Technical Experts
Arden McCracken, Ph.D.
Distinguished Advisor, Reservoir Engineering
Arden began his career with Amoco in 1970, became Manager of Reservoir Engineering for Aminoil, then Chief Reservoir and Petroleum Engineer for Sohio. After Sohio was acquired by British Petroleum, Arden advanced to become BP’s Chief Reservoir Engineer Worldwide. Dr. McCracken left BP to join Pennzoil in 1992, becoming their Chief Engineer Worldwide and, as he was approaching retirement, Senior Engineering Advisor for International. Although officially retired, Dr. McCracken works nearly full-time with Object Reservoir as their senior reservoir engineering advisor.
Dr. McCracken holds a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Clemson University. He served two terms with the SPE Reserves Committee, and is a former chairman of that committee.
Aura Araque-Martinez, Ph.D.
Senior Reservoir Engineer
Dr. Aura Araque-Martinez has more than 25 years of experience in reservoir engineering, with specialties in geochemistry, reservoir characterization/simulation, reservoir management and thermal recovery. She began her career with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) in Caracas, Venezuela in 1979. After four years with PDVSA, she was assigned to BP Company in London for special training in reservoir simulation. She returned to PDVSA for a 14-year stint as a reservoir engineer and heavy oil exploitation specialist.
From 1997 to 2000, Araque-Martinez worked at the University of Texas at Austin as a teaching/research assistant. She later worked as a reservoir modeling and simulation specialist at PDVSA-Intevep before joining Object Reservoir in 2004.
Dr. Araque-Martinez has a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela. She earned an M.S. and a PH.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a co-author of the book “Geochemistry and Fluid Flow, Elsevier 2002”. She is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the “Sociedad Venezolana de Ingenieros de Petróleo” (SVIP) and the “Colegio de Ingenieros de Venezuela” (CIV).
Mark Miller, Ph.D.
Chairman, Strategic Planning
Mark A. Miller, PhD, PE has nearly 38 years experience as a petroleum engineering practitioner and educator, specializing in reservoir engineering, reservoir simulation, the reservoir engineering aspects of natural gas and naturally fractured reservoirs, thermal oil recovery, and petrophysics. After working for Getty Oil Company in a variety of petroleum engineering capacities, Dr. Miller earned a PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford U. Dr. Miller subsequently served on the petroleum engineering faculty of the U. of Texas at Austin until establishing a consulting practice in 2001. From 2002 to 2006, Dr. Miller served as Senior Reservoir Engineer for Object Reservoir before returning to his consulting practice. He currently serves as Chairman of Object Reservoir’s Strategic Planning Committee.
Dr. Miller has conducted research, consulted, and taught courses in reservoir engineering, reservoir simulation, natural gas engineering, naturally fractured reservoirs, hydrocarbon fluid behavior, petrophysics, and thermal oil recovery. Consulting and/or training has been conducted for Schlumberger, IBM, Tenneco Oil, Amerada Hess, ARCO, Chevron, Sonat, MCN Corp., CALTEX, Texaco, Shell, Japan Vietnam Petroleum Co., Vietnam Petroleum Institute, Tecpetrol, EOG Resources, Rosneft, Medco Energi, PEMEX, HOT Engineering, Centric Energy, INA, and YPF, as well as for the many clients of Object Reservoir.
Larry Coble, Ph.D.
Senior Reservoir Engineer
Dr. Larry Coble began his career in the United States Air Force (USAF) and later conducted physics research for the University of Texas and Texas Instruments, Inc. Coble worked for the Halliburton Companies, where he provided reservoir description, reservoir performance forecasting and production enhancement services for more than 25 years. During that time, he was a reservoir engineer and pressure transient analyst at OTIS Engineering. Most recently, Coble worked for Exxon Mobil Exploration Company before joining Object Reservoir. Larry retired from Halliburton as Senior Technical Advisor & Reservoir Performance Forecast-Online Products and has since been an independent well test and reservoir engineer. With over 35 years of distinguished industry experience, Larry is a strong leader and mentor to Object Reservoir engineering personnel.
