Peter MacDougall: The PPDM Association would like to express sincere appreciation to Peter MacDougall, a volunteer on the PPDM Association Board of Directors for 10 years, most of them as Treasurer. “Pete has been a staunch supporter of the PPDM Association in many capacities. His expertise has been invaluable to committees and workgroups. Through his board role, Pete has been instrumental in ensuring that the work we do is relevant and valuable to industry,” said Trudy Curtis, CEO of the PPDM Association.

Peter has been a vital member of the PPDM Board of Directors throughout his tenure. His insightful and prescient advice as a Director and Treasurer has contributed significantly to the long term wellbeing and sustainability of the Association. He will be deeply missed!” said Allan Huber, Chairman of the PPDM Association Board of Directors.

Peter is a Professional Geologist and recently retired as Director, Product Management, Canadian Well and Land at IHS Markit. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 1984 with a B.Sc. Specialization in Geology and has a Management Certificate from the University of Calgary obtained in 2001. Peter attained his CPDA with Distinction in 2018 and is also a member of the CSPG, CSEG, CWLS and APEGA. With 30+ years of industry experience, he has spent the last 24 years with IHS Markit, a major information and software vendor, working with data and his customers. Peter managed data within several versions of PPDM databases and was passionate about delivering quality information.

Tom Duong: Tom is the PPDM Association’s October 2020 Volunteer of the Month. Tom is the Chair of the What is a Facility Feasibility Study, a study completed in only 10 weeks to understand what would be involved in disambiguating the term Facility. “Tom is a fabulous team player. His team is awesome and equally supportive. Tom is always willing to do extra to help out and stepped into a leadership role without hesitation,” said Ingrid Kristel, Senior Project Manager at the PPDM Association. “His presentation at the September Forum explained everything we did in the Feasibility study perfectly. Tom is an all around great guy!”

Tom Duong is a software product manager at Assetas and has over 20 years in upstream and midstream work, including well completion, data systems, and environmental compliance. His current interest is the intersection of technology and end users, including external stakeholders, and how that relationship is shaping system re-thinking. Tom was the co-founder of Ecocion and helped to track 20% of the greenhouse data submitted to the US EPA of behalf of E&P companies. Tom and the What Is a Facility Feasibility Study Team look forward to member comment on the results of their hard work.

Kris Friedel: The PPDM Association would like to congratulate Kris Friedel, member of the Calgary Leadership Team, on being selected as our September Volunteer of the Month. Kris joined the Calgary Leadership Team in 2016 and has been instrumental in many of the great works being done by this team. “Kris has come up with many ways to improve our events, our Leadership Team and the PPDM Association itself,” said Elise Sommer, Senior Community Development Coordinator. “Kris has put a tremendous amount of work into building the Calgary and Canadian community, and making sure that the PPDM Association continues to meet the needs of our members. We are very fortunate to have Kris on our team.”

Kris is a Technologist Team Lead at Husky Energy, and has been a member of the Husky team for 19 years in a variety of roles starting in IS before transitioning to Geoscience. He currently leads various upstream technology & data management initiatives and has a passion for pragmatically leveraging technology to add business value. Kris has a Geological Applications Certificate and Diploma, Computer Technology from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and is currently pursuing a Management Certificate from the University of Calgary.

Oliver Thistleton: Olly joined the Professional Development Committee (PDC) in 2018 and has been a valuable member of the committee, extending above and beyond the call of duty by contributing to multiple work groups.

As the Consulting Lead for Sword Venture’s Asia-Pacific Business Unit. Oliver began learning the discipline 20 years ago on service desk teams for Venture’s various London-based clients. He progressed onto projects improving structured data and implementing document solutions. With the move seven years ago to the Australia office, Oliver has worked on a broad range of projects and consultative engagements including maturity assessments, governance definition, data quality improvement and application/data lake solution implementations. Oliver enjoys giving back to the discipline through his active role on the PPDM Professional Development Committee (PDC) and supporting CPDA certification. Oliver has also delivered public and private training courses teaching subsurface data management best practice. “Olly brings to the committee a deep understanding of data management discipline best practices and professional development needs. His teaching experience also adds to our consideration of industry gaps in education and training. I would be remiss if I neglected to mention his colourful sense of humour, which adds to every meeting! We’re very fortunate to have him on the committee.”

Daniel Clarke: a member of the United Kingdom Leadership Team, is the PPDM Association’s July 2020 Volunteer of the Month. Daniel joined the UK Leadership team in mid-2018 and was, our first volunteer from the Aberdeen area and a leader for starting events in Scotland. “Daniel has been with the UK Leadership Team since it started, launching our first events in Aberdeen and bringing PPDM to his community. He’s also participated in other global events including our Virtual Expo in March,” said Elise Sommer, Senior Community Development Coordinator with the PPDM Association. “Daniel has truly helped us grow our community in the UK and has been a real delight to work with. The PPDM Association has been lucky that we can count on a great volunteer like Daniel.”

