Harold Vinegarrecently retired asChief Scientist, Physics, of Royal Dutch Shell. He spent 32 years at Shell’s research laboratories in Houston, Texas working onnovel hydrocarbon exploration and production technologies.
Haroldreceived a BA in physics from Columbia and MA and PhD degrees in physics from HarvardUniversity before joining Shell’s BellaireResearchCenter in 1976. During his career at Shell, he had over 50 publications and 240 patents in such fields as thecomplex conductivity of shaly sands;X-ray CT, NMR spectroscopy and NMR imaging of cores;NMR well logging;microseismic imaging of hydraulic fractures;and wireless power and communications for intelligent wells.
Harold was coinventor of the in situ thermal desorption process for subsurface remediation and was instrumental in the formation of TerraTherm Environmental Services, an affiliate of Shell Oil Co. created to commercialize the in situ thermal desorption process.
He has spent almost30 years in developing novel thermal recovery processes to unconventional resources. He is a co-inventor of Shell’s In situ Conversion and In situ Upgrading Processes (ICP and IUP) that have been piloted successfully in Colorado oil shale and Alberta tar sands.
Harold served as President and VP Technology of the Society of Core Analysts. He received the Distinguished Technical Achievement Award of the SPWLA (1992), three SPWLA Best Paper Awards, ten Shell Special Recognition Awards and the Shell Research Quality Award. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999, cited “for contributions to the science and technology of oil exploration and environmental remediation, particularly thermal methods for extracting hydrocarbons from the ground and for applications of NMR methods to well logging.”
He was inducted into the U.S.NationalAcademy of Engineering in October, 2003 andhas served on the U. S.National Research Council’s Committee on Earth Resources. Haroldwas appointed Chief Scientistof Royal Dutch Shell on November 1, 2005.
In June, 2009 Harold was awarded the highest honor of the SPWLA, the Gold Medal for Lifetime Technical Achievement.
Since retiring from Shell in October, 2008, Harold and his family fulfilled a lifelong dream and made aliyah. He will be teachinga course in petroleum science at BGU, where his wife Robin also serves on the board of the American Associates of BGU.
Areas of Current Research Interest
- Novel production technologies for unconventional hydrocarbon resources
- Petrophysics and well logging, particularly magnetic resonance logging
- Environmental reclamation using in situ thermal technologies
- Using solar energy for in situ oil shale production
Contact Information
Dr. Harold J. Vinegar
Keshet 42
Re’ut, Israel 71799
Cell: 054-4737801
Email: