Alain Gringarten

Professor Gringarten holds the Chair of Petroleum Engineering at Imperial College in London, where he is also director of the Centre for Petroleum Studies. The Centre for Petroleum Studies is a focus for research and postgraduate teaching within the framework of petroleum sciences and engineering at Imperial College.

Prior to joining Imperial College in 1997, Professor Gringarten had a 25 year career in the oil industry, mostly with service companies. From 1983 to 1997, he was with Scientific Software-Intercomp in several senior technical, marketing and management positions including Executive Vice President, Exploration and Production Consulting (Americas and Asia) and Exploration and Production Products (world-wide). From 1978 to 1983, Dr. Gringarten was employed by Schlumberger. He was responsible for the development and world-wide implementation of well test interpretation services and was in charge of PVT laboratories at Flopetrol-Schlumberger in Melun, France; then served as director of engineering at Johnston-Macco-Schlumberger, in Houston. From 1973 to 1978, he was project manager at the Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres in Orleans, France, working on high and low enthalpy geothermal projects, underground heat storage, groundwater projects in fissured aquifers, and radioactive waste disposal. Dr. Gringarten was a Miller Research Fellow at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California at Berkeley, California from 1970 to 1972.

During 1973-1978, Dr Gringarten was an expert for the EEC research program on geothermal energy, in charge of low enthalpy projects; a consultant for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (University of California) on geothermal and radioactive waste disposal projects; a member of the French Committee for Technical and Scientific Research; and a representative for the French government to the CCMS committee to NATO. He was a member of the EEC Advisory Committee for the European Hot Dry Rock projects (Camborne School of Mines, UK, 1980-1983, and Schoultz, France, 1999-2005).

Dr. Gringarten is a recognised expert in well test analysis and has authored or co-authored more than 80 technical papers. He has been involved in many consulting studies (including reserve evaluations for acquisitions); and has taught numerous well test interpretation industry courses around the world. He also taught graduate level petroleum engineering courses at several universities, including the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and Institut Francais du Petrole. He holds a MSc. (1969) and a Ph.D.(1971) in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University; and an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale Paris, France (1968). He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).