UT PGE Recognizes 2011 Distinguished Alumni Honorees

The award is given annually to UT PGE alumni who are leaders in the oil and gas industry — educators, executives, innovators and entrepreneurs with unmatched industry expertise. Distinguished Alumni recipients are selected by a committee of UT PGE alumni, including past award honorees.

Meet the 2011 Distinguished Alumni Honorees:

Louis A. Beecherl, Jr.

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1948

Louis A. Beecherl, Jr., former chair of The University of Texas at Austin Cockrell School of Engineering Advisory Board (1985) and former member and two-time chairman of The University of Texas System Board of Regents, was born in Dallas on February 10, 1926. He entered Tulane University under the new V-12 Navy engineering program in 1943. After graduating from Tulane in two years with a degree in mathematics, he served a short time with the Navy before being discharged in July 1946. Shortly thereafter, he enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a BSPE in 1948.

Beecherl started his professional career as a district engineer for Republic Natural Gas in Corpus Christi. He left Republic in 1954 and moved to Dallas to begin working for a company that eventually became Texas Oil & Gas. Three years later, he became the president and soon after served as chairman and chief executive officer of Texas Oil & Gas Corporation from 1957 to 1977. He remained on the board as Honorary Chairman until TXO was eventually sold to US Steel in 1986.

With his retirement from TXO, Beecherl directed his energy for the next 35 years, serving the State and local institutions. Beecherl served as chairman of the Texas Water Development Board of the Department of Water Resources from 1980 to 1986. He was also a member of the Energy Resources Committee of the Interstate Oil Compact Commission. Appointed to a six-year term on the UT System Board of Regents by Gov. William P. Clements in 1987, Beecherl was elected chairman of the board in March 1989 and re-elected chairman in 1991. As a member of the board, he dedicated his time and talent to formalizing the Capital Improvement Program, enhancing the Management Information System to facilitate decision-making, encouraging efficiency and economy in the system’s operations and advocating for the funding that higher education needed to meet the technological developments of the future.

Beecherl was instrumental in helping develop the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building (CPE) at the University. He established several endowments at the Cockrell School and was the first individual to offer funding support for the world-class Biomedical Engineering Building that opened in 2008. He believed in higher education. He not only gave generously of his time and funding resources to the University and UT System, but he also supported UT Dallas and UT Southwestern in multiple ways.

Beecherl received the UT Austin Cockrell School of Engineering’s Distinguished Graduate Award in 1987, the UT Austin Distinguished Alumni Award in 1993, the UT Austin College of Natural Sciences Hall of Honor Award in 2000, and was inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame in 2002. Louis A. Beecherl, Jr., passed away on July 5, 2011, at the age of 85

The University of Texas greatly benefited from Beecherl’s leadership, wisdom, and generosity. Of all of Louis’ many accomplishments, he took the most pride in his family. Louis and his wife of 61 years, Julie, had eight children, 35 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren. More than a dozen of them have graduated or are currently enrolled at UT Austin.

Ben H. Caudle

B.S., Natural Sciences, 1943
Ph.D., Petroleum Engineering, 1963

Ben H. Caudle was born in Midlothian, TX, in 1923, attended school in Dallas and graduated in 1939 at the age of 16. On his father’s recommendation, Caudle attended junior college before coming to UT Austin, where he studied chemistry and graduated in 1943 with a B.S. in natural sciences-chemistry.

Out of school, he moved to Bartlesville, Okla., to work at the US Bureau of Mines’ refining research lab before being drafted into the US Army. As an enlisted infantryman, Caudle served in the Third Army in Europe, and under General Patton’s direction, saw combat at the Battle of the Bulge and the crossing of the Rhine before the end of the war. PFC Caudle returned home later in 1945, disembarking from a Liberty boat in New York City on Victory in Japan Day. Upon completing his war service, Caudle returned briefly to the Bureau of Mines before relocating back to Dallas to be closer to his family. He took a position as Research Scientist with Atlantic Refining in the old Magnolia Petroleum building, initially going to work developing an apparatus for measuring relative permeability. Not long after that, Caudle met Edna Lucille Stewart, known as Teal to her family and friends, and they married in Dallas in 1948.

