Awards & Scholarships

Kamel Ben Naceur was born in Gafsa in Tunisia’s Southwest as the seventh child in a family of 5 brothers and 3 sisters. After graduating from high school, he was selected (and given a grant) by the Tunisian Government among the country’s 20 top-performing students to prepare in France for the exams of the Engineering’s Grandes Ecoles. The two-year highly selective and intensive process leads to a series of competitive nationwide exams to be admitted to the elite engineering schools. He was the first Tunisian ever admitted to the two most coveted French engineering schools: the École Normale Supérieure and the École Polytechnique. 

He then set himself the extreme challenge of studying in the 2 schools in parallel, which only he and another (Lebanese) colleague have managed to accomplish. He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique with the Engineer’s degree and from Ecole Normale Supérieure with the Agregation de Mathématiques. He then did applied research in process control at the Ecole des Mines de Paris.

In December 1980, he started as an R&D project leader at Dowell Schlumberger in France, specializing in stimulation/fracturing, as well as modeling developments. His team has major breakthroughs in the creation of 3-D fracturing models, as well as in the understanding of complex phenomena, such as viscous fingering and wormholing. In 1985, he moved to Tulsa (OK), where he led progress in proppant and acid fracturing and reservoir simulation. 

In 1990, his professional career took a new direction within Schlumberger, where he moved to operations management in Algeria, South America, and the Middle East/North Africa region, followed by global company technology leadership in Well Services in Houston. In 2003, he led the creation of Schlumberger’s business and technology services in CO2 Capture and Storage. In 2009, he became the company’s Chief Economist before leading the development of South America’s R&D and geoengineering center in Rio de Janeiro. 

In 2014, he was asked to become Tunisia’s Minister for Industry, Energy, and Mines as part of the first country’s technocratic government in charge of stabilizing the economy and improving security while organizing the first fully democratic elections. The government’s successful mission in 2014-2015 was recognized by the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize award to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet.

In 2015, he became the International Energy Agency’s Director for Sustainability, Technology, and Outlooks, with his teams developing long-term energy scenarios that provided guidance for international climate change negotiations.

In 2017-2018, he served as the ADNOC Chief Economist in Abu Dhabi, contributing to the transformation of the NOC into a single-identity, multi-activity major industry player.

In 2019, he created UAE-based Nomadia Energy, a consulting company advising the energy industry’s stakeholders on sustainable strategies, and since 2020, he has been participating in the development of DAMORPHE, a Houston-based nano-technology company focused on sustainable (energy) development.

His engagement with SPE and AIME started early in his professional career, with his first co-authored paper published at the 1981 ATCE, and he continues until now to present new papers at major industry events and submit innovation patents. In 2009, he co-led, with the support of AIME (including SPE, SME, and TMS), AICHE, ASME, and ASCE, the first joint-society symposium on Engineering Solutions for Sustainability: Materials and Resources in Lausanne (Switzerland). He was a Member of the SPE Board of Directors, in charge of the Management & Information technical discipline, and in 2022, became the SPE President.

He was honored by SPE and AIME with the Distinguished Membership, Distinguished Service, Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold, and the Sustainability and Stewardship in the Oil and Gas Industry Awards. He is the coauthor of 19 books and 170 papers and holds several energy-related patents.

He is currently also serving on several boards, including engineering schools. He was honored by the Government of Tunisia with the Medal of Commandeur de l'ordre de la République, and in France by the Medaille d’Or of the city of Saint Etienne. 

He is married to Najoua (Khouaja), a senior professional in Finance and Administration, and they have three boys: Anis, Mohamed Khalil, and Walid.