Interview with 2010 SPE President Behrooz Fattahi

President's interview Behrooz Fattahi is coordinator, Heavy Oil Development, Aera Energy, a California E&P company jointly owned by affiliates of Shell and ExxonMobil. He began his industry career in 1977 and subsequently worked as a reservoir engineer, reservoir-engineering manager, and team leader for Osco/Shell International, Shell Western E&P, Shell Offshore, and Shell affiliate CalResources. Before joining the petroleum industry, Fattahi conducted research for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the US National Science Foundation and taught courses in fluid dynamics and solid mechanics at Iowa State University. He is a past member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Association of University Professors. Fattahi has served on the SPE Board as director of the Western North America Region, and as vice president, Finance. Additionally, he has been chairman of the SPE Continuing Education Committee, a member of the SPE President's Learning Initiatives Task Force, and executive editor of SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering, and was chairman of the San Joaquin Valley Section. Fattahi holds PhD degrees in aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering from Iowa State University. How did you get involved with SPE? I joined the oil industry in 1977, working in Iran for Osco/Shell Company. There was an interruption in my SPE membership because of all the events in Iran at the time, but when I came back to the US in 1985 to work for Shell in New Orleans, I became a member again. At the time, I had a passion to work on behalf of SPE but I did not really know how to, and I suspect that there are a lot of people today who have that problem—they want to get involved but they do not know the avenues to take and where to start. It was not until I began working in Bakersfield, California, in the early 1990s that I really got involved with SPE. One day I received a call from a friend at Chevron who was on the board of the SPE local section and he asked me if I could help him with the continuing education program because he was going to move the next year. And that turned out to be the opportunity that I was looking for. I got involved in that program and, after he left, I was able to become the section's Continuing Education director and significantly increase the size of the continuing education program.