After presenting on Secondary Recovery at one of the Atlantic Lecture Series at the UT PGE Department, Caudle decided to return to UT Austin as a petroleum engineering Ph.D. student, studying under the supervision of Dr. Hal Silberberg while working for the Texas Petroleum Research Council. Upon graduating in 1963, he promptly joined the faculty of UT PGE—then the UT Department of Petroleum Engineering—and he served as chairman from 1963-67. 

Over the next four decades, Caudle led pioneering research efforts at UT PGE, developing numerous new secondary recovery technologies, including WAG injection. He studied oil recovery techniques using sand models, and as digital computers became available, he adapted this work to create the streamline model for predicting reservoir performance under numerous drive mechanisms and secondary recovery techniques. He authored two reservoir engineering books through the Society of Petroleum Engineers. He also steered the department through numerous waves of faculty additions, in the process mentoring many of UT PGE’s most distinguished current faculty members. Most importantly, Caudle taught and mentored multiple generations of UT PGE alumni, in some cases teaching the sons, daughters, and even grandchildren of some of his earliest students.

Caudle was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 1988.  He retired and was granted Professor Emeritus status in 1997, but still taught classes from time to time until 2009. In 2003, Teal passed away; today, Caudle continues to reside in Austin, next door to his son Brian Caudle, UT BSAE ’77, UT MSAE ’80, Vice President of Walter P. Moore & Assoc., a civil engineering firm. His other son, Alan Caudle, UT BSPE ’79, owns the Texas Blueberries farm outside of Grapeland, Texas.

Jeff R. Edgar

M.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1997

A third-generation engineer, Jeff Edgar earned his M.S. in petroleum engineering from UT Austin in 1997. As a graduate student, Edgar was awarded a Texaco Foundation Fellowship to conduct research in the application of oil field technology to remediate U.S. Department of Energy superfund sites under the supervision of Professor Gary Pope.

After working in both public and private oil companies for the past 15 years, Edgar decided to partner with Kyle Miller to form Rock Oil Company, LLC. Over the past year, Jeff has helped this new company acquire acreage in the Eagle Ford Shale through a $100 million joint venture with Abraxas Petroleum, combined with financing from Energy Trust Partners. Jeff currently serves on the board of Rock Oil Company and is Vice President of the joint venture, Blue Eagle Energy. Prior to becoming a co-founder of Rock Oil Company, Edgar was Engineering Manager at Baytex Energy, USA, Ltd. where he oversaw the development of a 250,000 acre joint-venture in the Williston Basin of North Dakota. Before joining Baytex, Edgar served as senior evaluations engineer and acquisitions manager for Quantum Resources, LLC. He was instrumental in growing the start-up by evaluating over $10 billion in oil and gas assets and corporations, as well as helping acquire $600 million worth of properties located throughout the United States. Before he moved to Quantum, Edgar served a year as acquisitions manager for Aspect Energy, LLC. In this capacity, he assisted with the formation and capitalization of Aspect Abundant Shale LP, which focused on the evaluation and exploration of unconventional shale plays throughout North America. Prior to working at Aspect, Edgar worked for Hilcorp Energy in Houston, where he managed the reserve department and identified and evaluated potential assets for acquisition and divestiture. Jeff also held other engineering positions at Hilcorp, where he conducted reservoir studies to find bypassed oil and gas.

In addition to earning his master’s degree in petroleum engineering from the university, Edgar earned a bachelor’s degree in 1991 in civil/environmental engineering from Vanderbilt University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and a supporter of the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Friends of Alec program. An avid outdoorsman, his interests include skiing, mountain biking, hockey, soccer, and golf. He lives in Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two sons, Jack and Will.

