Jim Pettigrew

Principal Investigator/Director of Operations, Ocean Energy Safety Institute

Retired Navy Captain Jim Pettigrew is the Principal Investigator and Director of Operations for the Ocean Energy Safety Institute (OESI). A partnership between Texas A&M University, University of Houston, and University of Texas – Austin; OESI provides a forum for dialogue, shared learning and cooperative research among academia, government, industry and other non-governmental organizations. OESI’s focus is offshore-related technologies and activities that help ensure safer and environmentally responsible offshore operations. Jim assumed the position of Principal Investigator in December 2018, and Director in May 2014.

Throughout his three decades in the Navy, Pettigrew worked predominantly in operational oceanography, surface warfare and information warfare; managing and mitigating risk at all levels of operations. He served most recently as Chief of Staff for the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command where he was responsible for the direction and leadership of a team of 150 people, executing a $300 million annual budget, the operations of 4,000 personnel worldwide, the nation's Master Clock, two world-class supercomputing facilities, and six military Oceanographic Survey Ships. He also had the privilege and honor of serving as the Commanding Officer for the Navy’s Global Atmospheric and Ocean Modeling Supercomputing Center (Fleet Numerical, in Monterey, CA) and as the Commanding Officer for the Navy’s only forward deployed Operational Oceanography support center in Yokosuka, Japan. He served twice in the Pentagon and was Joint-qualified serving with the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs.

Pettigrew received his Masters of Science in Physical Oceanography and Meteorology from the Naval Postgraduate School, and received his Bachelors of Science in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M University. 

Dr. Maurice B. Dusseault

Earth and Environmental Sciences Dept., University of Waterloo

Dr. Dusseault is a Professional Engineer and teaches Geological Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He carries out research in deep underground engineering issues including oil production, hydraulic fracturing, energy storage, geothermal energy, carbon sequestration, and deep injection disposal of granular solids and liquid wastes (including biosolids, oilfield wastes, and civil wastes). He holds over 90 international patents, has about 570 full-text papers published in journals and conferences and has taught Petroleum Geomechanics short courses in 28 countries. He is involved in energy technologies that can be downscaled to community levels to provide robust and reliable heat and power: geothermal, natural gas approaches, compressed air energy storage, and heat geo-storage. Many of the general energy processes he works on involve hydraulic fracture implementation to generate communication, or analysis to prevent hydraulic fracturing onset.

John Walsh

Principal Technologist, Worley

Dr. Walsh has worked as a water specialist for over thirty-five years. He is currently a Principal Technologist for Worley. Before Worley, he was the Global Water Treatment Subject Matter Expert for Royal Dutch Shell. He has worked on projects in fourteen countries and was involved in essentially all aspects of water treatment in upstream oil and gas. He started his career as a water treatment engineer with Westvaco Paper Company.

Until recently he was the President and Managing Director of the Produced Water Society, an international organization of upstream water treatment specialists. He remains on their Board of Directors. He has served on the Board of Directors of Society of Petroleum Engineers. He is the designated instructor for the SPE water treatment courses. He has recently authored a two-volume book which can be found on Amazon by searching “Produced Water Walsh.” He earned a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

Jon Curtis

Chairman Emeritus, Petrolink International Limited and Vice President of Saudi Arabia, Petrolink

Jon Curtis is a member of numerous professional organizations and is the former Chair of SPE’s Drilling Uncertainty Prediction Technical Section (DUPTS) and the current Technical Section Liaison, where he works with other leaders to provide comprehensive solutions across drilling operations. Mr. Curtis is author of multiple SPE papers including those concerning data architecture of real-time drilling and completions information and the integration of real-time, drilling sensor data with drilling reporting data. He graduated from Oxford University where he studied Metallurgy and Materials Science.

Dr. John Ratulowski

Reservoir Fluids and Flow Assurance Consultant

Dr. Ratulowski received his B.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and his PhD also in Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston. He has worked for 16 years in the reservoir and facilities engineering departments of the Bellaire and Westhollow Shell Technology Laboratories in Houston. During this time John was involved in thermal recovery projects, equation of state development, physical property and phase behavior measurement and organic solids measurement and modelling. In 1999, John assumed the role of Vice President – Research for DB Robinson After the acquisition of DBR by Schlumberger in 2001, John acted as Reservoir Fluids Research Director at Schlumberger’s DBR technology center in Edmonton Alberta Canada and Reservoir Geosciences Research Director at Schlumberger Dow Research Center in Cambridge Massachusetts until his retirement in 2017. John is currently an independent consultant in the areas of reservoir fluids and flow assurance.

Dr. Ian Bryant

President/CEO, Packers Plus Energy Services Inc

Dr. Bryant provides leadership to the executive team that is responsible for developing, implementing and managing strategic initiatives at Packers Plus.

With over 34 years of industry experience, Dr. Bryant worked for both a major operator and a major service company before joining Packers Plus. A central theme to his career has been applying technology to improve both productivity and ultimate recovery from oil, gas and gas-condensate reservoirs. In the past 18 years, he has been intimately involved in developing technologies to improve the efficiency of exploration and exploitation of tight gas, coalbed methane, shale oil and shale gas.

