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