Contributors

Jim Brugman is chief engineer of National Oilwell Varco’s Pressure Control Group in Houston. He has led the new product development efforts for this group (formerly, the Shaffer division of Varco International) since January 1994 and was responsible for new product R&D engineering since that time. Prior to that, he spent 21 years developing new products for Varco Oil Tools and Varco Drilling Systems in Orange, California, where he was responsible for the development of the Iron Roughneck, Top Drive Drilling System, Pipe Handling Machine (PHM), Star Racker, and the Pipe Transfer System. He received a BSE degree in Mechanics and Structures from UCLA in 1975.

Erdem Catak is a project engineer for Secure Drilling. Currently, he is responsible for assisting the development and introduction of Secure (managed pressure drilling) in the field, supervising field applications, preparing training materials, teaching rig crews and drilling engineers how Secure works, reviewing potential well candidates with clients, and promoting the method in conferences, exhibitions, and meetings. Before joining Secure Drilling, Catak worked for the Louisiana State University Petroleum Engineering Research and Technology Transfer Laboratory as a coinstructor and trained rig personnel on advanced hands-on well control methods. He taught drilling fluids and well control classes at LSU, where he earned his MS degree in Petroleum Engineering. He also taught classes at Istanbul Technical University, where he graduated with an honors degree in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering. Catak is a member of SPE, IADC, and AADE, and a lifetime member of Pi Epsilon Tau, the Petroleum Engineering Honor Society. He is an advisory board member of the Well Control Gulf of Mexico. Several technical papers and articles by him have been published by SPE, IADC, AADE, and various magazines. He can be contacted at ecatak@securedrilling.com.

John Cohen worked in research and development in the oil industry since his graduation from the Colorado School Mines in Golden, Colorado. His degree in Mineral Engineering Physics has given him a unique view and allowed him to work on a variety of projects over the past 35 years. Cohen has significant experience in developing and improving down-hole tools, including roller cone and PDC drill bits, turbodrills, mud motors, turbine generators, MWD tools, rig instrumentation, and rotary steerable tools. He has also worked on subsea equipment, including riser design, collet connectors, and subsea pumping systems. Cohen was director of a drilling laboratory, where he developed methods and apparatus for testing oilfield equipment, down-hole tools, and drilling concepts. Included among these was the testing of fluids for a unique method of dualgradient drilling. This interest in new technology and dual-gradient drilling continues, with work on subsea pumps and concepts for dual-gradient and riserless drilling.

Brandee Elieff is a drilling engineer in the U.S. drilling group at ExxonMobil Development Company in Houston. She earned a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2004. She further earned an MS degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University with a Drilling Engineering focus and an MS degree in Petroleum Economics and Management from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Pétrole et des Moteurs (Institut Française du Pétrole) in 2006. She has been working for ExxonMobil Development Company since 2006, where she has worked offshore in West Africa and on land in the United States.

Paul Fredericks works for At Balance in Houston and has 30 years of international and domestic oilfield experience, ranging from open- and cased-hole wireline, measurement, and logging while drilling and managed pressure drilling. His career spans field operations, log analysis, technical support, operations and product line management, and marketing. Fredericks joined At Balance as director of marketing in 2005 and directs all activities related to marketing, advertising, sales support, and communications for the company and its products and services. His technical articles have been published and presented for various professional organizations including the SPE, IADC, and SPWLA. He graduated from the University of Mississippi with degrees in Geology, Physics, and Mathematics.

Arash Haghshenas is a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University. He holds a BS degree from Petroleum University of Technology in Iran and MS degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in Petroleum Engineering. Currently, he is involved in managed pressure drilling, underbalanced drilling, and well control projects at Texas A&M University. He also is member of the IADC Book Publishing Committee.

Jim Hughes has 28 years′ experience in all phases of the upstream oil and gas business. His first 9 years were devoted to drilling and production operations, prospect generation, and acquisitions under the tutelage of David K. Davies, his first employer and mentor, who taught him extensive completion design practice using formation-damage prevention techniques. Over the next 10 years, Hughes developed and utilized short radius, multilateral underbalanced horizontal drilling (UBHD) technology as a primary completion and recompletion method to improve productivity. After several years of research and development and purchase of his own drilling rig, in 1991, Hughes, using an air hammer, drilled the first horizontal lateral well from a short-radius (25-ft) curve. Over the next 3 years, he spent most of his time evaluating reservoirs for the recovery of bypassed reserves, using UBHD technology as a completion technique. During this time, he was in Oman as part of the first independent technical team invited to recommend well construction methods and evaluate indigenous oilfields for redevelopment, using UBHD technology as a completion technique. Hughes has devoted most of the last 10 years to patenting new technologies related to UBHD, including a new short-radius self-steering bottom-hole assembly, an artificial lift-while-drilling process for managed pressure drilling, and smart drill pipe. He currently holds 12 patents related to UBHD. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri with a BS degree in Geology.

George Medley is the executive vice-president of Signa Engineering Corporation and has over 30 years in oil and gas operations and R&D. Along with extensive drilling, completions, and operations management, he has managed R &D projects for the U.S. Department of Energy, the Gas Research Institute, and the Drilling Engineering Association. He developed multiple training courses in unconventional drilling techniques. Medley holds a BS degree in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University and received one of five regional SPE International Drilling and Completion Engineer awards for 2005–2006.

Dennis Moore received a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University. Since then, he has worked for major oil companies, independent operators, and consulting engineering companies, serving in a variety of drilling, production, and reservoir engineering positions worldwide. These jobs provided him with a diversity of both engineering design and well site supervision experience on HPHT, horizontal, underbalanced, and managed pressure projects, including drilling with casing and with coiled tubing. He has 30 years′ experience in the oilfield, authored or coauthored several articles on underbalanced and managed pressure drilling, and is a registered professional engineer in Texas. He currently is the vice-president of international managed pressure drilling with New Tech Engineering, based in Houston, and can be reached via email at dennisdmoore@yahoo.com or by phone at 281-687-8584.

Sagar Nauduri is a PhD candidate in the department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his master’s degree from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK, and his bachelor’s degree from Andhra University, India. He is involved in the managed pressure drilling research project at Texas A&M University.

Amir Saman Paknejad is a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University. He holds a BS degree from the Petroleum University of Technology in Iran and an MS degree from the Texas A&M University in Petroleum Engineering. Currently, he is involved in managed pressure drilling, underbalanced drilling, and well-control projects at Texas A&M University. He also is a member of the IADC Book Publishing Committee.

Bill Rehm, the principal author for Managed Pressure Drilling, is a drilling consultant in and the author of Practical Underbalanced Drilling and Workover. He has some 30 years′ experience in underbalanced drilling, starting with some of the early foam drilling on the AEC site in Nevada and foam workover in California, up though experiences in Canada and present-day operations with gaseated fluids in such diverse areas as the Austin Chalk, Illinois, and California. In his broad experience, he was an early contributor to well-control technology and chief engineer for a service company when drilling chokes were first being introduced as a method of controlling well pressure. As general manager of a directional drilling company, in the early days of learning in the Austin Chalk, he participated in...