Iraj Ershaghi is an Iranian-American petroleum engineer and academic who serves as the Omar B. Milligan Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). His research focuses on reservoir characterization,fractured reservoir systems,digital and smart oilfield technologies,and low-carbon energy transition strategies.
Ershaghi was born in Iran.[1] He received a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Tehran in 1965,and later earned both his master's (1968) and Ph.D. (1972) in petroleum engineering from the University of Southern California.[2]
Ershaghi holds the Omar B. Milligan chair in Petroleum Engineering at USC and directs the university's Petroleum Engineering program. He also serves as executive director of the Ershaghi Center for Energy Transition (E-CET),as well as the Center for Interactive Smart Oilfield Technologies (CiSoft),which in 2008 was described as "the university's biggest industry partnership."[5] His research spans low-carbon engineering,greenhouse gas monitoring,complex reservoir well-testing,pattern recognition for waterflood and EOR monitoring,reservoir characterization,unconventional resources,and soft-computing approaches to digital oilfield design.[2]
In 2020,Ershaghi argued that repurposed idle wells could provide "subsurface energy storage" and reduce the environmental and economic costs of abandonment.[6][7]
In April 2022,USC launched the Ershaghi Center on Energy Transition (E-CET),named in his honor and supported by a gift from his former student Gary Buntmann and his wife.[8] The center focuses on advancing technologies for lowering the carbon footprint of oil and gas development and for converting idle wells into subsurface energy and geothermal storage sites.[9]
Ershaghi has been awarded Honorary Membership in the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).[12] His awards and recognitions from the organization include the Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty (1983),Distinguished Member Award (1996),[2][12] Western North America Distinguished Service Award (2005),Technology Transfer Award (2006),North America Western Region Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award (2007),[2][11] Distinguished Lecturer (2006–2007),[11]John Franklin Carll Award (2010),[12] and Legion of Honor (2016).[13] In 2022,he was awarded the U.S. Colonel Edwin L. Drake Oilman Award by the Petroleum History Institute.[14]
In 2014,Ershaghi was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "contributions to characterization of complex fractured reservoirs,and for leadership in university-industry collaboration."[15]
Bibliography
Ershaghi, Iraj (2023). Solved Problems in Well Testing. Springer. ISBN978-3031472992.
Selected publications
Ershaghi, I., & Omorigie, O. (1978). "A method for extrapolation of cut vs recovery curves." Journal of Petroleum Technology, 30(2), 203–204.
Ucok, H., Ershaghi, I., & Olhoeft, G. R. (1980). "Electrical resistivity of geothermal brines." Journal of Petroleum Technology, 32(4), 717–727.
Abdassah, D., & Ershaghi, I. (1986). "Triple-porosity systems for representing naturally fractured reservoirs." SPE Formation Evaluation, 1(2), 113–127.
Acuna, J. A., Ershaghi, I., & Yortsos, Y. C. (1995). "Practical application of fractal pressure-transient analysis in naturally fractured reservoirs." SPE Formation Evaluation, 10(3), 173–179.
Al-Ghamdi, A., & Ershaghi, I. (1996). "Pressure transient analysis of dually fractured reservoirs." SPE Journal, 1(1), 93–100.
Ershaghi, Iraj (2019). "17 - Ethical Issues Facing Engineers in Oil and Gas Operations". In Ali E. Abbas (ed.). Ethical Issues Facing Engineers in Oil and Gas Operations. Cambridge University Press. pp.245–257. doi:10.1017/9781108616188.017.
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