The SPE Podcast

SPE Live Podcast: How Relevant is Well Intervention in Today's O&G Landscape?

How relevant is well intervention in today’s O&G landscape? Very much, as the need from operators to maximize ROI while maintaining cost control relies on mature asset management, production increases. Well Intervention is a fundamental technical discipline, which enables Operators to regain access to reserves and restore/increase production faster than drilling. The SPE/ICoTA conference is the cornerstone of the Well Intervention Technical Community, where companies share their newest technologies, developments, and achievements, contributing to the technical excellence and knowledge sharing amongst peers.
Moderated by Carlos Torres, SPE North America Regional Director. Founder and Owner at Royal Oaks Energy Services
Speakers:
Manuel Chavez, Lead Well Interventions Engineer, Coiled Tubing SME at Shell
Luis Castro, Asset Surveillance and Intervention Leader at Baker Hughes
SPE/ICoTA Well Intervention Conference and Exhibition

SPE Live Podcast: Shaping the Future of the Drilling and Well Industry

Join us for an exclusive fireside chat with Erik Kirkemo, Senior Vice President of Drilling & Well at Equinor and Conference Chair for the upcoming SPE/IADC International Drilling Conference and Exhibition. We will explore the extraordinary shifts reshaping the drilling landscape—from harnessing advanced automation and digital innovation to pursuing net-zero targets. Erik will share insights on balancing short-term demands with long-term strategic planning, adapting to evolving regulations, and leveraging collaboration to drive meaningful change. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain fresh perspectives on what’s truly shaping the future of drilling.
Moderated by Robin Macmillan, SPE Technical Director for Drilling
Speakers: Erik Kirkemo, Senior Vice President of Drilling and Well, Equinor. Conference Chair for the 2025 SPE/IADC International Drilling Conference & Exhibition

SPE Live Podcast: From Human Error to System Resilience in O&G, Maritime, and Civil Aviation Industries - Learnings and Perspectives

In this SPE Live, we explore the evolution of safety in O&G, maritime, and civil aviation industries under a human factors approach, discussing how the evolution from human error to system resilience reshaped workplace practices and safety management. Drawing insights from incidents and normal work, we illustrate how human competencies, such as adaptive variability, non-technical skills, and team dynamics, are the solution, not the problem, to deal with the emergent challenges in high-risk environments as the complex sociotechnical system of these industry's workplaces.
Moderated by Sarah Acton, Human Factors Engineer at Ascend Performance Materials
Speakers:• Riana Steen, Associate Professor at BI Norwegian Business School• James Norman, FOQA Gatekeeper, ALPA at Delta Air Lines• Josué Maia Franca, Safety Engineer and Human Factors Consultant at Petrobras

SPE Live Podcast: The Frontiers in CCUS with the TWA Energy Influencers

We are excited to host two 2024 Energy Influencers selected by The Way Ahead for outstanding technical, entrepreneurial, and service contributions by young professionals. In this SPE Live, we discuss how technology innovation is enabling carbon capture, how industry is scaling-up these technologies in large projects globally, and how our energy sector is collaborating and working across industries to advance.
Our guests have years of experience championing new technologies and are ready to share their perspectives and answer your questions.
Moderated by Natan Battisti, Portfolio Risk & Decision Quality Lead at Harbour Energy
Speakers:• Mohamad Yousef Alklih, Senior Reservoir Simulation Engineer at ADNOC• Rostyslav Dolog, Senior Lab Scientist at Aramco Americas

SPE Live Podcast: Challenges Faced by Young Leaders and How to Overcome Them - With TWA Energy Influencers

We are excited to host three 2024 Energy Influencers selected by The Way Ahead for outstanding technical, entrepreneurial, and service contributions by young professionals. In this SPE Live, we talk about the meaning and impact of being a leader, leadership skills, challenges face as young leaders and how to overcome them.
Our guests have become leaders and are ready to share their perspectives and answer your questions.
Moderated by Hitisha Dadlani, Reservoir engineer at ONGC
Speakers:
*Ravana Karimova, Completion and Intervention Engineer at bp* Debora Martogi, Geotechnical Engineer at Geosyntec Consultants* Nihal Darraj, CCS researcher at Imperial College London

SPE Live Podcast: Advanced Membrane Technology Applications for Produced Water Treatment

