Myra Dria
Dr. Myra Dria is founder, president and CEO of Pearl Resources LLC, which has operated in the Delaware Basin since 2011. A Texas-registered professional engineer, Myra also founded Opal Resources in 2007 and served as president and CEO while it operated in the Midland Basin as a co-venture with Goldman Sachs until its first asset sale to W&T Offshore in 2011. In 2018, she was named to Hart Energy’s inaugural “25 Most Influential Women in Energy” list. Across her career with rigor and imagination, Myra applied an insatiable appetite for learning and challenging the “norm.” She earned a Case Western Reserve University BS engineering degree (polymer), and in the late 1970s, the Sohio engineer traveled to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, contributing to establishing standards for seawater injection in the 2 MMBWPD Prudhoe Bay waterflood. This sparked her interest in facility design and downhole formation damage and led her to earn a PhD in Petroleum Engineering with advisors Dr. Larry Lake and Dr. Robert Schechter at UT Austin.
With her PhD, Myra moved into enhanced oil recovery (EOR) at Shell while working with leading EOR technology experts. She applied this knowledge in the field before focusing on developing management experience at Western Atlas. As division manager, she established an Integrated Studies business unit and led her 29-member team to win the proposal to redevelop the PEMEX Cantarell mega field, providing recommendations that added 600,000 BOPD immediately and ultimately lifted Cantarell production to 2.2 MMBOPD. Myra then went on to work as Amoco’s EPTG reservoir and production technology director where she led the effort to fully integrate seismic, geology, drilling, reservoir and production technologies for improved delivery to the asset teams. She then enjoyed serving on Amoco’s PQT (Prospect Quality Team) and later with BP on their XQA (Exploitation Quality Assurance) team. As chief of staff to BP America’s president, she championed technology applications in BP’s Latin America ventures and delivered a Latin America gas resources assessment to Lord Browne. Continuing at BP as the MidCon BU’s drilling and operations manager, she managed 28 rigs running in five states and optimized infrastructure operations to eliminate production bottlenecks. As SENM asset manager, she managed BP assets and discovered huge untapped opportunities in New Mexico. This career milestone stimulated her goal to ‘Find Gems Missed by Others’ under her Opal and Pearl ventures.
Myra is a five-time international figure skating gold medalist in the US and Canada. This former coach is a highly ranked US National Figure Skating competitor (1971) and a Gold and International judge.
