Seminar and Dinner Mark Retirement of Professor John Fayers
Prof John Fayers has retired after a long and distinguished career, predominantly in the oil industry.
John, together with friends and colleagues from the times he spent with UKAEA (Winfrith), Sohio, BP and Stanford University gathered at Imperial College in London in June (2004) to honour his career with a series of technical presentations and a celebratory dinner.
Major Influence
John has been active in petroleum-related research since the mid 1950s and has made major contributions to improved oil recovery (particularly on miscible and near-miscible gas injection), viscous fingering compositional simulation and upscaling. Even today he is still thinking about issues and problems that need to be tackled and solved. John has been a major influence on at least two generations of researchers in his careers at Winfrith, BP and Stanford.
Early Career
John graduated with a PhD in physics from Reading University in the mid-1950s. Following his national service (developing a digital computer for military applications), he joined Standard Oil of California (Chevron) at La Habra where research was being undertaken on using the first large IBM computers to solve reservoir engineering problems. He assimilated a lot of the theoretical RE background from Muskat's book and benefited from working alongside many of the respected pioneers of the time (Handy, Perrine, Fatt and Johnson, together with Peaceman, Rachford and Douglas who were rivals at Humble Oil). John was Chevron's representative in a joint project to develop and use a 2D simulator to model Aramco's giant Gwahar and Abqaiq fields. This was probably the first simulator to be deployed in reservoir management studies. It solved the pressure equation implicitly using successive over-relaxation, while the water/oil interface was tracked using what later became known as Dietz theory. While at Chevron, John also did pioneering work on the solution of two-phase flow equations, particularly the effects of capillary pressure and gravity, and in using the method of characteristics to solve hyperbolic equation systems for enhanced oil recovery.
John (third from left), with Seminar Organisers (from left) Ken Sorbie, Martin Blunt, and Khalid Aziz
In 1959, because of declining funding for research in reservoir simulation at Chevron, John decided it was time to return to the UK and pursue a career move in the nuclear power industry. Following a spell at English Electric, he joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority (at Winfrith), eventually becoming a senior manager in the national Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor (SGHWR) project.
Involvement with Department of Energy (later DTI)
In 1976 the UK Government placed a moratorium on nuclear power development, so the UKAEA was looking for non-nuclear projects to re-deploy many computer modelling specialists. At this time the Petroleum Engineering Department (PED) at the UK Department of Energy (later adsorbed into the Department of Trade and Industry) required assistance in their role regulating the UK oil and gas industry, particularly in the approvals of field development strategies. John's previous experience in the oil industry proved pivotal in securing this work for Winfrith. John's team used the Intercomp (later SSI) black oil simulator BETA in their modelling work (in parallel the UK 's first reservoir simulator PORES was being developed by Ian Cheshire's team at Harwell and this was later also used at Winfrith). A major question posed by PED related to the timing of the start of water injection. American operators preferred their usual practice of an initial depletion phase to create a secondary gas cap to promote gravity drainage, followed by a delayed water flood lower in the reservoir. However, PED considered experimental work had shown that this resulted in higher residual oil saturations. Studies at Winfrith left the earlier experimental inferences unresolved, but along the way led to John's interest in gas-displacement mechanisms.
Simulation Course held at Winfrith in 1978 with John (front - on left), Jim Nolen (front - fifth from left) Course Tutor, then with Intercomp but later to write the VIP simulator, and Ian Cheshire (back - sixth from left), then head of the PORES team but later to head up the ECLIPSE development team
PED also commissioned EOR work at Winfrith, looking at gas injection, surfactant and polymer flooding, and thermal techniques. A major component of the programme was the construction of two reservoir-condition flooding rigs designed to compare the merits of gas and surfactant EOR. However, design flaws, political considerations, and internal issues at Winfrith meant that the plans for the rigs did not fulfil their proper potential.
Later Career
Putting this disappointment behind him, in 1982 John joined Sohio working in San Francisco on miscible gas injection and water flooding in the giant Prudhoe Bay field. He later moved back to the UK to head up a reservoir simulation team in BP's research department at Sunbury. John again moved to California in 1991 joining the staff of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Stanford University (initially as BP Consulting Professor, then as a Stanford Research Professor). He was instrumental in setting up an industry collaborative project on horizontal wells. He returned again to the UK in 1995 to complete his career as a Consultant. Through most of this time John's research activities revolved around gas injection and horizontal wells.
John (front - centre) with his BP Research Team Colleagues in 1991
John has published his research work extensively being an author on over 50 papers. He was a Distinguished Lecturer for SPE, served as a Chairman for a number of international conferences, and was the leader in the setting up of the first European Conferences on Enhanced Oil Recovery. His first SPE paper on "The Effect of Capillary Pressure and Gravity on Two-Phase Fluid Flow in a Porous Medium" appeared in the 1959 Transactions of the AIME (American Institute of Mining Engineers - forerunner of SPE) and his last papers (SPE 59313 on methods for three-phase flow and SPE 59340 on upscaling using the Todd and Longstaff method) were presented at the SPE/DOE Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery in Tulsa, April 2000.
Outside of work John is a family man, now a grandfather, who enjoys fine wine and good food. He also enjoys racquet sports.
Seminar and Dinner
The subjects discussed at the seminar reflected John's research interests and included numerical methods, streamline simulation, history matching, uncertainty, well modelling and IOR. The presentations and discussion were lively and entertaining with John still demonstrating his sharp and incisive intellect.
John (front - centre) with Daughter, Kirstie and Wife, Ann and Stanford Colleagues and their Families in 1995
An enjoyable dinner was held at the Rector's House at Imperial College. John was joined by his wife Ann; other top-table guests were Prof Khalid and Mrs Muschi Aziz (Stanford), Prof Martin Blunt (Imperial College ) and Prof Ken Sorbie (Heriot Watt) who were the organisers of the event. John regaled us with his life in the oil industry, the accomplishments he was proudest of and some of his regrets. Ken Sorbie presented John's life in pictures culled from various sources, some of which to John's chagrin were, maybe, not intended for public display!
All present wished John a long and happy retirement (and the same goes for absent colleagues).
Administrative arrangements were by Caroline Baugh (Imperial College ).
Please use the feedback box below to record your recollections of John's career.