Local champions of the energy industry were honoured recently when The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Aberdeen rolled out the red carpet for their annual awards ceremony at Satrosphere in Aberdeen.
Guest speakers Gert de Jonge from Chevron, a SPE Past Chairman, and Leon Beugelsdijk from Shell International, soon to be made SPE Regional Director North Sea, addressed the capacity crowd of oil industry leaders before presenting awards.
Leading the evening’s proceedings, current SPE Aberdeen Chairman Chris Nussbaum said: “Supporters turned out in force to help recognise the valuable contribution SPE volunteers have made to the industry in the past year. Gert and Leon gave very interesting, insightful speeches and we are delighted that they were able to join us at this worthwhile event.”
SPE Aberdeen ‘Contribution to Industry 2010’ awards went to Leigh-Ann Russell of BP for Completions, Optimisation and Technology, Michael Byrne of Senergy for Drilling Engineering, Phil McCurdy of Senergy for Formation Evaluation, consultant Bill Rob for HSSE and Social Responsibility, Michael Heaney of Benchwhistler Associates for Management and Information, Cameron Laing of LETS for Production and Operations and Trevor Grose of BP for Reservoir Description and Dynamics.
BP completions engineering manager North Sea Leigh-Ann Russell, who was also commended for her valuable contribution to mentoring said: “It is very rewarding to be recognised in this way by my peers. SPE Aberdeen as an organisation offer mentoring and support to those entering the industry, as a mentor it is great to be able to give something back.”
Abhijeet Kulkarni was presented with the Outstanding Young Member Award. Mr Kulkarni, as SPE Aberdeen Young Professionals (YP) co-chairperson also led the organisation to win the coveted 2010 SPE International Outstanding Section YP Program Award.
Student bursary awards were presented to Sergei Kelm, University of Aberdeen, Nkiruka Maduekwe, Dundee University and Kazemi Alireza, Heriot-WattUniversity.
“SPE Aberdeen has long encouraged high standards of academic achievement among petroleum engineers by providing bursaries to students studying petroleum engineering-related subjects. All bursaries awarded this year go to extremely worthwhile candidates who have shown outstanding commitment to their studies,” explained Mr Nussbaum.
Others who took top honours on the night were Graeme Rae of Chevron who was given a special award for his dedicated service to the Section, with Colin Black of Optima Solutions, Paul Adair of BP and Steve Sawaryn of BP all taking away regional service awards. Past Aberdeen Section Chairman Jeb Tyrie was also presented with a special award to thank him for his service to the section.
SPE international is a large worldwide organisation. The thousands of members in the UK are each affiliated to one of three UK Sections in Aberdeen, London and Great Yarmouth. Aberdeen is the largest of these, with over 2,500 members. The Aberdeen section has won this year’s SPE International President’s Award for Section Excellence.
