SPE Board Announces Nominees: 2020 President and 2019 Directors
Authors: JPT staff _ 
Published: May 2018

Shauna Noonan is the nominee for 2020 SPE President. She and six others make up the slate of nominees recommended for positions open on the SPE Board of Directors.
2020 SPE President
Shauna Noonan is the chief of artificial lift engineering at Occidental Petroleum in Houston, where she directs the company’s efforts in artificial lift system performance globally. Before joining Oxy in late 2015, Noonan worked on artificial lift projects and technology development worldwide at ConocoPhillips and Chevron for more than 22 years. She has authored or coauthored more than 25 technical publications on artificial lift and is a frequent speaker at industry events.
Regional Director Africa
Omowumi O. Iledare is Chirota and Emmanuel Egbogah distinguished professor of petroleum economics and director of the Emerald Energy Institute at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He is professor emeritus of petroleum economics and policy research at the Center for Energy Studies, Louisiana State University.
Regional Director Asia Pacific
Nasir Haji Darman is the head of group research and technology in the project delivery and technology division at Petronas. In this position, he steers and drives all Petronas groupwide technology activities.
Regional Director Middle East
Faisal Al-Nughaimish is manager of gas drilling engineering at Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He is responsible for the design and engineering of high-pressure/high-temperature gas wells in the country, offshore and onshore. Al-Nughaimish has held various supervisory positions in drilling and workover, reservoir management, production engineering and well services, and offshore producing. His previous work includes numerous onshore and offshore intelligent-field developments involving multilaterals, intelligent completions, and extended-reach wells. He is a board member of ARO Drilling Company.
Regional Director North America
Steve Cheung is the principal of SteveIOR Consultants based in southern California. In a 30-year career with Chevron, he researched and field-tested acid stimulation, interwell tracers, conformance control, chemical enhanced oil recovery, oilfield chemicals, and gravel packing. He was a troubleshooter for mature waterfloods worldwide. Since retiring from the company, Cheung has taught graduate petroleum engineering classes at the University of Southern California (USC), and serves as a course director at Petroskills.
Technical Director Completions
Terry Palisch is the global engineering director at Carbo Ceramics in Irving, Texas. He began his career with ARCO, during which he served 4 years in Algeria and 10 years as a senior petroleum engineer in Alaska. Palisch joined Carbo in 2004 and in his current position leads a team of technologists developing and championing new products and services and advising clients on completion and fracture optimization.
Technical Director Reservoir
Erdal Ozkan is the head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines. He is also the director of the Unconventional Reservoir Engineering Project and codirector of the Marathon Center of Excellence for Reservoir Studies.