About Us
Dr. Robert D. Barree is President of Barree & Associates. He has been involved in the development of hydraulic fracture design simulators and fracture diagnostic procedures since 1980 and is the primary author of the fully three-dimensional hydraulic fracture simulator GOHFER®.
Previously, Dr. Barree was a Senior Technical Consultant at Marathon's Petroleum Technology Center in Denver, Colorado. His 24 years' experience at Marathon developed extensive expertise in the areas of well completion, stimulation, numerical simulation, special core analysis, formation damage, and equipment design.
He continues to provide consultation on formation damage evaluation, well completions, and stimulation to company engineering personnel in domestic and international operations. Consulting services have been provided in Mid Continent US, Alaska, California, Gulf of Mexico, North Sea, Africa, Mid East, Australia, China, and Russia including onshore and offshore developments.
Dr. Barree served as SPE Distinguished Lecturer on "Advances in Hydraulic Fracturing" for 1999-2000. He also presents intra-company short courses on hydraulic fracturing and other topics, and his publications are extensive. List of publications.
John Gilbert is a Senior Engineering Consultant with Barree & Associates. He began his career as a wireline engineer with Schlumberger after completing his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Auckland University in New Zealand. Having spent seven years at various locations around the world, he left Schlumberger to pursue his Master’s in Petroleum Engineering at Colorado School of Mines.
He first worked with Bob upon completion of his master’s degree in 1999, when he joined Marathon Oil Company at the Petroleum Technology Center in Littleton, Colorado. At PTC he worked on pressure transient analysis applied to production data and hydraulic fracture modeling. John relocated in 2001 to work in the Drilling and Completions Technology group with Marathon in Houston until 2003. He then went on to spend five years with Santos in Adelaide, South Australia, where he was Team Leader for Fracture Stimulation, implementing Pinpoint Multistage Fracturing technology in the Cooper Basin, one of the most hostile fracturing environments in the world. He joined the team here in Denver, Colorado in February 2008. List of publications.
Val Barree graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in 1986 where she majored in mineral engineering mathematics, with minors in chemical petroleum refining and computer science. After graduation and a brief stint as an instructor at Arapahoe Community College, she focused on software development for core test analysis and instrumentation under the company name Custom Scientific Tools. Developed software included tools for the acquisition and analysis of relative permeability and capillary pressure data, as well as many other customized testing procedures.
In 1999 Val joined Bob in forming Barree & Associates. Her primary duties include well test analysis and software development for the Stim Lab Proppant Consortium (including Predict-K), GOHFER®, and new software projects on the horizon. List of publications.
Christine Gilbert has a Master’s in English from the University of Bergen, Norway and she attended Law School at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She has taught English as a Foreign Language in Norway and High School English in Houston, and also has office management and administrative experience. Before joining Barree & Associates in February, 2008, she was writing book reviews for an online newspaper in Adelaide, Australia and doing freelance Norwegian to English translation.
In addition to her administrative and marketing duties in the office, she is responsible for company invoicing and contract review. Christine is also working on improving and developing software training (including plans for new computer-aided training) for both GOHFER® and Predict-K, as well as helping Bob develop and prepare industry short-courses.