Charles Brady Grant

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1942

Charles Brady Grant was born on October 5, 1920, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the oil boom. His father was the director of the bank, and his motherʼs family, the Hamilton Bradys, had come from Pennsylvania to look for oil. Grant’s only sibling, Louis Wesley Grant, Bud, was born in 1925.

Grant graduated from Tulsa High School in 1938, and family friend Mac McCullum, President of Carter Oil, a division of Standard Oil Petroleum, recommended Grant to attend the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from UT Austin with his Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering in 1942, and was offered an opportunity to work for Warren Petroleum, making 100-octane fuel for the country’s war effort. He worked for six months and then decided to go into the military, joining the Army Air Corps, on December 1, 1942—just days before Pearl Harbor. As part of his military training, Grant went to Yale University’s Engineering School to study aircraft maintenance. In 1944, Grant was commissioned as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. He then served in Pyote, Texas, and was one of three officers to be in charge of maintenance on B-29 Bombers.

When World War II ended, Grant returned to Tulsa and went to work as a real estate appraiser for Sooner Home Federal Savings and Loan, which eventually became the largest savings and loan in Oklahoma. He married Marilyn Vinson and went to work for her father, Bailey Vinson, where he worked for 12 years at Vinson Supply. He and Marilyn had three daughters: Jeanne Dillingham, Kathy Grant, and Chrissy Trotter.

Grant went to Harvard Executive Business Management School and graduated in 1958. While at Harvard, Bailey Vinson had obtained an oil country tubular account from U.S. Steel Corp. Grant managed the account and doubled the sales volume of Vinson Supply. After divorcing Marilyn in 1960, Grant could no longer work for Vinson and quit. Bailey Vinson asked Grant what he

was going to do; he said, quoting Ulysses S. Grant, “I am going to cut my supply lines and forage on the country.”

So in December 1960, Grant formed Grant Supply Company with seven employees, including himself. Their motto was “People Who Care.” When he sold his corporation in 1990, he had 1700 employees with five different companies in the corporation: Grant Oil Country Tubular Corporation, Houston, Texas; Grant Supply Company, Houston, Texas; Grant Corporation LTD, Fribourg, Switzerland; Tubular Finishing Works Inc, Navasota, Texas; Grant Corporation S.A., Calgary, Canada.

In 1976, while traveling by train from Juarez to Mexico City, Grant met Mona M. Moya. They married in 1982 and continued traveling throughout Mexico on his private railcar, entertaining business customers wherever the tracks went. Mona, who received a B.A. in Spanish and a Ph.D. in Bilingual Education from the University of Colorado, has three children, including Roxanne Marie Moya- Nasalroad and Lawrence Paul Moya. She also has three grandchildren: Wesley W. Moya, Carrie May Moya and Catherine Marie Bean.

In 1996, they bought a beach house in Kino Bay, Sonora, Mexico, on the Sea of Cortez—a small fishing village with no tourism, so the water is clean and there are thousands of birds, fish, and porpoises. They now split their time between Kino Bay and Denver, Colorado.

A longtime supporter of The University of Texas at Austin, Grant established the Charles B. Grant Endowment in Engineering in 1990.

William J. Murray, Jr.

B.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1936
M.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1937

William “Bill” Murray, Jr. grew up in the oil fields of northwest Texas by his father’s side, where he became interested in the oil business.  He went on to Simmons College, now Hardin Simmons University, in Abilene, and after two years transferred to The University of Texas at Austin, where he received his BSPE in 1936.  He went on to earn his MSPE in the first graduating class from the program in petroleum engineering at the university in 1937.  While completing his MSPE, Murray also taught and graded undergraduate courses as an instructor.

