Otto Santos Honored with SPE Service Award
The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) annually recognizes some members with awards for their professional quality and achievements, technical contribution, leadership and service to colleagues. One of these awards is the SPE Regional Service Award that acknowledges relevant contributions to the Society at the section or regional level. This year, the SPE Latin America & the Caribbean Region has selected Dr. Otto Luiz Alcantara Santos of the LSU Craft & Hawkins Dept of Petroleum Engineering to be the recipient of the SPE Regional Service Award. For having received this award, he is automatically nominated for the equivalent international award for the next three years.
Member of the SPE since January 1982, Dr. Santos always demonstrated a constant involvement and dedication to the activities of the SPE Bahia/Sergipe Section (one of the three SPE Brazilian sections) and SPE International. He is a co-founder of the Section and served as its Chairperson in the periods of 2000-2002, 2011-2015 and 2017-2019 and its Program Chairperson in the periods of 2004 -2005, 2008-2011 and 2015-2017. During the entire period that he occupied the section board, he was responsible for the Distinguished Lecturer program.
Collaborating with SPE International, Dr. Santos has participated or still participates in several SPE committees, in dozens of technical meetings, forums, workshops and conferences sponsored and organized by SPE in Brazil and worldwide; wrote many SPE technical articles, some published in SPE magazines; and reviewed dozens of SPE technical articles for publications in SPE magazines or presentation at its events. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in the 2009-2010 period, presenting the lecture “Ways to Successfully Reduce Well Blowout Events”. He also had participation in two SPE publications: “Drilling and Production Operations in HP/HT”, SPE Reprint Series as editor and “Advances in Well Control” as co-author.
Currently, Dr. Santos is the Secretary of Bahia-Sergipe SPE Section, member of the program committees of the 2020 SPE LACPEC and the 2021 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference & Exhibition and member of the JPT Editorial Committee. He has been employed with the department as a Professional in Residence since August 2018. After receiving his PhD from the department in 1989, he returned to work for Petrobras. He was in service at Petrobras from 1976 until his retirement in 2016.