Presenters

Dr Mike Ala has been closely associated with the oil industry for more than 30 years both as an exploration geologist with an independent oil company and as a consultant.

He has a BSc in Oil Technology and an MSc, PhD and DIC in Petroleum Geology from Imperial College. Since 1981 he has been a member of the academic staff in the Earth Science Department of Imperial College, rising to the post of Director of the internationally recognized MSc Petroleum Geoscience Course in 1994.

Dr Ala has published more than 50 research and review articles, mostly on the petroleum geology and oil industry of the Middle East, West Africa and Europe and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Petroleum Geology.

He was also Editor in Chief of Seventy-Five Years of Progress in Oil Field Science and Technology, published in 1990. Since 1982 he has been organising and presenting numerous industrial training programs in Europe, north Africa, west Africa and southeast Asia. Currently, Dr Ala is completing a textbook entitled The Acquisition and Interpretation of Modern Openhole Logs.

Mr Ollivier Allain is Technical Director of KAPPA Engineering, in Sophia-Antipolis, France. He has been involved in the technical development of Production Logging and Well Test software since 1990.

Previously, he spent two years with Schlumberger as a Field Engineer in Testing and Production Services. He holds a degree from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, and an MSc and Engineer's degree in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University.

Dr Ivor Ellul is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Knowledge Reservoir, Inc. L.P. in Houston.

Prior to this, he spent three years with Smedvig Technologies Inc., two years with Schlumberger GeoQuest, and five seven years with Scientific Software Intercomp, in various technical and management positions.

Dr Ellul's expertise is, among other things, in the modelling of multiphase flow in pipelines under steady-state and transient conditions.

Dr Ellul holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Malta, and an MSc and a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Imperial College London.

He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas and a registered Chartered Engineer in the United Kingdom.

Professor Alain C. Gringarten holds the Chair of Petroleum Engineering in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, where he is also director of the Centre for Petroleum Studies.

Prior to joi ning Imperial in 1997, he spent fourteen years with Scientific Software-Intercomp; five years with Schlumberger; and five years with the Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières in Orléans, France, in various technical and management positions.

Professor Gringarten is a recognised expert in well test analysis. He received the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Formation Evaluation Award for 2001, the SPE John Franklin Carll Award in 2003 and the SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Certificate in 2005.

He holds a MSc and a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University; and an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale Paris, France.

He was elected a SPE Distinguished Member in 2002 and has recently served as a SPE Distinguished Lecturer.

Emmanuel Gringarten is Product Manager at Earth Decision Sciences for t he Reservoir Product Line, focusing on the development of workflow-driven integrated applications for consistent construction of reliable 3D reservoir models.

He holds a BSc in Mathematics from Imperial College London, and Masters and PhD in Reservoir Engineering from Stanford University.

Emmanuel has been involved in many reservoir characterisation projects and is a recognised expert in Geos tatistics and Uncertainty Modelling.

Professor Peter King is Professor of Petroleum Engineering in the Centre for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London.

He spent 17 years with BP at their technology centre in Sunbury-on-Thames where he worked on a wide variety of subjects applying methods of mathematical physics to reservoir characterisation and modelling.

Professor King is a Fellow of both the Institute of P hysics and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications; a Royal Academy of Engineering Vi siting Professor in the Department of Engineering at C ambridge University; a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Physics at Boston University; and a member of the Physics College of the EPSRC.

He was a deputy editor of Petroleum Geoscience. Professor King holds a PhD in theoretical statistical physics from Cambridge University.

François Montel works as a thermodynamics and fluids expert for Total in Pau. He studied engineering physics at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris and has a PhD from the University of Paris.

He has many years industrial experience in petroleum engineering, PVT laboratory and process engineering. He has worked for Elf, TFE, and Total for 25 years.

He has taught at the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles in Paris and is also an associate professor at IFP School and the University of Pau. He has numerous publications in journals and conference proceedings.

Dr Hemanta Mukherjee is the principal Consultant of his independent consulting company called iPoint LLC based in Westminster, Colorado - in the suburbs of Denver.

iPoint is an 'Integrated Production Optimization Company' providing services to oil and gas production and service companies through engineering consulting and offering training courses in various aspects of production, well completion and reservoir engineering.

Dr. Mukherjee retired from Schlumberger Oilfield Services in January 2005 as an Advisor, Well Performance.

Prior to joining Schlumberger, he spent two years as a research engineer with Gulf Science and Technology Company, Harmarville, Pittsburgh; four years as a Lecturer of Petroleum Engineering at the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, India; and three years as a Field Engineer (Production) with the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (O.N.G.C.), India.

Dr Mukherjee has published many technical papers in the areas of multiphase flow in pipes, well management and wellbore hydraulics in reservoir simulation, Gas lift and other artificial lift methods and calibration of induced hydraulic fractures especially in the fissured formations.

He is a co-author of the SPE Monograph Volume 17 on "Multiphase Flow in Wells ". He was recognized by the SPE with the Distinguished Lecturer in 1996-97, Production Engineering Award for the year 2000 and Distinguished Member in 2004.

Dr Mukherjee holds a BS (Petroleum Engineering) from the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, India; and MS and PhD (Petroleum Engineering) degrees from the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Dr Velisa Vesovic is a senor lecturer in the Centre for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engine ering, Imperial College London.

His experti se is in ther mophysical properties, heat transfer and computational modelling and has recently emba r ked on research in the area of environment engineering.

The current research in terests are in understanding and modelling the dispersion phenomena associated with industrial or accidental releases of pollutants into fluid media and their subsequent environmental impact.

He has published over fifty papers and reviews in refereed scientific literature and acts as a consultant to the chemical and environmental industry.

He graduated in 1978 in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College and was awarded a PhD in 1982.

Dr David Waldren is director of Petroleum Consulting and Training Limited and a Visiting Professor to the Centre for Petroleum Studies, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London.

He has been a consulting reservoir engineer for over 25 years, previously having been with BNOC, Intercomp, and IPEC. He is recognised wor ldwide for his reservoir management and simulation advice.

He has a PhD in particle physics from Liverpool University.

Professor Robert Zimmerman is Chair in Rock Mechanics at Imperial College. He obtained a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, and a PhD in continuum mechanics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Schedule