A
graduate of the University of Wisconsin in chemical engineering,
Jim Mack has worked in the oil industry since 1971. From reservoir
engineer, Jim moved on to work as a process engineer at an engineering
and construction firm, where he spent five years designing gas
plants, coal gasification plants, and shale facilities. In 1976,
he earned his MBA from Colorado State University.
In 1977, Jim joined Betz Chemical Oil Recovery, where he served
as a sales engineer for volumetric sweep improvement technology
before opting to begin TIORCO with Betz colleague, Ben Sloat.
Jim has been the lead engineer on many TIORCO projects and his
work has been published in many journals and technical publications
dating from 1978. He is a member of SPE, where he has served as
an officer and chairman of the Denver Section, and in October
of 2000, received the SPE Public Service Award for his efforts
on behalf of youth and the oil and gas industry. Upon receiving
this prestigious award, he was named an SPE Distinguished Member.
Chuck Norman
Manager for the Latin America Division of TIORCO
Chuck
Norman's primary responsibility is to introduce TIORCO's oil recovery
technologies to oil producers in Latin America, particularly in
Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Prior to joining TIORCO, Chuck
owned his own company, CRS Services, Inc. from 1990 to 1997. As
the leader of a consulting group to oil and gas interest owners,
he worked with unitizations, operating agreements and joint interest
operations.
Chuck also served as a senior oil and gas analyst to the United
States Senate for two years, where he led investigations into alleged
mismanagement of federal oil and gas mineral interests. He began
his professional career at a CPA/consulting firm in 1978, working
his way up from staff accountant to manager to partner.
Chuck holds a BSc. degree in Petroleum Engineering, and a Master's
in Mineral Economics, both from the Colorado School of Mines, and
a second BSc. in accounting from the University of Colorado. He
is a CPA, a member of SPE, has been published in numerous trade
journals and SPE articles, and is fluent in Spanish.
Ben Turner
TIORCO U.S. Rocky Mountain Region Manager
Ben Turner is sales and project manager for the Rocky Mountain region for TIORCO. He brought to his position an extensive knowledge of enhanced oil recovery technologies gained from his prior work as TIORCO Lab Manager.
Ben began working with TIORCO in 2002 as a summer lab technician and continued to work on special projects for the company on a part time basis over the next two years. In May 2004, Ben graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a BS in Chemical Engineering and joined TIORCO as our full-time Laboratory Manager. While attending Colorado School of Mines, he completed the McBride Honors program which concentrates on public affairs for engineers. As TIORCO’s Laboratory Manager, Ben focused on new product and technology development while bringing the lab into the new millennium. He oversaw the expansion of TIORCO’s laboratory services and its move to a larger facility in 2006.
Ben received his MBA degree from the University of Denver in 2007. He is active on the board of the SPE Young Professionals Committee in Denver as well as coordinating golf tournaments for petroleum industry professionals.
Harry Chang
China Sales
Harry
Chang, TIORCO’s oil and gas consultant in China, has worked
in the oil industry for more than 30 years and specializes in
Colloidal Dispersion Gel technology for in-depth profile modification.
He received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering
in Taiwan, and earned his Ph.D., also in chemical engineering,
from Rice University in Texas. As an engineering researcher at
ARCO, Harry was manager of the firm’s Beijing office. Today,
Harry travels frequently to China as a consultant, guest speaker,
and a representative of the United States.
Don Wicks
Chief Operating Officer
Don Wicks joined TIORCO in 2007 with extensive management experience including 20 years in the oil and gas industry concentrating on enhanced oil recovery and unconventional reservoirs. He spent much of his early professional career with ICF Resources, Inc. based in Fairfax, VA, beginning as a reservoir stimulation engineer, eventually becoming vice president and an owner of the company. During that time, ICF Resources grew from 23 to more 5,000 employees with annual revenues in excess of $500 million.
As executive vice president for Advanced Resources International, Don was principal investigator of major initiatives to commercialize NASA and Gas Research Institute products for use in the oil and gas industry. He went on to found Spectrum Mapping LLC to provide remote airborne mapping services. Under Don’s leadership, Spectrum became a pioneer in the use of LIDAR (Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging) technologies.
Irina Kamenetskaya
Laboratory Manager
Irina Kamenetskaya holds BS and Master’s degrees in chemistry, with a PhD in organic chemistry from Rostov-on-Don State University, Russia. As a professor at Rostov-on-Don, she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in organic chemistry, organic synthesis, general and inorganic chemistry, and analytical chemistry, and conducted research in metal organic chemistry. Irina synthesized and investigated molecular dynamics of previously unknown N-containing Co(II), Cd(II), Ni(II) and Cu(II) complexes.
Prior to joining TIORCO, she was a chemist with Intel Corp. in Colorado Springs, where she organized and facilitated the water laboratory, providing complete analytical support to ensure water quality for lab customers and water analysis for mechanical wet systems. Irina conducted industrial waste water analysis for site POTW permit compliance monitoring, worked with a third party lab to provide analytical reports to city and site Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) engineers and assisted facility engineers with chemical-related system troubleshooting.
As a post-graduate student at Rostov-on-Don State University, she synthesized previously unknown O- and N- derivatives of substituted cyclopentadienes and created theoretically and proved experimentally a new approach for mechanism investigation of group’s migrations around the cyclopentadiene ring, with published results. Under Irina’s guidance, TIORCO is expanding its research capabilities to increase the effectiveness of the EOR solutions.
Ben Sloat
Co-Founder
Ben
Sloat co-founded TIORCO with Jim Mack in 1977 and served as the
firm’s first president. Now semi-retired, he continues to work
as a special project consultant to TIORCO and assists in the firm’s
marketing efforts.
Ben earned his BS degree in chemical engineering from the University
of Michigan in 1950. He began his early career working as a mud
engineer along the Louisiana Gulf Coast, the mid-continent, Michigan
and the Illinois Basin for four years and then took several years
off engineering to serve in the Army Quartermaster Corps after the
Korean War.
Ben returned to work in 1956 as a waterflood specialist at Calgon
Corp and Bradford Laboratories, where he designed plants and selected
chemical treatments to improve oil recovery with the least damage
to reservoirs. In 1970, he began at Betz Laboratory’s chemical
oil recovery division as a specialist in marketing water/oil ratio
control processes, which seven years later became the foundation
for TIORCO. It was at Betz where Ben met Jim Mack. The two broke
off from the laboratory in 1977 to create their own recovery company,
The Improved Oil Recovery Company, or TIORCO.
Ben’s work has been published in many SPE professional publications
and in technical and trade journals in the petroleum industry, dating
back to 1965. He has served as lead engineer for many reservoir
studies, and has previously served on the Board of Directors for
SPE, the Denver Section of SPE, and the Long Range Plan Review Committee.
TIORCO
Corporate Headquarters 2422 S. Trenton Way, Suite H
Denver, CO USA 801231
Telephone (303) 935-0046 Telephone (800) 525-0578
Fax (303) 935-1514 Fax (303) 935-1514
