Governance

John S. Bell, Assistant to the Vice President, Production Department, of the Humble Oil & Refining Company, Houston, Texas, was President of the Institute during 1971, AIME's Centennial Year.

Mr. Bell has been a member of the Institute since 1939 and has been active in both AIME and the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME affairs for more than thirty years. He has been a member of the AIME Board of Directors (1959-1961), Chairman of the AIME Nominating Committee (1956), and was Chairman of the AIME

Lucas Medal Committee (1966). From 1951 to 1953, he served as a member of the AIME Petroleum Branch (now SPE-AIME) Executive Committee, and he was a member of the SPE-AIME Board of Directors from 1958 to 1960. He has also been Chairman of the East Texas Section of AIME (1944) and Chairman of the AIME

Production Engineering Committee (1946). While President of AIME and SPE-AIME, Mr. Bell traveled extensively and was known as "the traveling President."

Mr. Bell joined Humble Oil in 1933 as a roughneck in Louisiana. Later that year, he was transferred to the company's Petroleum Engineering Department in Conroe, Texas, and in 1934 was moved to Humble's Southwest Texas Division, San Antonio. He was named District Engineer, Freer, Texas, in 1935 and to a similar post in Avoca, Texas, in 1938. He subsequently served as a Division Petroleum Engineer in Eastern Texas before being appointed Superintendent of Humble's California Division. In 1955 he was promoted to California Area Manager and in 1959 was named Gulf Coast Division Superintendent. He was also Area Manager of the Houston AreaSouthwestern Region and Manager of the East Texas Division, Production Department before being appointed to his present position in 1970.

Mr. Bell is a native of Fort Worth, Texas and he received his Petroleum Engineering degree from the University of Oklahoma.