The team is made of volunteers from the upstream segment of oil and gas industry.  They are all passionate about the oil industry and know the importance for the industry of retaining experience and expertise. History has shown that with each downturn the industry has lost experienced professionals and this has hurt it. The long downturn the industry has experienced since the end of 2014 is risking the industry to suffer from the loss of experience and expertise.

Experience and expertise help to find new oil and gas, help to develop projects efficiently, economically and safely, help to avoid mistakes, and to teach junior professionals. Experience and expertise help to develop new technology and to think of better and safer processes. In other words, the industry and the whole community benefit by retaining experienced professionals. For this reason, since November 2018, the team has spend innumerable number of hours working in the coordination and implementation of the hiring event for experienced upstream professionals.

Fall 2018 Co-Chairs:

Darrell Howard

Darrell is an experienced leader in developing and delivering value-added applications, services and solutions across the E&P sector. He has a track record of exceptional performance in domestic and international assignments and has served in key positions ranging from Drilling Engineer to Global Business Unit President. His passion for safety, delivery and integrity is reflected in all aspects of his career. Darrell has delivered major projects and held CAPEX responsibility for over $1 billion. He is considered to be an industry authority in the Drilling industry with a proven ability to understand financials and make sound decisions.  Darrell is a strong communicator and his business experience and expertise includes: Executive Leadership, Board Representation, Project Management, Technology Management, Asset Management from Field Development to Abandonment, and Wells Delivery (onshore, offshore, HPHT, remote locations operations).

Steve Marymee

Steve is a Mechanical Engineer with experience in the engineering design of production facilities and pipeline stations, ranging from offshore topsides to unconventional. His creative thinking and attention to details have enabled him to prevent several flawed designs from entering service, and satisfy the requirements of multiple departments and clients. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and is certified as an Engineer-in-Training (EIT) in the State of Texas. Steve is an active member of both the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Petroleum Engineers, serving on committees in each organization. He is passionate about oil and gas, and is known for his dedication and loyalty.

Spring 2019 Team:

Anglia Sweet

Anglia is an expert Deepwater subsalt geoscientist focused on both Domestic GOM and international exploration and is currently seeking her next professional challenge.  Her technical experience includes petroleum system framework study, prospect generation, multi-attribute analysis, AI, AVO and risk & resource assessment. Her passion in seismic interpretation embraces integrating geologic models and data in areas with poor seismic illumination under salt bodies. Having worked for both American and European oil companies, she has successfully discovered and/or developed over 500 million BOEs core assets in the Gulf of Mexico, identified over two billion BOE of pre-salt prospects in Deepwater West Africa and is currently working at a private US Exploration company with emphasis on near field exploration/development for on-shore and Shelf fields GOM. Anglia holds a B.S. in Geology from Thailand and an M.S. in Geological Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology.

Ben Anunne

Ben is academically a geologist and professionally a senior imaging geophysicist with diverse experience in seismic data processing, depth imaging and seismic interpretation, of marine and land data across mainly West Africa and Gulf of Mexico. Currently he is open to opportunities in this domain or entry level opportunities in prospect evaluation, field development, operations geology / geophysics or data analytics.  Ben is actively engaged in geosciences and digital transformation self-development efforts.

Carlos A. Salamanca

Carlos earned a BS in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and received an MBA from the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. Carlos holds a PMP certificate from PMI, and an EIT certificate from the Texas Board of Professional Engineers. He has held several positions through different oil and gas projects. He has been working with oil companies in Latin America with focus on Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. Carlos is the current South Texas Section – American Institute of Chemical Engineers (STS-AIChE) Chair, and previous Treasurer. He also has represented AIChE with the Offshore Technology Conference events including OTC Houston, Arctic Technology Conference, OTC Brasil, and OTC Asia in different roles. Carlos is active with Toastmasters, Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), and the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Dalian Payne

Dal Payne is a Senior Reservoir Engineer Advisor who has been responsible for diverse developments across North America. He has held positions of increasing responsibility with major operators including Chevron and Chevron Oil Field Research, Oxy and Devon. His areas of expertise include waterflood/enhanced recovery, economics and risk analysis and reservoir characterization.  Dal has lead developments in both conventional and unconventional basins including exploration advisement of significance in areas including Permian Basin, Rocky Mountains and Alaska North Slope. In his upstream research position, he co-authored and presented his work applying advanced reservoir characterization with miscible recovery simulation at the Second International Reservoir Characterization Conference.  Dal holds a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University where he was a member of Pi Epsilon Tau Honor Society.

