Comments: ATCE's Distinguished History
Authors: Donnelly John 
Published: February 2015

This year marks SPE's 50th anniversary, but the society's Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) is quite a bit older. This year's ATCE—to be held 11–14 November in Anaheim, California—will be the 82nd occurrence of what has grown to become one of the oil industry's most important yearly events.

Both SPE and the annual conference have their roots in the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME). ATCE was once called the Mid-Year Meeting, then became known colloquially as the Fall Meeting, then the Annual Meeting and, beginning in 1975, the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. The first event was held in Tulsa in 1926 with a program put together by the Petroleum Division of AIME. The Petroleum Division would grow to become the AIME Petroleum Branch by 1949 (the year JPT began publishing) and then would become the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME in 1957 after petroleum-based membership in AIME flourished. The first SPE-AIME board meeting was held at the October 1957 Annual Meeting in Dallas, marking the official beginning of SPE. That event attracted 3,584 attendees and included 75 technical paper presentations.

The first annual meetings consisted largely of technical paper presentations and social events. Exhibits would not be added until the 1946 conference in Galveston, Texas. That event had just 14 exhibitors, compared with the more than 400 booths that will fill the Anaheim Convention Center this year. After SPE became its own distinct organization, there was renewed focus on improving the technical content of the meeting. In 1962, SPE established technical committees in the 10 primary fields of interest of the membership. The committees were charged with the responsibility of guiding the literature within these fields and helping to develop programming for the Annual Meeting. That idea previously had been rejected for fear that it would fragment SPE's membership, but the Board of Directors later concluded that it was necessary to keep pace with the needs of the members. The new committees covered Drilling and Well Completions, Education and Professionalism, Economics and Evaluation, Formation Evaluation, Gas Technology, Geological Engineering and Groundwater Hydrology, Management and General Interest, Production Operations and Engineering, Reservoir Engineering, and Fluid Mechanics and Oil Recovery Processes.

As a result of this emphasis on the technical aspect of the meeting, the number of papers grew sharply and the quality improved as well. Technical presentations more than doubled during the 1960s. The 1960 meeting in Denver included 68 technical papers, but by the 1970 meeting in Houston, paper presentations had grown to 151. This year's meeting will include 389 papers (320 oral presentations, 57 posters, and 12 student papers), covering a broad scope of new technology, case studies, and best practices in a dozen disciplines. Perhaps most important, these papers—as well as those presented at the society's other meetings—add significantly to the industry's technical literature and knowledge base.

This will not be the first year the annual conference takes place in California. The 1983 meeting was held in San Francisco, and the 1962 event was in Los Angeles. Attendance at the Los Angeles meeting was only 1,800, compared with the more than 9,000 who came to last year's ATCE in San Antonio, Texas. The most common locales for ATCE have been Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, New Orleans, and Denver, the site of next year's event. In 2010, ATCE will be held outside the US for the first time—in Florence, Italy—reflecting the increasing international growth of the society.