Invited Speakers
Mtro. Merlin Cochran
General Director
AMEXHI
In his last role, Merlin worked at Mexico’s Ministry of Energy where he was Deputy General Director in the O&G upstream division. There he worked on promoting local content, developing public policies regarding the environmental aspects of the upstream sector (such as emission reductions), managing the Ministry’s upstream data warehouses, amongst others.
Before working in the Ministry, Merlin was managing O&G drilling rigs both onshore and offshore. He started in Brunei as a trainee with Schlumberger and continued his career in countries like Venezuela, Oman, UAE, Iraq and Saudi Arabia working as a drilling contractor for clients such as Shell, BP, ENI, ExxonMobil, PDVSA & Saudi Aramco.
Merlin is a Civil Engineering graduate of Mexico’s Institute Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey. He underwent Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development and had an Executive MBA from both London Business School & Columbia Business School.
Keynote Speakers
Dr. Mukul Bhatia
Director
Berg-Hughes Center
Mukul Bhatia joined the Berg-Hughes Center as Executive Professor and Director in 2017. He was concurrently awarded both the Dudley J. Hughes Endowed Chair in Geology & Geophysics and the Dan A. Hughes ‘51 Chair in Geosciences. Before coming to the College of Geosciences, Dr. Bhatia worked with BHP Billiton Petroleum for 27 years in Australia and the U.S. He consecutively moved to positions of increasing responsibility in BHP and retired as the Executive Leader of Geoscience in the Production Division. A major part of Dr. Bhatia’s experience in the Oil and Gas Industry involved integration of geoscience and engineering functions for resource development. His vision is to create value through integration of geoscience, engineering and other disciplines and directly impact how industry develops these resources. Mukul has a Ph.D. in geology from the Australian National University.
Ing. Rodrigo Hernández
General Director
CNH (Comisión Nacional de Hidrocarburos)
Geophysical Engineer from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM),where he later obtained the Master of Science degree in Structural and Tectonic Geology. He made a research on Saline Tectonics in the Higher Council of Scientific Research of Spain. He worked for several years in the Mexican Petroleum Exploration, at the National Center for Seismological Processing and later on, evaluating exploration technologies in Management and Transfer Technological Management. After working for private initiative firms, he joined in 2008 the Ministry of Energy, where he was part of various Councils and Committees within the Mexican government to regulate the exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons. He has actively participated in the elaboration and implementation of the Energy Reform. In April 2016, the Republic was elected by the President to integrate the list of candidates sent to the Senate to select a Commissioner of CNH. He is currently the General Director of Exploration Opinions in CNH, and within its main functions is to analyze and submit for operators approval plans for oil tankers in Mexico. He is also a professor at UNAM, teaching Geology courses in Deposits, Petroleum Geology and Geochemistry, on the Petroleum engineering Deparment.
Dr. Luis Vielma Lobo
General Director
CBM
Executive in Oil Exploration and Production areas with more than 40 years of experience in Oil and Gas businesses. He is the General Director of CBMX Petroleum Engineering Services consultant, and President of the Chapopote Foundation, created to support excellence in Oil Education in Mexico. Until 2002 he was the General Director of Petroleum Exploration and Production of Venezuela (PDVSA). He is member of the Mexico College of Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), and its Latin America Regional Director from 2002 to 2005. He is Founder and Vice President of AMESPAC. He is a columnist and collaborator in specialized media. He has published 4 books, the last two of them are the novels "Argentum, life and death after the mines" (2019), and "Chapopote: historical fiction of oil in Mexico", (2016).