Awards & Scholarships

Paul James Taylor is a reservoir engineer in the Greater Point McIntyre area for ARCO Alaska, Inc. in Anchorage. His current responsibilities include facilities optimization, reservoir modeling, reserves reporting and planning. He received a BS in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and an MS in energy economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he pursued interdisciplinary studies on energy, economics, the environment, and public policy. One topic central to all these issues is crude-oil supply. Accordingly, he pursued a thesis that addressed domestic crude-oil production and demonstrated that crude-oil production can be modeled as a function of physics, technology, economics, and the oil that has not yet been produced. With this model it can be argued that the likelihood of an acute, long-term supply shortage is poor, and that future opportunities in the US are still strong. The findings of this thesis are summarized in his paper.

Prior to ARCO Mr. Taylor worked for Union Pacific Resources as a production and reservoir engineer and for THUMS Long Beach Company as an operations and analytical engineer. During this time he was involved in a variety of activities including drilling, production, and reservoir engineering. Mr. Taylor is a member of SPE and the International Association of Energy Economics.