Richard J. Heil

Chief Geologist

Richard Heil is a Senior Geological Consultant with over 30 years experience in the oil & gas and environmental engineering industries, the last 23 years marking a distinguished career with Saudi Aramco as a key contributor in the evolution of the company into a world-class reservoir management and modeling enterprise. A tireless propone nt of the multi-disciplinary asset management team, he is known for achieving effective results from detailed geocellular models incorporating salient geological, petrophysical and reservoir engineering information. In addition to “hands-on” construction of reservoir models, he also served in management as supervisor or division chief for a variety of operating and specialist groups, including the geological support division for Ghawar field, the reserves division and the geo-modeling unit. Most recently, he served as the chief technical consultant to the manager of the Reservoir Characterization Department at Saudi Aramco.

He was involved or responsible for the construction of many of the 3D geocellular geological models of the Saudi Arabian giant reservoirs including those in Ghawar (Khuff), Berri, Safaniya, Zuluf, Marjan, Abu Safah, Abqaiq (Hanifa), Neutral Zone (offshore fields), Hawtah and Shaybah fields. The latter two fields were new field developments that were the first in the company’s history to utilize integrated geophysical, geological and reservoir simulation studies prior to actual field production. Richard was a key member of Saudi Aramco’s Reservoir Engineering Best Practices Team, providing the reservoir characterization requirements. He also developed a technical competency assessment system for the geological and geophysical disciplines for the Exploration Organization and provided in-depth projections and analysis of existing and future professional manpower needs to executive management.

Richard received his B.Sc. in geology from Tufts University in Boston and his M.A. in geology from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a long-time member of AAPG and SPE and has participated in numerous corporate and professional forums and is the author of numerous corporate and professional technical papers and reports on reservoir characterization.