Awards & Scholarships

William Ludwig Horner is a partner in Horner & Smith, oil producers in Houston. He received his B.S. in 1928, his petroleum engineer degree in 1934, and his geological engineer degree in 1951 from the University of Pittsburgh, School of Mines.

Mr. Horner joined Humble's Production Research Department in Houston in 1929. The Company's first laboratory measurements of reservoir permeability were made by him, assisted by William Hurst. From 1933 to 1935, with Forest Oil Corporation in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, he applied production research to waterflooding. In 1936 he joined in founding Core Laboratories, Inc. in Dallas and was granted patents covering its routine core analysis methods. He developed Core's services until 1943. From 1943 until 1954 Mr. Horner managed secondary oil recovery for Barnsdall Oil Company which merged into Sunray and Sun. In 1943, he, with D. R. Snow, initiated in the Midway Field, Arkansas, one of the industry's first water injection projects expressly to maintain reservoir pressure fieldwide. Mr. Horner left Sunray as Vice President in 1954. He rejoined Core to establish its reservoir engineering consulting practice and left in 1960 to unitize the Citronelle, Alabama oil field. He initiated its fieldwide pressure maintenance by water injection and managed the Unit until 1964 when he joined Lloyd H. Smith in Houston. Mr. Horner is the author of 40 technical papers and holds eight patents in his field.