Stringent regulations to protect the environment have generated an increased demand for oilfield produced water treatment for recycling and reuse, creating significant challenges to existing treatment technologies. Membranes technologies, even though they have sparsely been used in the oil and gas industry, offer promising solutions.
During this SPE Live, we are going to discuss innovations on membrane materials, coatings and hydraulics. Field examples to illustrate applications of advanced membrane technology to treat produced water will be shared.
Moderated by Patricia E. Carreras, General Manager at Blue Moon Strategies
Speakers:• Jinwen Wang, Vice President of Product at PolyCera• Peter Christou, President at Swirltex

SPE Live Podcast: Direct Lithium Extraction from Produced Water and Brine Well

Lithium is an essential building block of the low-carbon economy, particularly for energy storage and electric vehicles. Due to its unique properties and lack of alternatives, the global demand for lithium is predicted to rise over 40 times by 2040. To meet this demand, lithium mining and refining need to scale in tandem. Current methods of extraction and processing are slow and resource intensive. Brine is pumped to the surface and into ponds where solar evaporation is used to concentrate the lithium. This process can take months or years to complete, requires large amounts of land and water, causes air and water pollution, and has a relatively low recovery efficiency.
New direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies, on other hand, are emerging which extract lithium from produced oil and gas water or saturated brines. There are several categories of DLE technologies including sorbents, electrochemical, membrane and ion exchange technologies. Dozens of companies are working in these areas and several of them are starting to reach the commercial markets.DLE projects are dependent upon a wide range of technologies and disciplines in the petroleum engineering field. These include drilling the wells, pumping the lithium rich brine/produced water, recycling and reinjecting water in the reservoirs, and reservoir characterization and simulation. This SPE Live will focus on petroleum engineering skills required for DLE and provide a resource outlook for DLE technologies.
Speaker: Marshall Carolus, Vice President at INTEK Inc.
Moderated by: Elena Melchert, President at Energy Consulting LLC

SPE Live Podcast: Integrated Sensor Synergy - Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Security

Monitoring critical infrastructure is a crucial aspect of maritime security. It involves integrating various sensor technologies to create a comprehensive understanding of the environment. This includes data from static sensors like OptoDAS, radar, AIS, sonar, and CCTV and mobile sources such as unmanned systems.
This SPE Live focuses on integrating these diverse data sources into one comprehensive understanding of the environment.
* Speakers:
Lasse Krabbesmark, Product Manager at Systematic
Mike Rountree, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Systematic
* Moderated by Ed Tovar, CEO at InTechSys, LLC

SPE Live Podcast: O&G Powering Our Net Zero Future –Where Are We, What Next?

Energy Security underlines oil and gas dominant role in the foreseeable future. However, 85% of CO2 emissions are related to the production or consumption of energy. Hence the important dual role of the O&G community is to safeguard the energy supply while advancing us toward Net-Zero. Scyller Borglum talks with Girish Nadkarni to unpack the complexities of whether we are making sufficient progress, the role of Climate Tech investments, do we need to further democratize Discovery, Development, and Deployment, the role of AI and the O&G sector’s leadership in our march to Net-Zero.
Girish Nadkarni is a veteran thought leader in corporate venture investing. He retired as the CEO of TotalEnergies Ventures in 2022. Among many advisory roles, he serves OGCI Climate Investments, Clean Energy Ventures, and the Stanford High Impact Technology Fund.
Scyller Borglum is the Vice President for WSP USA’s Underground Storage Market in the Energy National Business Line. She is the Deputy Project Manager for the Advanced Clean Energy Storage cavern development in Delta, UT, the first-ever utility-scale hydrogen production and storage facility in the world.
Join them as they answer live questions!
• Speaker: Girish Nadkarni, Climate Tech Investor, Venture Advisor, and Board Member• Moderated by Scyller Borglum, Vice President at WSP

SPE Live Podcast: Technical Director Series – Data Science in Production and Operations – Opportunities, Gaps, and Future Outlook

Join us for an SPE Live on data science applications, opportunities, future trends, gaps, and demands in oil and gas production and operations. In this episode, the SPE DSEA Technical Director and the SPE Production and Operations Technical Director also address people skills & training requirements related to data science for professionals in the energy sector.
Speakers:• Hamad Al-Marri, SPE Production and Operations Technical Director. Production and Facilities Development Director at Saudi Aramco• Sushma Bhan, SPE DSEA Technical Director. Board of Director at Ikon Science
Moderated by Birol Dindoruk, Former SPE DSEA Technical Director.  Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Houston.

