Opening Plenary Session
Monday, June 11, 09:00 - 12:30

In keeping with our conference theme of "Industry, Academia and Government.. Sailing Together!", we are pleased to have four outstanding representatives of these domains to open the 2007 Conference.

OMAE 2007 Keynote Lecture

Presentation: "Cooperating to Achieve Offshore Energy, Safety, and Environmental Objectives"
Speaker: Elmer "Bud" Danenberger III, Chief of Offshore Regulatory Programs, Minerals Management Service, U. S. Department of Interior

The OMAE 2007 Sponsors Lecture

Presentation: "Technology Continues to Make a Difference in Offshore Developments"
Speaker: George Rodenbusch, Global Discipline Head - Offshore Engineering, EP Projects, Shell International E&P, Inc.

The Fred Noel Spiess Memorial Lecture

Presentation: "Waves"
Speaker: Prof. Walter H. Munk, Professor of Geophysics Emeritus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego

The OMAE 2007 Technical Lecture

Presentation: "Arctic and Deepwater Offshore Pipeline Installation"
Speaker: R. J. Brown, Chairman, R. J. Brown Deepwater Inc., Houston, Texas

Luncheon Speaker

Presentation: "The Offshore Frontier: Testing the Limits"
Speaker: Todd W. Grove, Senior Vice President & Chief of Staff, American Bureau of Shipping

Plenary Speaker
Wednesday, June 13, 8:00 - 8:30 AM

Presentation: "Confessions of an Offshore Technology Geek"
Speaker: Peter Marshall, Professor of Offshore Technology, Lloyds Register Chair, National University of Singapore

