2024 SPE Pioneers of Improved Oil Recovery

Abstract

Reservoirs present plenty of complexity and mystery. Four oil recovery experts have helped remove some of those mysteries, taming the complex to boost production. From developing preformed particle gels that improve conformance when fractures cause severe channeling to simulating enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes in the reservoir to identifying the aqueous stability concept to demonstrating the distance polymer solutions can travel without degradation, the four 2024 recipients of the 2024 Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) Pioneer Award have made a “sustained and important contribution to increased oil recovery,” Randy Seright, New Mexico Tech, 2024 Pioneer selection committee chairman and 2008 honoree, told JPT. Seright, four other previous recipients of the recognition, and 2024 SPE IOR Conference General Chairman Tom McCoy evaluated a field of 16 nominees for the lifetime achievement honor and selected four who have throughout their careers “made the most lasting and significant contributions to IOR,” Seright said. “It’s why we are where we are today with respect to IOR.” The 2024 IOR Pioneer recipients who were honored during the biannual IOR conference in Tulsa in April are Baojun Bai, professor of petroleum engineering, who sits in the Lester Birbeck Endowed Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, Missouri; Mojdeh Delshad, research professor in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin); Varadarajan Dwarakanath, team lead for chemical EOR at the Chevron Technology Center in Houston; and Stephane Jouenne, who previously led a TotalEnergies team dedicated to surface and subsurface research topics for polymer flooding and is currently CO2 capture project coordinator at TotalEnergies. “It’s the most prestigious award given out in IOR,” Seright said.