Grand Directions has assembled a management group with over 90 years of diverse oil and gas industry experience. This talent base provides the company with the insight necessary to consistently choose and drill projects that result in a profitable investment.
Bob Westermark
Bob's first directional well project was offshore Louisiana for Union Oil in 1971, the same year he graduated from Montana Tech as a petroleum engineer. In 1975 he moved back to Montana and worked for two different independents Gary Operating Company, in the Bell Creek Field, SE Montana, at the time the largest oil producing field in the state and for Fulton Operating Company, in north central Montana.
Bob then joined Phillips Petroleum with his first assignment being in Norway in 1979. There he was a senior drilling engineer, overseeing the drilling and completions on the newly installed Edda and Eldfisk B platforms. He was promoted to head a special projects group evaluating new technologies for North Sea Operations. He returned to the States in 1984 where he teamed up with Dr. S. Joshi in implementing Phillips entry into horizontal drilling. In 1995, he moved to Tulsa to manage the Amoco Drilling Test facility at Catoosa, as a consultant through Oil and Gas Consultants International (OGCI), while at Catoosa, he worked on many horizontal drilling tool development projects, including the Amoco Short Radius drilling system.
In 1999, he managed a DOE sponsored vibration stimulation development project. Bob joined Grand Directions, L.L.C. in 2003 to develop projects using horizontal wells for both in house projects and partnership properties. Since then, Grand Directions has drilled approximately twenty-five horizontal wellbores in northeast Oklahoma.
He occasionally conducts intermediate and advanced drilling courses for OGCI domestically and internationally. He has authored or co-authored over 30 technical papers, has contributed on obtaining several patents, and has conducted numerous training classes on four continents.
Marvin Robinowitz
Marvin received his Bachelor of Science degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma, and has accumulated over thirty years experience in engineering, exploration, drilling and operational activities. Mr. Robinowitz worked for Amoco Production Company as a production engineer. After leaving Amoco, he joined Robinowitz Oil, a family business, where he managed the exploration and production departments. In 1981 Marvin formed Grand Resources (an operating oil and gas company) and grew the company through drilling into the late 1980s. Marvin developed novel drilling approaches that saved time and money using underbalanced drilling (UBD) techniques. His use of these techniques in geologic environments where UBD had never been utilized, provided Marvin with the insight that underbalanced drilling could be applied in more diverse situations than previously considered. It is his combined experience of working with both a large corporation and a small independent oil company that has given Mr. Robinowitz the perspective to build and run profitable exploration and production companies.
Scott Robinowitz
Mr. Robinowitz has diverse experience in completing horizontal drilling projects and has drilled over 25 horizontal wells in Northeastern Oklahoma since 2002. Scott managed a Department of Energy grant received in 2002 titled "Enhanced Oil Recovery by Horizontal Waterflooding". He has experience in reservoir engineering and modeling, well completions, equipment design, field operations, environmental compliance, and technology integration. He holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Tulane University and an M.S. in environmental engineering from Oklahoma State University.
Dwight Dauben
Dr. Dauben has 35 years of diversified experience in the areas of reservoir engineering, waterflooding, reservoir simulation, and improved oil recovery technology. This experience has been gained through his employment with Amoco Production Company, where he was involved with the development and testing of advanced technology for the improvement of oil recovery; Keplinger and Associates, where he established the high-technology division of the company including a core analysis laboratory; and Dauben International Energy Consultants, Inc. (DI), where he offers a broad range of petroleum engineering services to the industry. He has considerable international experience with activities concentrated in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. He has worked extensively with Japanese companies over the past 20 years. He is considered an expert in the application of technology to improve oil recovery, especially in the adaptation of horizontal wells in primary recovery and waterflooding applications. Dr. Dauben received his PhD in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Oklahoma, A MS Degree in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Tulsa, and a BS Degree in Petroleum Engineering from Texas Tech University.