Dr. Bryant holds B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Earth Sciences from the University of Reading. He is past-chair of the SPE Development Geology and Geophysics Committee and represented Schlumberger on the AAPG Corporate Advisory Board. Dr. Bryant is an active member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers; American Association of Petroleum Geologists; the European Society of Geoscientists and Engineers; and a Fellow of the Geological Society of London. He holds 20 patents and has authored over 50 publications.

He enjoys outdoor activities in his free time including cycling, hiking, skiing and scuba. He has two grown children, Jonathan and Berenice and he resides with his wife, Lisa in Houston, Texas.

Dr. John McLennan

USTAR Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Utah

Since October 2009, Dr. McLennan has been a USTAR Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah. He has been a Senior Research Scientist at the Energy & Geoscience Institute and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Utah, since January 2008. He has a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Toronto, awarded in 1980. He has more than thirty-five years of experience with petroleum service and technology companies. He worked nine years for Dowell Schlumberger in their Denver, Tulsa and Houston facilities. Later, John was with TerraTek in Salt Lake City, Advantek International in Houston, and ASRC Energy Services in Anchorage. He has worked on projects concerned with subsurface energy recovery (hydrocarbon, geothermal) in a variety of reservoir environments, throughout the world. He is a past president of the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA).

Philippe Herve

VP of Solutions, SparkCognition

Mr. Herve joined SparkCognition as the VP of Solutions. Herve is an executive with US and international success in operations, P&L, technology, business development, marketing, sales, and client relations.

Herve’s comprehensive experience in oil and gas spans large-scale project leadership, IT, engineering, manufacturing, and operation.

Herve holds multiple patents in the field of ultrasonic and has authored many technical papers. He is a member of numerous professional organizations including the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Over the years, Mr. Herve has frequently been published in Bloomberg, Oil & Gas Journal, Journal of Petroleum Technology, World Oil, The Houston Chronicle, Drilling Contractor, and is a frequent speaker on diverse management and engineering subjects.

Herve was a late comer to the AI revolution. He only started working on Artificial Intelligence in 1985.  Artificial Intelligence had already been defined 30 years earlier.

Omar Abou-Sayed

CEO, Advantek Waste Management Services

Mr. Abou-Sayed's experience spans the global energy, chemicals, oilfield services, and clean tech industries. He has worked in a variety of engineering, business, and organization-wide leadership roles within SuperMajor oil companies, blue chip management consulting firms, private equity funds, and venture-backed startups. He currently serves as CEO of Advantek Waste Management Services, a private equity backed industrial waste management company which operates primarily in the oil and gas market. He also acts as President at Advantek International, a global oilfield consulting firm focused on hydraulic fracturing, geomechanics, and data analytics and artificial intelligence applications within oil and gas. Omar began his career at BP, where he held a variety of engineering roles. Omar holds a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Tracy Lamb

VP of Regulatory and Safety Affairs, AUVSI

As VP of Regulatory and Safety Affairs for AUVSI, Tracy brings 23 years of experience in commercial flight operations. She has over 7000 flight hours as an International Airline pilot flying the Boeing 737, she is also a Senior Certified Flight Instructor with over 3000 hours of flight instruction delivery and over 1000 hours as a Charter Pilot in the Australian outback and Asia Pacific. She also has over 1100 hours as an international corporate jet pilot, flying the Cessna Citation range of aircraft to remote islands including; Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, Nauru, Christmas & Cocas Islands and Indonesia. (her movie star passengers included Mathew McConaughey!). She is also a certified UAS pilot with 5 years of commercial UAS operations flying missions in the Agriculture, Mining, research and industrial plant installation sectors in Australia and in Europe. She was the 109th person to receive an ‘Unmanned Operators Certificate’ in Australia. She has been chased by brown snakes and wild emu’s in this role on several occasions.

Her post-graduate research has won academic Awards through Griffith University in Aviation Safety, Human Factors, Crew Resource Management, Safety Management Systems and Unmanned Aircraft Systems. She has an MBA in Aviation and continues her research towards a PhD. As an ‘ISO 9000:2008 Lead Auditor’ in her previously role she conducted operational safety audits and inspections on Airlines and Aircraft operators including; helicopter and Unmanned Aircraft Operators and Maintenance Organisations around the world. For 3 years, Tracy was the Global project lead for this organisation, developing Unmanned Inspection Capabilities in the Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, South Africa, Spain, Canada the South America.

As an appointed industry subject matter expert, Tracy contributes as part of Working Group 7 on the ICAO RPAS Panel, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on the Aviation Rule Making Committee (ARC), the FAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems Safety Team (UAST), and the ICAO Unmanned Aircraft Systems Advisory Group on Unmanned Traffic Management (UAS AG - UTM).

Wayne Rodieck

Manager, Aerial and Visual Analytics Department, Anadarko

Wayne has been in and around the Oil & Gas business for over 40 years. He spent his childhood in Tyler, Texas working in the family’s steel fabrication business, building natural gas processing equipment. After attending Baylor University where he acquired a Business Degree in Entrepreneurship and Information Systems, Wayne went on to become a landman for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation. He has spent the last 12 years building spatial data departments at Anadarko and has just recently been appointed as manager of the newly formed Aerial and Visual Analytics department. Wayne and his team of geospatial analysts are turning drones into actionable intelligence gathering business tools. He is a Part 107 FAA certificated commercial pilot with over 400 flight hours flying commercial drones all over the world and the Gulf of Mexico.