Curriculum Vitae

Burney Waring

Career Focus

Production Engineering/Production Technology, Software Development, Training, Operations

Areas of Major Interest

Surveillance, artificial Lift (especially gas lift), nodal analysis, well completions and testing, fluid mechanics

Strengths and Skills

Working for the same company can be stifling to learning and creativity -- but it doesn't have to be that way. While working for Shell I been able to work in a lot of different situations. I have worked in successful teams, as a project manager, mentor, instructor and (quite often) unsupervised. I believe one should never stop learning and so I have collected expertise in several fields of knowledge: civil engineering, facilities/process engineering, production engineering/technology, software engineering and programming. It's a waste not to share what you know. Luckily I enjoy mentoring and teaching, and have done lots of classroom lecturing and one-on-one instruction (courses in gas lift from one day to one week in length), developing my own training materials.

Being creative with technology is another way I try to keep out of a rut. Several of my software projects began life as something I tried to do just for fun, on my own time. The successful ones were those that others thought were useful.

Work Experience

My current position:

Production Engineering Curriculum Director
Staff Production Engineer
Shell Oil Exploration and Production Company

I teach all aspects of Production Engineering to our new and experienced staff at Shell. Our team has an amazing experience base in terms of both teaching and technical skills and I'm lucky to be able to work with a group like this. Despite 17 years with Shell, I'm the young guy!

Compared to my last few positions, I am no longer able to specialize in one or two areas, but now must know a great deal about everything to do with Production Engineering. I also act as a consultant to the local staff and am continuing to consult on gas lift and WinGLUE projects.

In the short term, I will teach or coordinate teaching of several sessions of Basic and Introductory Production Engineering, Production Logging, Perforating, Rod Pumping, Completion Optimization, Nodal Analysis with Prosper, Fishing Tools and Techniques, Electric Submersible Pumping, Advanced Well Modeling, Wellhead and Tubular Design, Gas Lift, etc.

My unique postion will allow me to influence the course of the next few generations of engineers. I have already started by convincing my students that well surveillance is an important part of their work, not the sideline it has been seen as in the past.. I am also giving them my experience with gas lift and promoting a few of the CAO projects from SIEP that can do Shell Oil the most good.

One observation: There have been several articles lately about people being hired away from Shell after they have some experience. The way I see it, since Shell is (one of?) the primary training grounds for the industry, this puts the other instructors and I in the unique postion of impacting the entire oil business!

Some of my previous work:

1994-mid 1997
Worked for Shell International Exploration and Production as the Artificial Lift focal point, supporting international operations. I was chosen for that position because of my interest and work in the area of enhanced surveillance for gas lift. Shell International has almost 1 million bbl/day of production by gas lift so any improvement made is huge in terms of extra revenue generated.
One of my largest contributions was to develop Shell's Windows-based gas lift analysis, design, optimisation and surveillance software, WinGLUE. This software along with the related training and processes has helped its users generate over $50 million of additional revenues per year (possibly doubling in the coming years) on a total development investment of about $500,000. My work included providing software support to 15 Shell Group companies (over 180 registered users). I enjoyed teaching 15 gas lift classes in 9 countries, to over 150 students.
In the broader area of Artificial Lift, I had responsibility for information dissemination, training (including more lecturing at the Shell Training Centre), manual writing, statistics-compilation, on-site reviews, and general support. Finally, since there are never enough Production Technologists to go around, we needed tools to multiply our efforts so I help with the development and economic justification of Computer Assisted Operations (enhanced SCADA and control).

Sr. Production Engineer
New Orleans, Louisiana
1990-1993
Shell Oil gas lift specialist. Developed gas lift surveillance and optimisation software for use by engineering and operations. Championed, formed, trained and managed the Shell Offshore Inc. Gas Lift Team which generated a ten-fold yield on investment in the first six months. Developed interactive graphical software tools to perform nodal analysis specific to gas lift wells, space gas lift mandrels, perform gas lift valve design, and optimise gas lift allocation. Helped write API manual (RP 11V6) on gas lift design. Redesigned and taught Shell's (one-week long) Gas Lift Course. Guided development of CAO (SCADA) installation (from production engineering perspective) in a large offshore field. Coordinated development of vision/mission statement for CAO development group. Managed development and installation of an ambient air modelling system for coastal facilities.

1989-1990
Designed workovers and exploitation strategy in support of field operations in southern Louisiana onshore locations. Total project costs of over $3MM/yr. Performed initial completion design, forecasting and cost estimation for large scale CO2 flood. Engineered environmentally sensitive method for the disposal of 40,000 feet of tubing contaminated with radioactive scale (NORM). Engineered complex snubbing operations to free tools embedded in hydrates at the surface of a high pressure gas well (we got them out--although some things refused to go as planned). Converted mainframe kill procedure software to run interactively on a PC. Wrote Shell Oil's first (and only in-house) nodal analysis software (SEAGL) -- still in use today.

1985-1989
Designed workovers and exploitation strategy in support of various Gulf of Mexico offshore operations. Total project costs were $2-4 MM/yr. Included full portfolio of work: field surveillance by well and reservoir, estimation of recoverable reserves, calculation of economics including risk analysis, creation of detailed workover procedures and presentation of projects plans to management. Reduced initial development costs and increased production by innovative combination of empirical/theoretical sand failure prediction techniques. Maximised profit by using creative wireline and concentric operations. Implemented company-wide plan for reconditioning safety valves and packers, saving $400,000 per year. Active member of Shell Oil's Quality Assurance Committee. Technical mentor for several newly-hired Production Engineers and Operations Technicians on training assignments.

Facilities Engineer
1981-1985

Engineer and project manager of a wide variety of surface facility projects on offshore locations. Designed and co-ordinated $1.1 MM, field-wide multi-platform upgrade project. De-bottlenecked one facility to double the throughput. Designed all aspects of a simple produce-while-drilling facility. Designed an offshore helicopter refueling station. Developed and designed no-weld modular wellbay stand kit. Wrote Shell's first PC-based facilities engineering software.

Professional Associations

Society of Petroleum Engineers
American Petroleum Institute - Gas Lift Equipment Task Force

Education

Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia
Bachelor of Science, Civil Engineering, 1981

Numerous Shell training classes, including:
All general Production Engineering courses
All Facilities Engineering courses
Business Economics
Reservoir Engineering
Materials and Corrosion
Well Control
Production Logging