News Archive

Dr. Carlos Torres-Verdín, associate professor in the department of petroleum and geosystems engineering, and his research group received the Best Paper Award for a Refereed Paper published during 2006 in the Society of Petrophysicists and Well Log Analysts' (SPWLA) journal Petrophysics. The award-winning paper entitled "Estimation of permeability from borehole array induction measurements: application to the petrophysical appraisal of tight-gas sands, " by doctoral student Jesus M. Salazar, Carlos Torres-Verdín, Faruk O. Alpak of Shell Oil, Tarek M. Habashy of Schlumber-Doll, and James D. Klein of ConocoPhillips, introduces a new method for estimating the permeability of tight-gas sands which are normally considered to contain scarce hydrocarbon resources and are difficult to produce.  Torres-Verdín and his group are also being recognized with the Best Presentation award for a paper delivered at the 2006 Annual SPWLA Meeting. This first-place symposium paper is entitled "Pore-Scale Analysis of the Waxman-Smits Shaly Sand Conductivity Model" by Sarath Devarajan, master’s degree student, Emmanuel Toumelin of Chevron, Carlos Torres-Verdín and E. C. Thomas of Bayou Petrophysics. In a related honor, Torres-Verdín served as a SPWLA Distinguished Technical Speaker for 2006-2007; this is a recognition awarded to prominent, articulate speakers.