Texas A&M petroleum engineering scholarship honors Sterling Lacy

Texas A&M petroleum engineering scholarship honors Sterling Lacy

Carolyn and David B. Miller of Dallas have endowed a $120,000 gift to create a petroleum engineering scholarship at Texas A&M University in honor of her father.

Sterling S. Lacy '46

The Sterling S. Lacy Jr. ‘46 Scholarship, funded through the Texas A&M Foundation, is part of the Von Gonten Scholars Program. W.D. “Doug” Von Gonten was an influential department head whose years of service resulted in the unprecedented growth of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M.

“Our graduates are in high demand, and we have a surging undergraduate enrollment. Scholarships allow our department to recruit and retain the talented students we need to produce qualified engineers for the oil and gas industry,” said Stephen A. Holditch, petroleum engineering department head and holder of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Endowed Chair.

Scholars in the Von Gonten program must maintain cumulative and semester grade point ratios of 3.0 and be enrolled in at least 14 semester credit hours counting toward a petroleum engineering degree.

“We wanted to honor my dad because helping others achieve higher education has always been one of his top priorities in life. He has consistently provided strong encouragement both in spirit and financially to ensure that his daughters, grandsons and others could pursue their education goals. His degree from Texas A&M is a source of great pride to him. Therefore, we want to continue his example by endowing this scholarship for future petroleum engineers at Texas A&M,” Carolyn Miller said.

Sterling Lacy retired from ENSTAR Petroleum Inc. in 1984 and began a second career as a consulting petroleum engineer specializing in evaluations.

“I consider this endowment to be the highest honor I have ever received, made especially meaningful by the loving generosity of my daughter and son-in-law. I am humbled to know that deserving students will be aided in their pursuit of higher education at Texas A&M because of this scholarship. I have been grateful throughout my career for the knowledge and training I received at an institution widely known for its exceptional petroleum engineering program,” Lacy said.

A native of El Dorado, Arkansas, he enrolled in petroleum engineering at Texas A&M in 1942. Army specialized training took him to Oregon State College for studies in mechanical engineering and then back to College Station, where he graduated in 1947 with a B.S. in petroleum engineering.

The summer before his senior year, Lacy signed on as a roughneck with McAlester Fuel Co., joining the firm full-time after graduation. He advanced to field engineer and project engineer before interrupting his career to serve in the Korean War as a first lieutenant in the 781st Engineer Pipeline Company. In 1952 he returned to McAlester as district engineer and rose through the ranks to chief engineer, assistant production superintendent and assistant production manager.

Three decades after leaving Texas A&M, Lacy headed back to the classroom. He completed 12 hours in computer science at Southern Arkansas University while designing and overseeing implementation of McAlester’s new databases for oil and gas reserves, economic evaluations and geological mapping. During the 1983-84 transition from McAlester Fuel Co. to ENSTAR Petroleum, he trained new personnel and continued to design, program and oversee key databases for the changing organization.

Lacy is a registered professional engineer in Texas and a chapter director of the Society of Petroleum Engineers AIME. He is a past president of the Southwest Chapter of Arkansas Society of Professional Engineers, and a past chairman of the Louisiana-Arkansas Division Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association Pollution Control Committee.

For almost a quarter-century he served as chairman of the board of the Magnolia (Arkansas) Municipal Water System, receiving mayoral acclaim for his distinguished service.

Lacy and his wife Loice are avid birders, and he is a two-time past president of the Arkansas Audubon Society. The couple has remained connected to Texas A&M through alumni events like the Sul Ross reunion and Aggie Hostel. He is a 19-year member of the Association of Former Students Century Club.

“The Millers have shown a true love for Mr. Lacy and recognize his passion for Texas A&M. This scholarship will provide students a great opportunity to become Aggie petroleum engineers,” said Brady Bullard, director of development for engineering with the Texas A&M Foundation.

The Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M ranks first in undergraduate programs and second in graduate programs among public universities in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report.

By Betsy Ellison
betsyellison@tees.tamus.edu

50 protest gas drilling at Otesaga

50 protest gas drilling at Otesaga

By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau

COOPERSTOWN _ As the temperature dipped early Monday night, about 50 people lined the sidewalk in front of the Otesaga Hotel to protest a convention of the Society of Petroleum Engineers inside.

People traveled from Binghamton, Andes and all over Otsego County to protest efforts by natural-gas drillers to extract natural gas from Marcellus shale deposits in this area of central New York.

The shale often lies thousands of feet below ground. To loosen up gas trapped inside the rock and make it flow, drillers sometimes fracture rock by injecting it with water and chemicals under enormous pressure.

The process, called ``fracking'' in the trade, can occasionally result in polluted water wells and was the focus of many signs borne by protesters.

"I'm here because I'm worried about our water,'' said Eleanore MacDougall of Cooperstown. Otsego County is rich in clear water and should not sacrifice that for making money off gas, she said.

