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Board of Directors Election
Nominee Profiles September 1998 |
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Board of Directors Election
Nominee Profiles September 1998 |
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Mark Armentrout
ARCO
Mark Armentrout is Manager of Upstream Information Technology for ARCO reporting to ARCO's corporate CIO. In this role he has worldwide responsibility for information technology for all exploration and production offices for ARCO. He has been with Atlantic Richfield Company since 1976. He has held senior IT management positions in a number of ARCO divisions, including ARCO Alaska Inc. in Anchorage, ARCO Exploration and Production Technology in Plano, Texas, and the Houston and Midland offices of ARCO Oil and Gas Company. Earlier in his career, Mark held technical leadership positions in the Alaskan operations systems for Prudhoe's initial start-up and later for ARCO's company-wide mapping systems. In 1996, while in Anchorage, Mark was selected to be Technology Champion for ARCO's initiatives in integrated applications, virtual teaming and learning organizations.
Mark has always found it important to participate as a member of the computing and E&P industry communities and has served in numerous external capacities to influence the direction of E&P computing. As an example, in addition to being on the User Steering Board of OSF in its early days, Mark was also active in the original formulation of POSC and designing ARCO's participation in it.
He has spoken at numerous conferences including UNIX Expo, the Information Management Forum, the Association of Systems Management, and conferences sponsored by the Gartner Group, the Open Software Foundation and Open Systems Today.
A native of Hutchinson Kansas, Mark has a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Political Science with a major in Political Theory from Texas A&M University at Commerce.
Statement
I am honored that POSC would accept a nomination from ARCO to place my name in contention for a seat on the Board of Directors at POSC.
POSC is clearly the most successful collaboration in E&P information technology in the history of the industry. It's successes, like Epicentre, have given leaders in this industry a belief that even more collaboration is possible and even required to move the industry forward in exploiting information technologies which add real value to our businesses. The effort or struggle just to get to Epicentre, along with other efforts, have already contributed to the knowledge and skills it takes to make our industry partnerships more effective, to enhance the collaboration with the service sector of the industry, and to reduce the time it takes to exploit technology advances. The challenge of the take-up of Epicentre is still great and creates a valuable debate that is critically important to our future. Advances in integration technologies, full life-cycle optimization and simulation, organizational learning, and virtual teaming are of particular interest to me due to my background. Recent increases in joint ventures makes POSC even more important to us. I would enjoy the opportunity to work with my peers in industry to help make the POSC vision a reality as well as to continue to improve that vision.
Nico de Rooij
Shell
Mr. de Rooij is a senior consultant in the Activity and Asset Management group in Shell's Research and Technology Services organisation in Rijswijk, Netherlands. He is, currently involved in the implementation of Shell's integration strategy that aims for tight integration of Shell's technology in a multi-vendor environment through close collaboration with vendors. He is a member of the Data and Application Integration team that represents Shell In the OpenSpirit Alliance and the LightSIP Joint Industry Project.
Mr. de Rooij graduated in applied physics at the Technical University of Delft. He joined Shell in 1968 as a programmer. Since that time he has fulfilled various positions in E&P IT in Shell Central Offices, Shell Nigeria and lately Research and Technology Services ranging from programmer to system development manager. He has been involved in the development of IT systems in many phases of the EP life cycle ranging from seismic interpretation, topography, geology, drilling, engineering and finance.
Mr. de Rooij's first serious involvement in POSC was during his participation in the Project Work Order Team in 1994. The Project Work Order Team was tasked with defining the way forward with respect to POSC's technical direction that would receive broad support from the membership. Since that time, Mr. de Rooij has been the POSC Technical Contact for Shell. In that role he has been a regular participant in POSC's general and technical meetings. He has been involved in various projects that aimed to make the POSC specifications a reality such as SMDTI, Epicenter Builder and LightSIP. Recently he has been involved in the OpenSpirit Alliance that aims to implement the POSC Business Entity Object specifications.
Statement
It appears to be a tradition that candidates issue a 'statement of interest'. I was hoping that my contributions in the past years would be more convincing than any statements on what could be. But like all of you, I also have my dreams that I would like to share with you.
