Aramco professionals win top honors at ATCE in New Orleans

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) recognized three Aramco professionals for their significant technical and professional contributions to the petroleum engineering industry during the Society’s 100th Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE), in late September in New Orleans.

Subhash Ayirala received the SPE Distinguished Service Award, which recognized his exceptional devotion of time, effort, thought, and action to SPE. Throughout his membership, he has served as an executive editor SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering and Elsevier’s Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, as well as serving a committee member.

Waleed A. Al Mulhim received the Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold Medal Award, which recognizes distinguished achievement in mining administration, including metallurgy and petroleum.

Shouxiang Mark Ma received the SPE Formation Evaluation Award which recognizes outstanding achievements and contributions to the advancement of petroleum engineering in technical disciplines.

SPE is the largest individual member organization serving engineers, scientists, and other professionals in the upstream segment of the oil and gas industry. With more than 100,000 members, the Middle East region has one of the largest and most active memberships in the organization.

Serving the industry since 1924, this flagship SPE event is aptly themed, “Powering the Future of Energy with a Century of Innovation.”

More than 6,000 E&P professionals attended the centennial celebration of ATCE. Aramco served as a top tier sponsor and the company’s researchers hosted presentations from the exhibit booth on drilling and stimulation technologies, artificial intelligence, robotics and more.

“Our professionals have made an indelible impression on conference as SPE celebrated its milestone anniversary. Aramco showcased excellent thought leadership with presentations in the exhibit and highlighted technical papers. It was also my esteemed honor to represent our colleagues the prestigious winning awards,” said Mohammed N. Alaskar, director of Aramco Americas R&D.

The three-day conference consisted of more 400 technical presentations, 45 conference sessions and more than 200 exhibitors. Additionally, this is Aramco’s fifth year underwriting SPE’s Energy4me Teacher STEM Workshop highlighting the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math to careers in the energy industry.