Oliver John Wilson - Real Time Reservoir Management Program Manager at Chevron
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EDUCATION:
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My favorite memory from my college years with respect to my education has to be the time I spent with four friends coding our Reservoir Simulation Software package. The course was taught by Dr. Albert Reynolds and required each student to code (in C++ or Fortran) a fully implicit, 3D, and two phase simulator from scratch. I was the only undergraduate in the class and spent countless hours with the graduate students learning how to code and debug the software. During our breaks we would set up some LAN videogame sessions, which were a blast! To this day I stay in contact with my four friends from the class, and some of them are even coming to my wedding. The aspects of simulation that I learned during this course really set me up well for my first role at Chevron as a reservoir simulation engineer in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.
I graduated from the University of Tulsa about three years ago. Since then, I have held two positions at Chevron. The first one was working as a lead engineer for a major capital project at a top tier asset in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. The project has successfully been moved to field in development, which is a big achievement for not only me, but also for Chevron. My second role, which is my current position, is working as the Real-Time Reservoir Management (RTRM) Program Manager. This role is very unique because it ties many IT aspects with engineering components. We use automated workflows via models to calculate well rates; automatically update production history in simulation models; and will soon allow for system network optimization. RTRM has enabled a lot of production for our deepwater Gulf of Mexico assets, and will continue to do so!
My most notable SPE position has to be my time as SPE student chapter president at the University of Tulsa. The SPE scholarship was a very important contributing factor to me achieving my degree at the University of Tulsa. When I accepted the entry to the University, I was not going to receive financial support from my family, so it was very important for me to apply for scholarships. My financial situation resulted in me being listed as a non-traditional student. As a result, I am very thankful to the SPE for enabling my education at the University of Tulsa.
My advice to today’s SPE-GCS students would be to continue to learn. Even if you are a veteran in industry, there is always something new to learn. There are no identical fields; each field has its unique challenges. Petroleum engineering is one of the few disciplines where the more diverse your prior experiences have been, the more qualified you are to senior positions. Make sure to try out drilling, production, and reservoir engineering to help round you out as an engineer. This works for both the technical and management career ladders.
Contact me at oliver-wilson@utulsa.edu.