Bernt Sigve Aadnøy

Bernt S. Aadnøy is a Professor of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Stavanger, a position he has held since 1994.

He worked initially as a workshop mechanic for 5 years before entering college. He started in the oil industry as a trainee for Phillips Petroleum in Odessa, Texas in 1978. In 1980 he went to Rogaland Research (now Iris) as manager for Ullrigg, a full-scale offshore drilling rig research facility, focussing on drilling automation. He later worked as a drilling engineer for Statoil and a chief well engineer for Saga Petroleum up until 1994. Here he developed the common Well Design Manual for the Norwegian oil companies.

Aadnøy has published more than 200 papers, mostly on rock mechanics and well technology but also in reservoir engineering, production and automation, and holds 10 patents. He has authored books such as Mechanics of Drilling, Modern Well Design and Petroleum Rock Mechanics – Drilling Operations and Well Design. He is one of the editors of SPE Advanced Drilling and Well Technology book, and has written the Geomechanics chapter in SPE Fundamentals of Drilling Engineering. He is also co-author of a Norwegian Well Integrity compendium.

Dr. Aadnøy holds a mechanical engineering degree from Stavanger Tech, a BS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wyoming, an MS degree in control engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in Petroleum Rock Mechanics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology. Between 1983 and 1985 he received a scholarship studying petroleum engineering and geophysics at the University of Texas at Austin. He was Adjunct Professor at the University of the Faroe Islands building the Petroleum Engineering program and has also been a visiting professor at the University of Calgary and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Aadnoøy works in all areas of well engineering such as drilling, production, completion, rock mechanics and smart well technology. Aadnoøy is a member of the SPE Editorial Board and is also Associate Editor for the SPE Drilling and Completion journal.

Dr. Aadnøy has received many awards, amongst which he was the recipient of the 1999 SPE Drilling Engineering Award, is a 2015 SPE/AIME Honorary Member and a 2015 SPE Distinguished Member. He is elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences.