ENGR. DR. O. OLUMIDE PHILLIPS, Ph.D (PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS RESEARCH) FNSE, FNSchE, FAEng

Dr Olumide Phillips was born on July 28, 1945. He attended both Methodist Boys’ High School, Lagos (1959-1963) and he studied for his Higher School Certificate at Igbobi College Lagos.

Olumide was a Mobil Scholar at the Ahmadu Bello University where he graduated with a B.Sc Hons in 1970 in Mechanical Engineering.

Dr Phillips joined Dunlop Nigeria Ikeja, where he served for six months before joining Gulf Oil Nigeria as a Petroleum Engineer in January 1971.

Dr Phillips obtained his Masters Degree in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering in August 1974 and he was the first recipient of a Dual title PhD in both Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering and Operations Research in May 1976; both from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) U.S.A. His areas of study included Reservoir Modeling and Simulation, Geological Modeling, Enhanced Oil Recovery, Thermal Recovery, Complex Linear Flow Models, 3 dimensional 3- phase flow in subsurface porous media and in pipes, Petroleum Compositional Simulation, Queuing Models, Optimization techniques, linear and complex flow models and Mathematical Programming. Dr. Olumide Phillips worked as both research and teaching assistant during his post graduate program and was a consultant on many advanced projects.

Dr Phillips joined Eastern Hemisphere Operations of Texaco Inc in New Orleans USA in July 1976 and worked on various secondary recovery gas and water injection projects in the Gulf Coast. He was later transferred to Texaco Overseas (Nigeria) Petroleum Company and became Head Reservoir Engineering 1978. He spent many months at the Texaco Germany and Houston operations working on review and certification of some commercial reservoir simulators. He was appointed Assistant to Management in 1981 and moved to Warri in 1985 as the Divisional Manager with overall responsibilities for production, drilling operations, aviation and marine services, maintenance onshore and offshore and construction activities. He returned to Texaco Overseas Inc USA for a one year executive stint where he was involved in Trading activities and Technical management. In 1988 he was promoted to General Manager Operations. He was appointed Assistant Managing Director (Operations) in 1991 then in 1993 became the Assistant Managing Director (Assets Development and New Business). It was in this position that he was able to make mega acquisition of acreages for Texaco including the now famous largest oil reserves in Africa, at Agbami. Dr Olumide Phillips was appointed the first and only Executive Vice Chairman in 1998, a position from which he retired in July 2001 exactly after serving Texaco for 25 straight years.

During this period at Texaco, Dr Phillips worked extensively and wrote many technical papers and field study reports on reservoir characterisation, modeling and simulation, gas and water injection into oil reservoirs, multiphase flow in reservoirs and pipelines, field development and revitalization, deepwater program and development, subsurface completions, design and drilling multilateral wells and reservoir compositional simulation. He designed the Queuing Models for the Takeoffs and Landings of Rotary wing aircrafts at the TOPCON base in Warri and the Tanker Scheduling Terminal Operations at Pennington. He also worked extensively on Optimisation Models for the “wells to terminals” fluids flow and the Economic / Financial Mathematical Programmes for Global Analysis of Joint Venture and Production Sharing Contracts. His teams also developed models for Project Analysis of various Reservoir and Production optimization studies. Asked how to be remembered for his works in science and engineering, he said “just remember me for the training and development of the young engineers and geoscientists” some of whom are senior executives in various oil and gas producing and service companies today”.

Dr Phillips was a visiting lecturer and external examiner at the departments of Petroleum Engineering of Universities of Ibadan and Benin. He was Chief Consultant to the Department of Petroleum Engineering of Universities of Lagos and Chairman of the University of Lagos Consultancy Services 1998 to 2007. Dr Olumide Phillips was elected National Chairman of the Nigeria Chapter of the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 1981. He is a fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Fellow Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers and also holds the Fellowship of the prestigious Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Olumide Phillips is the Founder and Chairman Board of Governors of Dowen College, Lagos. He is also the Chairman of Dowen Services Limited, Promaco Associates Limited, Danning Petroleum Company, Principal Consultant DROOP Consultants and Vice President, Lomic Inc. USA.

Dr. Olumide Phillips was appointed Distinguished Fellow in Professorial grade at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos in February 2014.

He is very happily married to Dr. Toyin Phillips, acclaimed economist, professional banker and respected financial business expert and blessed with accomplished children and developing grandchildren.