Farnaz Zarian

Farnaz Zarian is a reservoir engineer. She holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering as well as an MS in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California. Farnaz started her upstream career with Chevron as a reservoir and production engineer, developing her skills from initial opportunity identification to field development in order to capture new reserves. She has extensive experience in secondary and tertiary recovery methods to identify candidate target fields for IOR/EOR and drive business performance. While at Chevron, she worked on multi-million dollar projects in the Permian, Deepwater Gulf of Mexico, Argentina, North Sea and Indonesia and managed several projects where she built consensus across multidisciplinary teams for technical analysis and execution.

Isolda Griffiths

Isolda is a petroleum economics evaluation engineer.  She holds a bachellors degree in geophysics from Argentina, an MS in petroleum engineering and an MA in energy economics both from the University of Texas at Austin. Her multidisciplinary background has helped her to better communicate and work in diverse teams and to understand, identify and quantify risks and opportunities from a holistic point of view. She has been involved in the economics, decision and risk analysis of multi-billion dollar projects in GoM deepwater, US onshore and internationally. Her knowledge, creative and out of the box thinking have helped her in the creation of user-friendly processes for economic evaluations, economics assurance reviews and the economic side of the reserves booking.  Isolda has worked for APC, SLB, Shell and BHP.

Jade Bradford 

Jade is an enthusiastic petroleum engineer with production engineering experience in unconventional horizontal wells and legacy assets with a focus on maximizing asset value. She has a proven track record of identifying and implementing production improvement opportunities in the unconventional horizontal Bakken wells and legacy vertical gas wells. She enjoys finding creative solutions to complex problems and utilizing her strong foundation in artificial lift systems, well surveillance, production optimization, system modeling, and process improvement. Jade holds a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas Tech University.

Jennifer Wilson

Jennifer holds a bachelors degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University. Her experience in the oil and gas industry started with Chesapeake Energy as a Barnett Shale production engineer working with 42 drilling rigs. Her interest in data analysis began after she put together a data study to discover an optimal time to run tubing in a new well. Most recently, Jennifer has worked on the start-up of a CO2 field and recycle facility for Tabula Rasa Energy all the while organizing well data and financial process optimization. Jennifer’s multifaceted experience has exposed her to several programming languages, software, and disciplines within the industry. She is a passionate engineer who is good at framing end goal objectives and working with her teammates to accomplish those goals.

Pat Chia

Patricia has diverse work experience. She has proven record to reduce cost for company, and she enjoys working with cross functional teams. She is interested in putting her experience and skill sets in areas related to project management and or supply chain for your organization.

Stephen Levy

Stephen has worked in seismic acquisition, data processing, and exploration interpretation on his 30-year career. He has interpreted major deepwater discoveries including Vito in the GOM and Block BM-ES-23 in Brazil. His interests include geologic interpretation and prospect generation, attribute analysis and spectral decomposition for hydrocarbon detection, and development and interpretation of detailed seismic velocity volumes for applications in imaging, pore-pressure modeling, and confirmation of DHI indicators. He holds a B.S. degree in Geology, a M.S. in geophysics, and a M.B.A. Stephen has taken multiple graduate level geoscience classes since 2008 while working full-time in Houston. His background and creativity have enabled him to enjoy a successful career in hydrocarbon exploration.

Susan Howes, PE, PHR

Susan is Vice President of Engineering at Subsurface Consultants & Associates, LLC, where she maintains technical quality standards for consultancy, recruitment and training services. She began her career with Anadarko, with engineering positions of increasing responsibility in Denver and Houston. In 2007, she joined Chevron as Horizons Program Manager and later moved into Reservoir Management.  Susan has coauthored articles on ethics, uncertainty management, risk management, and talent. She is a recipient of the SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal and is an SPE Honorary Member. Susan holds a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Texas.

Andrés Landa

Ciprian Soldan

Germain Johnson

Howard Gee

Yetunde Okediji