Tony Kovscek awarded top honor from SPE

Energy Resources Engineering professor Tony Kovscek received a top honor for energy industry professionals worldwide from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). The John Franklin Carll Award, which was established in 1956, recognizes distinguished contributions in the application of engineering principles to petroleum development and recovery.

Kovscek is the Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor in Petroleum Engineering and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. His research explores the physics of flow through porous media in a range of applications, from energy storage and the recovery of unconventional hydrocarbon resources to the mitigation of carbon emissions from fossil fuels via geological sequestration of greenhouse gases.

In addition to his research and teaching at Stanford, Kovscek leads a Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center aimed at transforming the way energy is generated, transformed, stored and used. The Center for Mechanistic Control of Unconventional Formations investigates the fundamental science of coupled physical, chemical and mechanical processes in unconventional formations – commonly known as shale – for reduced environmental impacts of natural gas production in the short term and, importantly, to provide foundational understanding of carbon dioxide utilization and geological storage.

Kovscek will receive the award at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition to be held in Dubai in September. Three other Stanford faculty have won the Carll Award in previous years: Roland Horne, William E. Brigham and Henry J. Ramey.