Balagopal Dharanidharan
Staff Director - Middle East/Africa, Vice President
Balagopal Dharanidharan joined DeGolyer and MacNaughton in 2007 as a reservoir simulation engineer. He works as a project coordinator and lead engineer on large-scale integrated studies for many major fields in the Middle East. Previously, he worked for Improved Petroleum Recovery International, Ltd, where he gained broad experience in reservoir management.
Dharanidharan received a bachelor’s degree of technology from the University of Madras in 2000 and a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M University in 2004. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Geographical Experience
- Algeria
- Egypt
- India
- Jordan
- Kuwait
- Libya
- Pakistan
- Russia
- Vietnam
- United States
Topical Areas of Expertise
- Reservoir engineering studies
- Enhanced oil recovery
- Heavy oil studies
- Unconventional resources
- PVT analysis
- Special core analysis
- Well treatment techniques
- Natural gas engineering
- Software application development
Major Projects
Dharanidharan has worked on major fields in the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. Some of his key projects include re-evaluation of in-place volumes and recovery potential on a long-term basis of countrywide fields in Middle East and construction of full-field 3–D compositional simulations of major fields in Algeria. He was involved in integrated studies involving probabilistic analysis, screening field development options, EOR evaluation, and simulation of gasflood, chemical flood, and steamflood operations for some of the world’s largest clastic and carbonate reservoirs in the Middle East.
He has applied geologic and simulation modeling techniques to assess reserves in complex reservoirs in Russia. More recently, he was responsible for evaluating a newly discovered heavy-oil field in Kuwait. He was involved in building a field development strategy and evaluating the uncertainties associated with the green field. He was also involved in building field development road maps based on simulations of primary, secondary, and tertiary recovery processes.