Perhaps the biggest contribution POSC has made to the EP community are the processes that enabled people from different cultures and interests to exchange ideas and debate the best way to provide software support to the EP business in what has become a commodity industry . The transition of POSC into a full membership organisation should enable us to foster and grow these processes and exploit the collective intelligence and know how of its membership.
No organisation, however, can prosper without a solid financial foundation. For POSC to survive in the long term, it must re-establish its economic viability. This will be a major challenge in this transition period from a sponsor driven to a membership driven organisation. It also means walking a thin line. Respecting the commercial interests of a large part of the membership, while at the same time creating yourself a source of revenue large enough to sustain your business.
Application Plug and Play should continue to be the ultimate goal of POSC. This can best be achieved by combining and improving the specifications of actual technology implementations rather than as an academic exercise. The POSC deliverables, however, are only as good as the contributions from its membership. POSC's role is primarily one of process facilitation and technical guidance. We, as members, will have to do the actual work.
John Hanten
Chevron
John works for Chevron Petroleum Technology Company in Houston as Manager-Upstream Knowledge Management Systems. His educational background includes a BS in Geology and Physics from the U. of Minnesota, an MS in Geophysics from Purdue and an MBA from St. Mary’s College in Ca. John has twenty years experience with Chevron in a variety of geotechnical, information, and business supervisory and management positions including:
John is the Chevron representative to the Landmark Graphics Customer Advisory Board for a New Era Group Product. He is also a member of the SEG.
Statement
I have worked in the information and data management area for twenty years, and am committed to pursuing the POSC Mission of facilitating integrated business processes and computing technology for the E&P segment of the international petroleum industry. I have experienced firsthand, the waste, frustration, and lost time spent trying to somehow integrate incompatible and closed vendor applications and data. I believe as an industry we should do better.
My combined technical and business education and work experience provide me with the skills and the perspective to help provide strategic direction to the POSC Nouveau organization and operating model. In particular, recent CPTC experience in strategic planning, organizational communication, business process facilitation, and operations management are all directly relevant to the outlined responsibilities of a POSC Board Member.
I strongly believe that the E&P business driver of doing ‘more work with fewer people’, and new types of operating arrangements between oil companies and suppliers, will continue to fuel the demand for increased levels of information sharing and interoperability. The amazing advances occurring in the Information Technology sector will enable this vision, but communication, facilitation, and widespread acceptance across the industry will be required to transform the vision into reality.
As one of the Founding Sponsors of POSC, Chevron has had a longstanding commitment to the vision of international E&P interoperability, and will continue to provide an active role in promoting industry standards.
Martin Leach
Marathon
I have worked in Information Technology all of my career, with my last 18 years being spent with Marathon Oil. My experience of the oil industry has been gained wholly in the Upstream business, initially in the North Sea, in both a Project and Operations environment, and more recently in the United States. In my current position I am responsible for all Marathon's computing needs in the Upstream business both domestically and internationally.
Statement
My interest in POSC stems from my experiences over this time frame. We face an enormous challenge in managing our complex technical computing environments and it's not going to get any easier. However, as an industry, we have had a unique vision to try to collaborate to solve our problems. I am sure we didn't realize how difficult the task would be, but I'm also sure we shouldn't lose sight of that early vision. The directions POSC takes in the future may not be those that it originally set out with, but I feel very strongly that the opportunity for collaboration to solve common problems is a powerful tool in our armory and it needs to be encouraged. POSC is the obvious home for that work and I would like to offer my services to progress the vision in any way that I can.
John Gibson
LGC
John Gibson is Executive Vice President of Landmark Graphics Corporation, and he joined the company in 1994. He has held various executive positions with Landmark including president and vice president of technology for the Zycor Division. Mr. Gibson began his career in oil and gas as an exploration geophysicist for Gulf Oil Company. Following the acquisition of Gulf by Chevron, Mr. Gibson was manager of geophysical and geological subsurface imaging for Chevron’s Oil Field Research Company. He holds a bachelor of science degree in geology from Auburn University and a Masters of Science degree in geology from University of Houston. Mr. Gibson is an extensive traveler who has worked in and addressed the issues of finding and producing oil and gas in numerous countries and continents around the world, including China, Russia, Australia, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Africa, South America, as well as North America.