SPE Live Podcast: Leveraging Expertise to Prepare the Next Generation

In this SPE Live, we discuss how a large oil & gas operator made the decision to encourage young to mid-career petroleum engineers to become SPE certified.
The strategy to pursue SPE Certification was to create an avenue to recognize the level of expertise of our petroleum engineers. It was essential to company leaders to choose a globally recognized certification program such as SPE Certification. Prior to this effort, Saudi Aramco had developed a strategy to manage and retain explicit and tacit knowledge from the experienced retiring workforce through a Corporate University know as Upstream Professional Development Center (UPDC). When establishing training programs at UPDC, a critical factor was to identify principle in-house subject matter experts (SMEs) and capture their knowledge. Additionally, UPDC utilizing our in-house SMEs to deliver courses. When creating a program to prepare our young professionals for the SPE Certification, the UPDC was able to leverage existing programs and inhouse SMEs to create a program for preparing to take the SPE Certification Exam.
In this discussion, our guest discusses the details of the program and the success of the efforts as of today, achieving 98% passing rate with over 1200 engineers certified.
Speaker: Todd A. Green, Technical Advisory Group Team Lead at Aramco.
Moderated by Bob Merrill, SPE Engineering Professionalism Committee Chair

SPE Live Podcast: Technical Director Series – Completions and Drilling Operations

Join us for an SPE Live with the SPE Completions Technical Director and the SPE Drilling Technical Director to discuss operations, the latest technologies, and people skills for energy sector professionals.
Speakers:• Robin Macmillan, SPE Drilling Technical Director. Business Development at IBM• Karen Olson, SPE Completions Technical Director. Senior Completions Advisor at Well Data Labs
Moderated by Peggy Rijken, Incoming SPE Completions Technical Director. Chapter Manager, Geomechanics Technology Center at Chevron.

SPE Live Pre-ATCE Series: What Do Leaders Need to Know, and Do, to Improve Safety Culture?

Leadership has a critical role in ensuring that a desired culture of safety exists within an organization. Good leaders engage their employees in a way that builds trust and yields desired discretionary effort around safety. Research has also shown that companies with an engaged workforce perform better in safety, quality, and financially versus their peers with less engaged workers.
Join this SPE Live Pre-ATCE with Tom Knode and Thomas Hinterseer as they discuss key issues around effective leadership for safety.
Speaker: Thomas Hinterseer, Managing Director and President of the Board of CEDEP
Moderated by Tom Knode, Principal Consultant at vPSI Group LL

SPE Live Podcast: Technical Director Series – CCS/CCUS Opportunities and Challenges for Safe Storage and Decarbonization Efforts

Join us for an SPE Live on CCS/CCUS opportunities and challenges for safe storage and decarbonization efforts. In this episode, the SPE HSES Technical Director and the SPE Reservoir Technical Director will address the intersection of HSES and Reservoir technical and non-technical challenges. In a world needing less carbon, CCS/CCUS is an area that will grow globally.
Speakers:• Sue Staley, SPE HSES Technical Director. Sustainability Director at vPSI Group LLC• Rodolfo Camacho, SPE Reservoir Technical Director. Professor at the National University of Mexico
Moderated by:
Simeon Eburi, SPE North America Regional Director. Reservoir Management Advisor at Chevron

SPE Live Podcast: Accelerating the Energy Transition

The SPE Energy Transition Symposium is designed to address the critical challenges and opportunities the oil and gas industry faces as we move towards a lower-carbon future. Our goal is to foster discussions, share innovations, and collaborate on strategies to reduce carbon emissions while ensuring energy security.
This SPE Live provides a sneak peek into the upcoming 2024 SPE Energy Transition Symposium, happening 12-14 August 2024 in Baytown, Texas. This symposium is a pivotal event for professionals across the oil and gas industry, focusing on the transition to a more sustainable energy future. We have an amazing and exciting lineup of keynote speakers, panel discussions, and technical sessions that you will not want to miss!
Moderated by Simeon Eburi, Reservoir Management Advisor at Chevron. 2023 SPE North America Regional Director
Speakers:• Tom Blasingame, Professor of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University. 2021 SPE President.• Jane Stricker, Houston Energy Transition Initiative SVP and Executive Director at Greater Houston Partnership• George Koperna, Vice President at Advanced Resources International, Inc. SPE CSRC Governance and Membership SC Chair and CSRC Chair-elect.

