Interview with 2023 SPE Legends of Hydraulic Fracturing: Role of Multi-discipline Collaboration for Hydraulic Fracture Evaluation and Optimization

Recorded On: 02/27/2023

Hydraulic fracturing technology has enabled economic production from low permeability formations for almost last 7 decades and has unlocked billions of cubic feet of natural gas and hundreds of millions of barrels of oil. Multi-disciplinary collaboration and integration of skill sets from various disciplines such as rock and fluid mechanics, geoscience, completion engineering, reservoir engineering and production engineering are essential to evaluate and optimize hydraulic fracture design and well’s production performance.

In this webinar, supported by the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technical Section, Karen Olson interviews 2023 SPE Legends of Hydraulic Fracturing, Dr. John Lee and Dr. Mohamed Y. Soliman to share more about their distinguished career and contributions to Hydraulic Fracturing technology, and their experience and case histories of multi-disciplinary collaboration in this success. The best practices and recommendations for effective multi-disciplinary collaboration are discussed too.

This webinar is organized and supported by the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technical Section.

This webinar is categorized under the Completions technical discipline.

All content contained within this webinar is copyrighted by Dr. John Lee, Dr. Mohamed Y. Soliman, and Karen Olson and its use and/or reproduction outside the portal requires express permission from Dr. John Lee, Dr. Mohamed Y. Soliman, and Karen Olson.

Dr. John Lee

Dr. Lee is a professor, at Texas A&M University, where he holds the DVG Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering.

With over 50 years of petroleum engineering experience, John brings a wealth of knowledge to the industry. He has specialized in reservoir engineering aspects of hydraulically fractured wells and integrated reservoir studies, as well as unconventional gas resources development.

Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Lee has taught at Mississippi State University, the University of Houston and Texas A&M University. He has worked at ExxonMobil, and later as a consultant for S.A. Holditch & Associates. From 2007-2008, John served as an academic engineering fellow with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission to modernize SEC rules for reporting oil and gas reserves.

For SPE, Dr. Lee has authored four textbooks and received numerous awards, including the Lucas Medal, the DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal and Honorary Membership recognition.

Dr. Mohamed Y. Soliman

Dr. Soliman is the chairman of the Petroleum Engineering Department at the University of Houston.

After earning his PhD, in petroleum engineering, from Stanford University in 1979, Dr. Soliman embarked on a career in both industry and academia. Throughout his profession, he has focused on various aspects of fracturing, including diagnostic testing, analysis of fracturing data, and numerical simulation of fracture propagation in geothermal and unconventional reservoirs. More recently Dr. Soliman and his team are investigation the area of plasma stimulation/fracturing as a method of waterless stimulation.

With the unique combination of both industrial and academic experience, Mohamed has authored and co-authored more than 250 technical papers and holds 40 US patents. He is the first author of "Fracturing Horizontal Wells", published in 2016; and the co-author of "Optimization of Hydraulic Fracture Stages and Sequencing in Unconventional Formations", published in 2018. Dr. Soliman is a distinguished member of SPE.

Karen Olson (Moderator)

Karen Olson is a senior completions advisor for Well Data Labs and an independent consultant. She previously was technology director for Southwestern Energy Company. Olson has been a completion/ reservoir engineer for more than 37 years, starting her career as a fracturing engineer for The Western Company of North America. She has also worked at S.A. Holditch and Associates, Mobil Oil, and BP.

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