Coble holds a PH.D. in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin.
Rakesh Rai
Expert Advisor Reservoir Engineer
Rakesh Rai has worked at Object Reservoir for the last eight years. Mr. Rai’s core work areas include reservoir modeling, reservoir simulation, production optimization and forecasting, economic analysis, sensitivity analysis, development scheme optimization, well test studies, and nodal system analysis. He has extensive experience with unconventional gas fields in the United States and South America.
Rai has an M.S.E in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He has worked in UT’s gas condensate group and was responsible for its gas condensate reservoir simulation.
Russ Schrooten
Unconventional Gas Resource Consultant
Russ has spent 30 years in the industry, focused primarily on recovery optimization from U.S. onshore unconventional gas resources. His breadth on subject matter ranges from exploration strategy development to late-life production optimization. Schrooten began his work in reservoir engineering with Amoco, with whom he worked until 1999. In 2000, he joined BP as an Acquisitions Engineering Consultant for North American Gas. He advanced to Senior Reservoir Engineer with BP before joining Object Reservoir in May of 2008. Russ currently provides advisory support to Object Reservoir’s focused shale gas performance characterization efforts.
Schrooten has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines.
Stephen Cassel
Senior Operations Engineer
Stephen Cassel has worked in Well Test portion of the service industry since 1983. Cassel has more than 15 years of experience in well testing and pressure transient analysis. His working knowledge of production logging services and fracture fluid quality control make him an asset to Object Reservoir. Most recently, he worked for Superior Energy Services as a technical sales representative. He has worked in Indonesia, the Philippines, Oman, and Argentina. Stephen has also worked in West Texas and both the shelf and deep water Gulf of Mexico. In January 2006, Stephen joined Object Reservoir where he has been working primarily on reservoir modeling using Resolve™.
Cassel received his M.S. in Petroleum Engineering from Montana Tech with a focus on hydrocarbon phase behavior.
Waldo Borel
Unconventional Gas Resource Consultant
Waldo has spent 41 years in the industry, focused primarily on development and recovery optimization from U.S. and recently Canadian-based fields. His experience ranges from reserve accounting, drilling, exploitation strategy development and redevelopment to production optimization. Waldo began his work in exploitation engineering with Shell and worked until 1968. He joined Amoco after earning his M.S. In 1994, Waldo began work with Pennzoil, and later Devon, first as Area Engineer, then as reserve coordinator for the region. His interest drifted to deep water exploration and development for Devon in the GOM. He joined Ocean Energy and worked their deep water GOM development as Project Reservoir Engineer. Waldo began consulting in 2003, undertaking an array of reservoir engineering-oriented projects. In 2008, he completed a thermal reservoir numerical simulation of Shell’s unconventional gas recovery research from tar sands of Canada.
Waldo began consulting with Object Reservoir in April 2009 and is focused on unconventional shale gas development.
Borel earned his B.S. and M.S. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (formerly University of Southwestern Louisiana).
Suresh K. Puthigai
Senior Consulting Engineer
Suresh is a petroleum and chemical engineer with more than 30 years of experience in the oil industry. He is an expert senior reservoir engineer and specializes in the evaluation and interpretation of reservoir and fluid data for the domestic and international oil industries. Puthigai has extensive experience in business and operational activities pertaining to production, drilling, completions, and technical sales. Puthigai’s experience includes both onshore and offshore projects in Trinidad, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Alaska, and various areas in North America.
Puthigai has worked for major international companies such as Schlumberger, Sperry Sun, Halliburton, and Power Well Services. For the last five years, he has worked in reservoir modeling.
Puthigai received his M.S. from the University of Oklahoma. He has published and co-authored six technical papers that were presented and published at various technical conferences and journals.