Keynote Speaker Biographies R. J. Brown Mr. Brown is an acknowledged international authority on marine pipelines. He has worked in the pipeline industry for over 57 years; he established R. J. Brown and Associates in 1969. Mr. Brown is presently the Director of R J Brown Deepwater Inc a wholly owned company of Technip USA. Under the direction of Mr. Brown, R. J. Brown and Associates has received seven Meritorious Awards at the Offshore Technology Conference for innovative methods of installing and connecting pipelines along with pipeline stabilization. He has been directly involved with the development, construction and operation of conventional and the first of the advanced 3rd generation semi submersible pipe lay barges, Several of his most notable projects included the development of new methods and procedures for installing projects in the Arctic (PanArctic in 1976 by developing a 2D modeling system to design the entire installation using a totally new system of installation). This modeling has evolved into 3D and is presently being used on projects in 6000' and 8000' water depths. To improve the economics of pipeline stabilization he developed the first pre-trenching plow followed by post trenching, multi pass, and backfilling configurations. Since 1985 he has been responsible for the design and installation of fourteen single and insulated bundled pipelines with lengths up to fourteen kilometers and bottom towed distances of 450 nautical miles in the Gulf of Mexico. He has published numerous papers on design and installation of onshore and offshore pipelines. In 1997, Mr. Brown received the OTC Heritage Award for his outstanding contribution to the oil and gas industry. In 1985, Mr. Brown received the American Society of Civil Engineers Stephen D. Bechtel Award for outstanding achievements in pipeline engineering. In 1986, Mr. Brown was named "Pipeliner of the Year" by the Pipeliners Club of Houston. He is a graduate of Ohio University with a BSCE and an MSCE degree from Stanford. Mr. Brown is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and a Registered Professional Engineer in 6 states in the USA. Elmer P. Danenberger III Mr. Danenberger earned a B.S. degree in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering and a Masters degree in Environmental Pollution Control, both from Pennsylvania State University. He has been employed as an engineer in the Department of the Interior's offshore oil and gas program since 1971. He served as a staff engineer in the Gulf of Mexico regional office; Chief of the Technical Advisory Section at the headquarters office of the U.S. Geological Survey; District Supervisor for Minerals Management Service (MMS) field offices in Santa Maria, California, and Hyannis, Massachusetts; and as Chief of the Engineering and Operations Division at MMS headquarters. He is currently Chief of Offshore Regulatory Programs with responsibilities for safety and pollution-prevention research, engineering support, operating regulations, and inspection and enforcement programs. Walter H. Munk Walter Heinrich Munk was born October 19, 1917 in Vienna, Austria. At age 14 his family sent him to a preparatory school in New York, envisioning a future for him in banking. Munk, however, had other plans. He enrolled at the California Institute of Technology and earned a bachelor's degree in physics in 1939 and a master's in geophysics in 1940. He attended Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and received his Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of California in 1947. Munk has spent his entire professional career at the Scripps Institution, and, in addition to his scientific work, has remained deeply engaged both in educating his students and in the university's governance. He is presently (2004) professor of geophysics emeritus at Scripps. During World War II, Munk and Harald U. Sverdrup, then director of Scripps, developed a system for forecasting breakers and surf on beaches, a technique of crucial importance in military amphibious landings. It was widely applied in the Pacific and Atlantic theaters of war, and it correctly predicted high but manageable waves for the Normandy invasion. During the 1946 testing of nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll in the southern Pacific Ocean, Munk participated in an analysis of currents and diffusion in the lagoon and the water exchange with the open seas. He pioneered research on the relationship between winds and ocean circulation, coining the now widely used term "wind-driven gyres." In the 1950s, Munk focused on the wobble of the Earth's axis during rotation. He observed irregularities in the Earth's motion caused by geophysical processes, such as the momentum exchange between ocean currents and the solid Earth and the exchange of mass between polar ice sheets and oceans. In 1963, he led a study that showed that waves generated by winter storms in the Southern Hemisphere traveled thousands of miles and spread throughout the world's oceans. To trace the path and the decay of wave packets as they propagated northward, he established stations in a great circle from New Zealand to Alaska and measured fluctuations with pressure-sensing devices lowered to the ocean floor. Beginning in 1975, Munk and Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pioneered the development of acoustic tomography of the ocean. The technique uses sound waves to generate images of water in much the same way that radioactive particles are used to create images of the brain in CAT scans. Munk developed the theory that by studying the sound propagation patterns and the time it takes for sound to travel through the oceans, it would be possible to detect important information about the ocean's large-scale structure. He thus conceived the Heard Island Experiment, in which acoustic signals were transmitted by instruments lowered 150 meters underwater near the remote island in the southern Indian Ocean. During four days in January 1991, in an experiment that has been called "the sound heard around the world," signals sent from Heard Island were received on the east and west coasts of the United States, as well as at many other stations around the world. Walter Munk was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1956 and to the Royal Society of London in 1976. He has been a both a Guggenheim Fellow (three times) and a Fulbright Fellow. He was also named California Scientist of the Year by the California Museum of Science and Industry in 1969. Among the many other awards and honors Munk has received are the Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America in 1956, the Sverdrup Gold Medal of the American Meteorological Society in 1966, the Alumni Distinguished Service Award from the California Institute of Technology in 1966, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1968, the first Maurice Ewing Medal sponsored by the American Geophysical Union and the U.S. Navy in 1976, the Alexander Agassiz Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences in 1977, the Captain Robert Dexter Conrad Award from the U.S. Navy in 1978, the National Medal of Science in 1985, and the William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 1989. Overall, Walter Munk is a member or fellow of more than a dozen professional societies and has served on many university, national, and international committees as well. He has also, over the course of his long career, written more than 200 scientific papers. George Rodenbusch, Global Discipline Head - Offshore Engineering, EP Projects, Shell International E&P, Inc. George joined Shell in September 1978 with a BS and MME in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University and a PhD in Oceanographic Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He spent much of his first 6 years in Shell's R&D center in Houston developing tools for the estimation of loads on offshore platforms induced by wind, wave and current during severe storms. In 1985 he joined the Marine Systems Engineering group of Shell Offshore which was formed to develop concepts for the development of deepwater fields in the Gulf of Mexico. One of these concepts was the Tension Leg Platform that was used numerous times by Shell in the Gulf. From 1989 to 1992 he led the global analysis group supporting the design of the Auger Tension Leg Platform that would move the record water depth for offshore production from 410m to 870m. From 1992 to 1995 he was in the Offshore Engineering Department of Shell International in The Hague, working on various technical problems involving hydrodynamic and hydroelastic design of offshore platforms. He also provided development planning support to operating companies in selecting systems for the development of deepwater offshore fields. In 1995 he returned to Houston and worked on the design of floating systems for deepwater production and drilling. In 1998 he became Civil/Marine Engineering Process Manager supervising a group responsible for the design of floating systems, risers, mooring systems and foundations for Shell's deepwater development systems worldwide. In April 2004 he was named a Shell Global Technical Expert in Offshore Structure Engineering in recognition for technical expertise and global contribution. In April 2007, he was selected as the Global Discipline Head - Offshore Structures. In this role he will work to maintain an environment in Shell where engineers are energized and able to make use of the best tools and practices to deliver excellent HSE and business results. On a personal note, George and his wife Nancy have two daughters and a son ranging in age from 30 to 24 years and a 2 year old granddaughter. He enjoys outdoor sports like backpacking; fly fishing, sailing, skiing and golf. Speaker Biographies Todd W. Grove, Senior Vice President & Chief of Staff, American Bureau of Shipping Todd Grove is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and the University of Houston with a Masters in Business Administration. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School in its Advanced Management Program. He has been with ABS for 24 years serving in the Corporate Office in the New York area, Pacific Divisional Headquarters in Singapore, Europe Divisional Headquarters in London, Country Manager's office in Korea, and Americas Divisional and Corporate Headquarters in Houston. He has worked in a variety of functions on a wide range of significant projects. These have included hydrodynamic analyses and model tests of semisubmersible drilling units in support of the development of alternative dynamic stability criteria subsequently adopted into the IMO MODU Code. He was project manager of the ABS SafeHull project when this new hull structure criteria was introduced to the industry in 1993. He has also participated in a number of other rule development efforts for offshore applications covering subjects such as spars, TLPs, synthetic mooring ropes, and offshore LNG terminals. In January of this year he was appointed as Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff in the Houston Corporate office after two years as President/COO of the ABS Americas Peter Marshall, Professor of Offshore Technology, Lloyds Register Chair, National University of Singapore 32 years designing offshore platforms for Shell: Head of development section, E&P Deepwater Civil & Marine Tubular joint & fatigue work enabled push into deep water & North Sea Led initial design team for Bullwinkle, deepest fixed-base platform Prof. of Marine Design and Construction, University of Newcastle Offshore Technology Pioneer, Reliability-Based Structure Design Proprietor, Moonshine Hill Pty. MHP Systems Engineering OTC Outstanding Achievement Award for Individuals, 2006 LR Chair of Marine Technology, National University, Singapore