ONGC petroleum engineer Sayanima Kisku has been chosen as one among the TWA Energy Influencers 2022, by the prestigious non-profit global body Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).

To recognize the outstanding young professionals in the oil and gas industry, Texas-based professional body SPE has chosen ten influencers whose work has positively influenced and inspired others.

Sayanima Kisku

A petroleum engineer with around a decade-long robust experience in reservoir engineering and management, Sayanima specializes in brown-field management of water-flooding in carbonate reservoirs. Proficient in classical and simulation engineering, she is presently a Manager (Res.) of ONGC’s Neelam and Heera Asset in Mumbai. By highlighting her work and its impact, her success story has been widely shared to inspire others.

Playing a pivotal role in successfully advocating the maiden use of underbalanced drilling in ONGC, Kisku inducted new technologies such as intelligent well completions, chemical enhanced oil recovery, low-salinity waterflood, and modern data analytics for waterflood management. She was able to reduce the cost of projects by approximately 50 per cent using zonal isolation techniques to delay water production in in-fill wells of the Heera field.

This step was instrumental in helping ONGC reshape its brownfield development strategy. This has lead to improvement of the production statistics of mature fields. Among other technical awards, Kisku was earlier named “Young Achiever of the Year” in 2019 and 2020 by ONGC and the Federation of Indian Petroleum Industry, for technical excellence and management skills.

Sayanima shares the honor with nine other professionals from eight countries, that include reservoir engineers, geoscientists, professors, and innovators. The list is inclusive of those whose scholarship, work, and volunteering is a reminder of their commitment to excellence in the oil and gas industry. The nine other professionals include Moataz Abu-AlSaud (Research Engineer, Saudi Aramco), Olawale Ajayi (Petroleum Engineer, Nigerian Petroleum Development Company), Zahraa Alkalby (Reservoir Engineer, TotalEnergies), Mathias Carlsen (General Manager Americas, Whitson), Cassandra Dewan (Audit to Optimize Engineer, Schlumberger), Kyle Haustveit (Manager, Devon Energy Ventures), Gaurav Hazarika (Assistant Professor, Pandit Deendayal Energy University), Adonis Ichim (Well Design Solutions Senior Engineer, Tenaris), and Sadaf Shah (Team Leader–Drilling, United Energy Pakistan).

Ten young professionals chosen as TWA Energy Influencers 2022

The young professionals were chosen among numerous high-quality nominations from different parts of the world, with the help of an exhaustive, three-step evaluation framework. They were then evaluated on an academic scale, with focus on technical credentials, the quality of their work experience, awards, positions of responsibility, volunteering, along with their academic, industrial, and social impact. The result was the selection of 10 TWA Energy Influencers whose candidature had the intrinsic qualities of going above and beyond the demands of the industry.

As the industry is overcoming many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, mercurial commodity prices, and energy transition, the society demands committed professionals who are vested in harnessing community strength. With “The Way Ahead (TWA) Energy Influencers” program, the society recognizes deserving professionals under the age of 35 every year for their extraordinary commitment to innovation, social responsibility, sustainability, safety. It also recognizes professionals for their contributions to the evolution of the global energy landscape.