SPE Live Podcast: Rising to the Challenge of the Constantly Changing World of Work - A Conversation with Brian Kraus

A major study from ERM, the global sustainability consulting firm, has produced a wealth of insight on a range of topical issues in the field of health and safety. ERM engaged 256 Health and Safety Function Leaders from companies that directly employ 11 million people in addition to many millions of contractors in the 2nd half of 2023. Over 36,000 H&S professionals work with the participating companies which have operations in more than 150 countries and combined revenues of US $7.2 trillion, equivalent to 7.2% of global GDP in 2022. The study builds on earlier studies undertaken in 2018 and 2021.
The engagements with the Function Leaders addressed topical issues in H&S at this time, such as psychosocial risk and the application of AI in H&S, but also revisited a number of themes which were addressed in the earlier studies which are a source of persistent challenge for organizations; an opportunity to examine trends in areas including changing stakeholder expectations, investment in H&S and management of H&S for contractors which undertake higher risk activities in the workplace.
Many fresh insights emerged from the engagements: useful lists of concerns, investments in H&S, uses of AI and approaches to address a broad range of challenges as well as data on ratios of H&S professionals to employees, reporting lines for the function and much more. What has become apparent is that many of the concerns that emerged from engagements with the Function Leaders in 2018 and 2021 emerged once again from the analysis of data in 2024. The context is the pace of change, not just in the field of H&S itself (stakeholder expectations, regulatory requirements, use of technology and more), but also in the nature of work, the composition of the workforce and where work is delivered. The pace of change has accelerated over the last 3 years. And it is clear expectations and impacts on business will continue to rise (the Function Leaders are virtually unanimous on this) and changes in the world of work will continue at a pace. It is not going to get easier.
The data suggest meaningful progress in many areas but also strongly suggest the underlying issues identified in the earlier studies have not been resolved, despite increasing leadership engagement, higher levels of investment and widespread application of software solutions and new technologies. But, in some areas the gap has widened. H&S functions, catapulted into a new paradigm and challenged to access talent with the necessary skills, are stretched, as are the Function Leaders.
Brian Kraus provides a high-level overview of the insights from this seminal study including a number of insights specific to upstream oil and gas.
Moderated by Sue Staley, SPE HSES Technical Director, and Sustainability Director at vPSI Group LL
Speaker: Brian Kraus, Associate Director at ERM

SPE President's Podcast with Terry Palisch: "Creating Our Energy Future" - August 2024

For his final podcast as 2024 SPE President, Terry is joined by his son Austin to take a look back at the last 12 months, as well as talk about the future of both SPE and the energy industry.

SPE Live Podcast: Separation; Design vs Reality

Designing production separators and actually achieving their desired performance levels in reality can be very challenging. In addition to the vessel size, internals suitable for the operating and flowing conditions, piping configuration, instrumentation, operating practices, and production chemicals all play a role in separator performance. This SPE Live will address some of these parameters assumed in the design, how reality can differ, and try to answer any related questions.
Moderated by Henri Witteveen, Lead Process Engineer at Kranji Solutions.
Speakers:o Logan Grim, Senior Oil Process Engineer at Saudi Aramcoo Graeme Smith, Process Engineer at Murphy Oil

SPE Live: Maximizing Utilization of Subsea Well Intervention Equipment

Join us for an SPE Live episode on Subsea Well Intervention with a preview of the upcoming SPE Subsea Well Intervention Symposium on 13-15 August 2024, in Galveston, Texas, where innovation meets the growing demand in this burgeoning market.
This will be a live discussion with industry leaders from domestic and international operating companies about the methods they use to maximize the versatility of intervention processes and equipment to increase return on investment and decrease waste.
Speakers:• Jack Sanford, Senior Advisor at Talos Energy• Agnaldo Magnum de Souza Silva, Implementer of Drilling Rig Technologies at Petrobras.
Moderated by: Billy Pierce, Sr Account Manager at Gilmore
2024 Subsea Well Intervention

SPE President's Podcast with Terry Palisch: "Creating Our Energy Future" - Enhancing Member Value - July 2024

For his July podcast, SPE President Terry Palisch is joined by Simon Seaton, SPE CEO, to discuss the member value survey and what is new with ATCE.