OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2012. Three EXPEC Advanced Research Center (EXPEC ARC) professionals were recently honored for their major contributions to the petroleum industry at the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio, Texas, reported the press-centre of Saudi Aramco.   

Ali H. Dogru, chief technologist of Computational Modeling Technology; and Sunil L. Kokal and Hazim H. Abass, both senior petroleum engineering consultants on the ARC team, were selected from a prestigious pool of candidates for their distinguished awards based on the recommendations from 17 international award committees.

SPE honors those who have made outstanding and significant technical, professional and service contributions to the organization and industry annually.

While EXPEC ARC researchers are regularly acknowledged by the international community for their leading edge research, the breadth of this year’s awards illustrates Saudi Aramco’s status among petroleum industry leadership.

Ali H. Dogru
Ali H. Dogru received the prestigious John Franklin Carll Distinguished Professional Award for his outstanding achievements in the industry.

He holds several U.S. patents, has had numerous technical papers published and served as a presenter at key conferences around the globe. His current research is focused on developing the next generation parallel reservoir simulator to improve the reservoir models and optimize oil recovery in mature fields.

With his team, Dogru developed the world’s first mega-cell simulator POWERS and recently the giga-cell reservoir simulator, GigaPOWERS. “Such esteemed industry recognition further motivates me to continue introducing new computational methods in modeling our reservoirs to recover more hydrocarbons,” he said.

Hazim H. Abass
Hazim H. Abass was presented with the Completions Optimization and Technology Award in recognition of his outstanding work. His research interest is applied rock mechanics.

His passion for exploring rock deformation resulting from applied stress has contributed to solving many petroleum engineering challenges related to drilling, completion and production. ”Enabling geomechanics discipline to solve petroleum engineering problems is like applying stress management for the reservoir to increase productivity,” he explained.

His many accomplishments include technical papers, patents and contributions to industry text books.

Sunil L. Kokal
Sunil L. Kokal captured the DeGoyler Distinguished Service Medal in recognition of his dedication to the profession of engineering and geology.

His research focus area is enhanced oil recovery (EOR). His quest for increasing the life of oil reservoirs has contributed to EOR technologies, specifically carbon dioxide or CO2 EOR. “I find this a win-win situation where we are able to produce additional oil and store CO2 in oil reservoirs,” he explained.