Meet Our Team
Dr. Hai-Zui Meng, President
Ph.D. Petroleum Engineering, University of Tulsa
M.S. Geophysics, University of Tulsa
B.S. Geology, National Taiwan University
Hai-Zui ("Hai-Ray") Meng has over 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry working in various technical positions. Hai-Ray created iReservoir.com, Inc. to provide integrated reservoir characterization and fluid flow simulation consulting services using state-of-the-art geoscience and engineering technologies. Previously, he was with Marathon Oil Company, Dowell Schlumberger and Flopetrol-Johnston Schlumberger. Dr. Meng has conducted numerous integrated reservoir characterization, reservoir simulation and reservoir management studies. Dr. Meng has extensive reservoir characterization experience including seismic attribute analysis, depth imaging, 3D faulted structural framework modeling, deterministic and stochastic AI inversion, 3-D geologic model construction, and 'very practical' geostatistical modeling for reservoir engineering problems. Dr. Meng has also conducted detailed reservoir management studies using both black-oil and compositional fluid flow simulation models that are constrained to honor the existing geological, geophysical, petrophysical, and engineering data. Dr. Meng has served on various Technical Committees for both the SPE and SEG as was author of the chapter "Design of Propped Fracture Treatments" in Schlumberger's 1987 textbook on Reservoir Stimulation.
Michael J. Uland, Industry Technology Advisor
M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University
Mike is directly in charge of Petrophysics, Geomodel Construction, and Integrated Reservoir Characterization input for flow-simulation. Mike has 36 years of experience in the petroleum industry. This includes 15 early years of practical field experience covering a range of engineering positions: Drilling, Operations, Facilities, Reservoir, EOR, and Acquisitions & Divestiture. From 1990 through 2000, Mike was a member of the early multidisciplinary reservoir 3D Geomodeling research teams located at the Marathon Oil Company Technology Center. These early Marathon geomodel projects and the current iReservoir geomodel projects required the data integration of Geophysics, Rock Physics, Petrophysics, Geostatistics, 3-D Geomodeling, Fractured Rock Mechanics, and Reservoir Simulation for the creation of effective reservoir management tools.
James R. Gilman, Reservoir Engineering Advisor
M.S. Chemical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines
Jim Gilman is iReservoir's Director of Engineering and has over 36 years experience in the petroleum industry. His expertise includes specialization in the area of application and development of numerical simulators for fluid flow in petroleum reservoirs. He was a co-developer of Marathon Oil Company's 3-D, 3-phase simulator for naturally fractured reservoirs and was instrumental in testing and debugging the dual-porosity versions of the commercial black-oil and compositional simulators for Marathon's applications. In addition to simulation expertise, Jim's work at Marathon Oil Company's Technology Center involved company-wide training and consultation in the areas of reservoir engineering, reservoir simulation, naturally fractured reservoirs, horizontal wells and production risk/uncertainty analysis. He was most recently Manager of Reservoir and Well Performance, a multi-disciplinary organization involved in 3-D geologic modeling, laboratory special core analysis, reservoir simulation and general reservoir engineering. Jim has authored or co-authored over a dozen articles primarily dealing with naturally fractured reservoirs or horizontal wells. He was instrumental in simulation of a large naturally fractured reservoir undergoing gas injection to improve gravity drainage and was recently invited to speak on fractured reservoir simulation at the 2003 International Simulation Forum in Germany and a 2003 Statoil Research Summit on Fractured Carbonates. He was a member of the SPE Editorial Review Committee from 1987-2000 and most recently served as an Executive Editor for SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering. He served as Chairman of the Twelfth SPE Symposium on Reservoir Simulation (1993) and on the program committees for the 1991 and 1997 symposiums. Jim has a MS in Chemical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines (1983) and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Montana State University (1978). Jim is a registered PE, and a member of the SPE and AICHE.
Reinaldo J. Michelena, Ph.D, Geophysical Technology Advisor
M.S., Ph. D. Geophysics, Stanford University
B.S. Physics, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela
Reinaldo Michelena has 29 years dedicated to research, development, and application of innovative seismic methods to help reservoir delineation and characterization, from programming and testing of novel algorithms to integrated interpretation of field data results. He worked 18 years for PDVSA-Intevep, the research and technical services affiliate of PDVSA. He also completed a short research intership at Amoco Production Company’s Tulsa research laboratory and was visiting scientist at CGG Americas. Reinaldo has been project leader in the area seismic techniques for reservoir characterization and senior scientist for reservoir delineation and characterization. In 2003, Reinaldo joined iReservoir and since then he has worked in a variety of problems and geological settings where seismic data analysis results are used to constrain geological and flow simulation models. Reinaldo is principal author or co-author of over fifty papers published in internationally recognized journals and proceedings of national and international conferences. He is a member of SEG, AAPG, EAGE, RMAG and DGS. He served as Associate Editor of Geophysics and is current member of the Editorial Board of The Leading Edge.
Omar G. Angola, Consultant Geomodeller
M. Eng. Petroleum Engineering, Texas A&M University
M.Sc. Reservoir Geosciences & Engineering, IFP School, France
DEA Signal-Image-Parole, Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble
B.S. Computer Engineering, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela
Omar has over 21 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. His early work was with a PDVSA Intevep Scientific Visualization group developing E&P software, including displays of reservoir simulation output, thin-sections image processing and laboratory measurements. In 1992 he was awarded with a scholarship to pursue studies in Signal Processing and Computer Science. His work included integrating and calibrating data from different sources and scales, geocellular modeling applications on constructing high-resolution reservoir models, assessing geospatial relationships, volume calculations and upscaling for numerical reservoir simulation.
Huabing Wang, Ph.D, Consultant Reservoir Engineer
Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, University of Utah
M.S. Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University
B.S. Chemical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology
Huabing joined iReservoir in 2008 after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Utah. Before that, he has over 11 years of industry/research experience in thermodynamics (PVT), numerical modeling, reservoir simulator development, fracture reservoir characterization, and quantitative analysis. At iReservoir he has been intensely involved in many industry reservoir consultation projects (located in Brazil, Columbia, Kurdistan, Vietnam, and many onventional/unconventional oil/gas systems throughout the US). His current areas of interest include integrated reservoir studies of conventional and unconventional resources, naturally fractured reservoirs and EOR.
Liwei Victor Cheng, Reservoir Characterization Geoscientist
M.S. Geosciences, National Taiwan University
B.S. Geosciences, Taiwan University
Victor started his career at Formosa Petrochemical Corp., Taiwan, as a geophysicist and had closely worked with iReservoir since 2007. His early work included identification of international prospects and involvement in various E&P activities in both conventional and unconventional plays in the Permian basin, Powder River basin and Gulf Coast basin of the United States. His current focus is on seismic interpretation, time-depth conversion, AVO, pre- and post-stack inversion, and velocity analysis for integrated reservoir characterization projects. He also has interest in employing seismic attributes and rock physics to identify unconventional resources. Victor is an associate member of SEG and the author of several peer-reviewed publications.