Daniel is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen and began his career as a mud logging geologist with Halliburton. In 2007, Daniel joined DataCo (now Sword Venture), in 2007 where he has worked as a Consultant Data and Information Manager on a wide variety of projects for numerous oil and gas companies worldwide. Daniel joined the PPDM Association UK Leadership Team in 2018 and has since hosted and attended a number of well- attended events in the UK as well as the 2019 expo in Houston.

Antonie Du Toit: The PPDM Association would like to congratulate Antonie Du Toit, our June 2020 Volunteer of the Month. Antonie joined the PPDM Certification Committee in 2018, the Australia West Leadership team in 2019, and has been an active member of both teams since. Antonie has represented the Certification team at live PPDM Association events, reprising his role in a virtual format for prospective CPDAs to view on our website. “Antonie has brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the team and can always be relied on to make sure that no detail or perspective is missed,” said Ingrid Kristel, PPDM’s Senior Project Manager. “Spreading the word of his CPDA experience has been his mission and he’s been a vocal advocate in both Australia and around the world.”

Antonie qualified as a geologist and a geophysicist in the late 1990’s and started his professional career in the minerals industry.  Soon his aptitude for data management was recognised:  in the days when it was cool to write data to CD’s, he catalogued a department’s CD collection, and ended up managing a dataset of 1000 wells.  In 2002 he switched to the Petroleum industry and as a static geological modeller spent enough time in the offices of four operating companies and a few consultancies to encounter various levels of data mismanagement, and a few professionals with healthy data habits.  He has also encountered professionals who use data, but appear either dataphobic, data agnostic or allergic to Data Managers.  He is currently an independent geological modeller, more of a Data User than a Data Manager. 

James Pipe: Congratulations to James Pipe, our May 2020 Volunteer of the Month. “James has been a tremendous volunteer on our Well Status & Classification Work Group, initiating and providing valuable inputs into the upcoming Version 3 and providing an update to our global community at the recent Virtual Expo,” said Ingrid Kristel, Senior Project Manager at PPDM. Beyond the work that James does directly with PPDM, he is very active in the Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU) where he is able to bring all work together, avoiding derivative standards and language in order to drive petroleum data practice forward for the industry as a whole. James leads the Data Definitions committee at OSDU where he stewards the alignment and direction of the data standards.

With over 14 years of experience in Upstream data management, James has worked his way through a wide range of projects, programs, and roles to reach his current position of Information Architect and Subsurface data SME within Chevron’s New Capabilities Delivery team. He has worked on a variety of solution deployments around the globe, with a focus on Reservoir Management and operations. James joined Chevron as a full-time employee in 2018, having worked with them for several years as a consultant. He is the Chevron data liaison to the OSDU industry forum where he leads the Data Definitions and Modelling team, and he is an active contributor to PPDM work groups. Based in Houston, James is married with one daughter and two dogs.

Megan Potter: Our April 2020 Volunteer of the Month is Megan Potter, Chair of the PPDM Houston Leadership Team. “Megan has brought enthusiasm, energy, and great ideas to the Houston Team, and has led the Team through the growth and changes to the Houston Professional Petroleum Data Expo during these unique times,” said Pam Koscinski, PPDM’s USA Representative. “Megan continues to be there for PPDM in a variety of capacities, and her excitement has led the team to do things bigger and better every time. We are truly fortunate to have her as a chair in Houston.” She has volunteered for the PPDM Houston Leadership Team since the end of 2016 and is in her second year as chair.

Megan has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Now with ConocoPhillips, Megan has more than 20 years of subsurface data management and analytics experience. She is currently Supervisor of the Exploration, Subsurface, & Strategy Analytics team, which focuses on building collaborative visual and predictive analytics solutions. Prior to working at ConocoPhillips, Megan gained a broad range of experience across all areas of data management while working for Devon Energy, Newfield Exploration, and Schlumberger Information Solutions. These experiences have given her unique insight into data integration and integrity, which has become a passion for her.

Bill Barna: Our February 2020 Volunteer of the Month is Bill Barna from the Dallas/Fort Worth Leadership Team. “Bill has done so much to bring the Dallas/Fort Worth community together by hosting our Workshops and Luncheons and always working to get new speakers that would be of interest to that group,” said Pam Koscinski, USA Representative for the PPDM Association.

Bill works for Microsoft as a Principal Cloud Architect and supports a dozen upstream oil and gas customers in Texas and Oklahoma. He specializes in innovation projects that use cloud-based AI (artificial intelligence) and geospatial techniques for solving drilling, completion, and production challenges. Bill is currently focused on developing a portfolio of solutions for managing oil field methane emissions. This includes natural gas leak detection and alternatives to venting and flaring. He is partnering with ESRI and Azure Maps to develop these solutions. Bill has an MBA from Southern Methodist University and a Master of Science in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University.