President’s Column: Q&A With 2025 SPE President Olivier Houzé: A Roadmap for a Very Busy Year

Abstract

_ This is a summary of the September episode of the President’s vodcast. Dive into the full video to catch the entire conversation. _ Welcome to the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ President’s message with 2025 President Olivier Houzé. I’m Pam Boschee, director of SPE magazines, and Olivier joins me today to share his thoughts about being named president with the official passing of the baton from 2024 President Terry Palisch at our Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) in New Orleans this month. He holds an engineering degree from École Polytechnique and an MSc in petroleum engineering from Stanford University. He started his career as a field well-test operator with Schlumberger (SLB). He is the co-founder and managing director of KAPPA Engineering, a reservoir and production engineering software company. Olivier has been involved in many SPE summits, forums, and workshops. He coauthored an SPE and SPEE Monograph. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2013 and served on the SPE Board as Technical Director for Reservoir from 2012 to 2015. In 2019, he received the SPE Lester C. Uren Award for Technical Excellence, and an SPE Honorary Member Award in 2022. Olivier, let’s start by hearing a bit about your journey and what has led you to this pivotal role within SPE. _ After my petroleum degree I started my professional career with Flopetrol, the well-testing arm of Schlumberger (now SLB) at that time. I started as a field engineer, mainly in the Middle East and the North Sea. Even many years later I still consider myself a well-test chief operator. At age 28 I left Schlumberger, co-founded KAPPA and wrote the first version of a piece of well-test software that is still around today. My professional career has centered on the development of my company over the past 37 years. I joined SPE as a student. During this time, Hank Ramey, who was our department head, would tell his Stanford students that joining SPE was not an option. When I visit sections these days, I am impressed by the volunteerism and dedication of students and young professionals. I feel a bit guilty because it was not my case when I was their age. I started with SPE as a consumer. I would publish papers, attend events, and use SPE exhibitions and JPT ads to commercially develop my company. My service to SPE was limited: some peer reviews, joining event committees, co-chairing events, that sort of thing. Whenever I attended an SPE event, my goal was to come back home with at least one technical idea for the development of my company. It worked, invariably. It would not necessarily be from a paper publication or a plenary session. Sometimes the idea would come whilst having a drink with a colleague on the side of the event. To me SPE was, first and foremost, a fantastic facilitator.