After graduation, Murray went to work for Brannon Oil and Gas in Coleman as an engineer, geologist, and lease superintendent and in 1939 returned to Austin to work for the Railroad Commission of Texas as a Conservation Engineer & Chief Examiner for the Oil and Gas Division.  In 1941, Murray left the Commission to work for the Petroleum Administration for War during World War II but returned after the war to work as Chief Engineer for Wheelock & Collins in Corsicana, then as General Manager for Houston Industrial Gas Company.  Thanks to his work on gas conservation prior to and after World War II, Bill was appointed as Railroad Commissioner by Governor Beauford Jester in 1947, serving until 1963, including a six-year stint as Chairman.  He became a well-known industry speaker, addressing the Dallas Petroleum Club at its annual meeting for 54 consecutive years.  In 1973, he became the chairman of the Voluntary Gas Allocation Committee, which later expanded into the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

Avid participant and leader in civic life, Murray is broadly known as the first professional engineer to serve on the Texas Railroad Commission and is considered by many, including Texas oil industry historian David F. Prindle, to have been the most influential and visionary commissioner in history.  His expertise and technical leadership during the 1950s resulted in policies that helped strengthen the Texas oil and gas industry, enabling the transformation of the state from an agricultural base to the world’s energy leader.  In addition to these accomplishments, Murray served as president of the Capitol Area Council of Boy Scouts of America, as a trustee of the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, was an active member of University Presbyterian Church for over sixty years, and served as one of the founding members of the Cockrell School of Engineering’s External Advisory Board.  In 1989, alumni and friends of Murray established the William J. (Bill) Murray, Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering to honor his commitment to the University of Texas community.

Bill passed away on August 3, 2004.  His wife of 65 years, Jo Newton Murray, currently resides in Fischer, Texas.  He and Jo had four children:  Jo Anna Schultz Osterman, Marsha Wilson (deceased), Janice Stoley, and Bill Murray, III—all UT graduates—and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Omar J. Varela

M.S., Petroleum Engineering, 1999
Ph.D., Petroleum Engineering, 2003

Omar Varela’s academic background and interests — he holds bachelor’s degrees in petroleum engineering and geology — led him to apply to the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a full scholarship to pursue an MSPE. He enjoyed the academic and research experience so much that the initial plan changed when he decided to pursue his Ph.D. with Professors Carlos Torres-Verdin and Larry Lake. His academic adventure took him on a journey into reservoir engineering, flow in porous media, optimization and geophysics, on which topics Varela has several publications. He held multiple summer jobs in the oil and gas industry while pursuing his degrees. These jobs supported one of his interests: traveling to nature destinations like the Amazon rainforest and Norwegian fjords.

As a graduate student, Varela held numerous academic- and research-based scholarships, including two UT Austin Presidential Fellowships. His M.S. thesis was part of Dr. Lake’s SPE Distinguished Lecture Series around the world on “Using Simulation Models to Predict Uncertainty.” Varela’s pioneering Ph.D. work on joint inversion algorithms for the static and dynamic characterization of hydrocarbon reservoirs led him to receive various awards, including a Student Grant from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) and the 2003 Best Paper Award from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). He was also recognized with the Dan P. Lowenthal Award for original research contributions. Varela became a lifetime member of the UT Ex-Students Association after his graduation.

Since joining ExxonMobil in 2003, Varela has held multiple positions in numerous areas: reservoir characterization, reservoir simulation, breakthrough projects, and research applications on development/depletion planning and evaluation of assets around the world. Currently, he supervises a team of scientists, software developers and engineers charged with the development of the ExxonMobil reservoir simulator. Varela is also involved in teaching, recruiting and community volunteering programs such as the United Way.

Varela has been continuously involved in professional activities with the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). He was vice president of the SPE student chapter during his undergraduate days. He has been part of the Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) program committee for many years and in various positions, and has served as technical editor for SPE journals. Currently, he is a member of the SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Advisory Committee, associate editor for the SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering Journal, and a member of the ATCE Executive Advisory Committee. Varela received SPE’s Editorial Review Committee Award in 2006 and the Peer Apart Award in 2010. He was also recognized by the National Academy of Engineering’s Outstanding Young Engineer Program in 2008.

While attending UT Austin, Varela enjoyed hiking and biking as well as taking nature photographs. He and his family make their home in Houston, Texas, and now look for opportunities to visit Austin.