As part of his responsibility for the development, integration and worldwide support of Landmark’s broad suite of applications and technology for finding and producing oil and gas, Mr. Gibson is credited with delivering Release 97. Release 97 set a new industry standard as the first synchronized release of a broad and integrated suite of applications that were developed, tested and certified for concurrent release on Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics and IBM computing environments. The release included nearly 20 of Landmark’s well-known and widely-used applications.
Mr. Gibson provides worldwide leadership to the company’s technical community, driving the development of innovations within specific scientific arenas, as well as the integration of those technologies to accelerate the activities of multidisciplinary teams during exploration and production.
He has been instrumental not only in Landmark internal development initiatives, but also in the identification and acquisition of key technologies for rapidly deploying new innovations and technology within the Landmark suite. He provides executive leadership for many of Landmark’s strategic relationships with technology partners including Western Atlas, Silicon Graphics and IBM. He is a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and the Geological Society of America.
Landmark Graphics Corporation, based in Houston, is a leading supplier of information technology for petroleum exploration and production. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Halliburton Company. Landmark employs more than 1,200 people in 35 offices worldwide, with installed systems in more than 80 countries. Its customers include 90 percent of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.
Statement
During my career in the petroleum industry, I have spent five years in exploration, four years in production, four years in technology development within an oil company, and four years leading technology development for a major vendor. This experience forms the foundation for my understanding of and belief in the need for standards and how they should benefit the industry. No single vendor can provide all of the technology required to support the activities of exploration and production companies. No internal technology development effort can provide all of the required tools at reasonable cost to support the activities of their company. Hence, users in every company pursue their activities within heterogeneous environments. These environments include multiple vendor applications, multiple proprietary applications and frequently personally developed tools. The mission statement of POSC contains the following: "POSC seeks to: Empower E&P professionals to concentrate on the business of exploring for and producing hydrocarbons". I believe that POSC can be a leader in the development, evolution, delivery, and support of standards that reduce the frustrations of end users and greatly improve their productivity through the elimination of non-value added activities that result from the lack of needed standards. Though my career includes experience in both proprietary and commercial development, it is my experience in exploration and production that drives my belief in standards. Should I be selected, I would consider the term successful if and only if POSC begins to improve the productivity of end users. In summary, I would be the champion of users deriving benefit from the activities of POSC and would assist POSC in transitioning from being driven by development organizations to being driven and valued based upon the improvement of productivity of business activities through the deployment of standards.
Stewart Robinson
DTI
My academic background is as a mathematician. I have been involved in the IT industry, on and off, since about 1966. My first senior post in IT was in 1976 at the British Library where we were building a large bibliographic database. I moved to the Department of Energy in 1979 charged with setting up an IT section and "gaining control of the UK’s data!" I have worked with the oil industry in the UK, and increasingly worldwide, ever since.
Member of the unofficial UK Petroleum IT Managers Club (PITC).
Chairman of the CDA (UK National Data Repository) standards sub-committee.
Statement
At the DTI we are effectively the government's oil company. We work like an oil company: processing, storing (and losing) data. We have built our own corporate database (using Oracle) and associated data stores (such as juke boxes) all linked together using maps (Arc Info). Our systems work but are bespoke and of no use to anyone else, in this we compare favourably with most oil companies. Our two major problems are acquisition of quality data and digital data exchange.
I became actively involved with POSC almost from the beginning because it seemed the obvious, possibly the only, solution to our two main problems. I have remained active. As chairman of CDA standards I have tried to ensure that CDA will develop as a POSC project. I have committed the DTI to POSC and DTI now have a POSC migration strategy that which will tie us closely to CDA. We are actively making public domain data available in POSC format on the web. I have a medium term goal of specifying all data exchanges with the UK government as POSC exchange files.
I have facilitated three meetings of representatives of National Repositories from all over the world. I was pleased at these meetings by the way people are willing to cooperate to a common goal and that there is a common belief that looking after data is no longer seen as a business advantage but as a shared problem.
My views on POSC are little altered with time. I do not see any alternative; it must be made to work and the DTI are in a position to make it happen in the UK and possibly elsewhere.
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