Cathy Mason of Springfield Center said she was worried about the chemicals that can be mixed with water used in fracking.

``Tons of gallons going into the ground, and they say the list of chemicals they use is proprietary information,'' she said.

Colleen Blacklock of Oneonta noted that New York City is taking steps to protect its water supply from the possible contamination from gas drilling.

``I think everyone's water needs to be protected,'' she said.

Monday's effort was organized by Sustainable Otsego, a group that formed last year to encourage stewardship of natural resources. The group's founder, Adrian Kuzminski, said he was pleased with the turnout and hoped it would open communication with the industrial engineers inside.

Kuzminski and Ron Bishop of Cooperstown were permitted to meet briefly with some of those inside the hotel. When they returned to the sidewalk, Bishop said he had spoken with Bradley Field, director of mineral resources at the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

``It was very cordial,'' he said.

Bishop said he believes gas extraction is often done without mishap, but mistakes can be horrendous.

``From what I've seen, I'd say they don't have problems about 98 percent of the time,'' he said. ``But would you fly on an airline that didn't crash 98 percent of time?''

Bob Faller, director of sales at the Otesaga, said reporters would not be allowed to interview the engineers and regulators at the conference.

After about an hour, geologist Al Lacazette, an attendee, met with some of the protesters outside. He said that fears about water contamination could be overblown because gas is buried deep in the ground and does not migrate to aquifers, which are much closer to the surface.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers, a group with more than 88,000 members, is headquartered near Dallas, according to spokeswoman Margaret Watson.

The regulators and engineers attending the conference are not advocates for any particular drilling project, she said, but have gathered to discuss best practices for extracting gas safely. The engineers and regulators are scheduled to be in Cooperstown until late Wednesday afternoon. According to the SPE's website, they will be attend a reception and dinner tonight at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The convention's last session, ``Call to Action _ Achieving Full Scale Development of the Marcellus,'' is slated to begin at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

The cost of attending this conference ranged from $1,195 to $1,395, according to the SPE's website.

Overview

Petroleum engineering has become a technical profession that involves extracting oil in increasingly difficult situations as the "low hanging fruit" of the world's oil fields are found and depleted. Improvements in computer modeling, materials and the application of statistics, probability analysis, and new technologies like horizontal drilling and enhanced oil recovery, have drastically improved the toolbox of the petroleum engineer in recent decades.

As mistakes may be measured in millions of dollars, petroleum engineers are held to a high standard. Deep-water operations can arguably be compared to space travel in terms of technical challenges. Arctic conditions and conditions of extreme heat have to be contended with. High Temperature and High Pressure (HTHP) environments that have become increasingly commonplace in today's operations require the petroleum engineer to be savvy in topics as wide ranging as thermo-hydraulics, geomechanics, and intelligent systems.

Petroleum engineers must implement high technology plans with manpower and high coordination, often in dangerous conditions. The drilling rig crew and machines they use become the remote partner of the petroleum engineer in implementing every drilling program. Understanding and accounting for the issues and communication challenges of building these teams remain just as vital to the petroleum engineer as ever.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers is the largest professional society for petroleum engineers and publishes much information concerning the industry. Petroleum engineering education is available at 17 universities in the United States and many more throughout the world - primarily in oil producing states - but not only top producers, and some oil companies have considerable in house petroleum engineering training classes.

Petroleum engineers have historically been one of the highest paid engineering disciplines; this is offset by a tendency for mass layoffs when oil prices decline. According to a survey published in September 2007 the average income is USD $122,458. In a June 4th, 2007 article, Forbes.com reported that Petroleum Engineering was the 24th best paying job in the United States.

Petroleum Engineers

"Petroleum Engineering" refers to the subsurface engineering activities related to the production of hydrocarbons, which can be either crude oil or gas. These activities are deemed to fall within the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry which are the activities of finding and producing hydrocarbons prior to the point of refining or distribution to a market, which is referred to as the downstream sector. Petroleum geology and petroleum engineering are the two main subsurface disciplines within the oil and gas industry, which focus on maximizing economic recovery of hydrocarbons from subsurface reservoirs. Petroleum geology focuses on provision of a static description of the hydrocarbon reservoir rock, while petroleum engineering focuses on estimation of the recoverable volume of this resource using a detailed understanding of the physical behavior of oil, water and gas within porous rock at very high pressure.

The combined efforts of geologists and petroleum engineers throughout the life of a hydrocarbon accumulation determine the way in which a reservoir is developed and depleted, and usually they have the highest impact on field economics. Petroleum engineering requires a good knowledge of many other related disciplines, such as geophysics, petroleum geology, formation evaluation (well logging), drilling, economics, reservoir simulation, well engineering, artificial liftoil & gas facilities engineering. systems, and oil & gas facilities engineering.