While at Texas A&M, he taught 97 courses and served on more than 175 graduate committees during his tenure. Holditch received several awards from Texas A&M. He was elected into the Petroleum Engineering Academy of Distinguished Graduates in 1998, named a Texas A&M Distinguished Alumni in 2014, and named to the Corps of Cadet’s Hall of Honor in 2016. An endowed chair was also created to honor him in 2012 by many of his former students, the Stephen A. Holditch ’69 Department Head Chair in Petroleum Engineering, which is currently held by Jeff Spath.
Holditch held various leadership positions in SPE, including vice president–finance, member of the Board of Directors from 1998-2003, and SPE president in 2002. He received numerous awards in recognition of his technical achievements and leadership. In 1995 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering at the age of 49, and in 1997 he was inducted into the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. He was elected as an SPE and AIME Honorary Member in 2006. He received some of SPE’s highest technical awards, including the Lester C. Uren Award, John Franklin Carll Award, and Anthony F. Lucas Medal. He published over 150 technical papers.
From 1999-2003, Holditch was a Schlumberger Fellow where he was a Production and Reservoir Engineering advisor to the top managers within Schlumberger. Holditch was President of S. A. Holditch & Associates, Inc. from 1977-99, a full service petroleum engineering consulting firm. His firm provided petroleum engineering technology involving the analysis of low permeability gas reservoirs and the design of hydraulic fracture treatments for various industrial and government clients. Holditch also has been a production engineer at Shell Oil Company in charge of workover design and well completions
Holditch received his B.S. in 1969, a M.S. in 1970 and Ph.D. in 1975 all in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University.
Stephen A. Holditch, "Types of Fracture Propping Agents", Tight Gas Reservoirs, Stephen A. Holditch, John Spivey, John Y. Wang
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The function of a propping agent is to hold the fracture open after the fluid injection is stopped and the fracturing fluid has been removed or has leaked off into the reservoir. Proppants are sized particles that hold fractures open after a hydraulic fracturing treatment. In addition to naturally occurring sand grains, man-made or specially engineered proppants, such as resin-coated sand or high-strength ceramic materials such as sintered bauxite, also can be used. Proppant materials are carefully sorted for size and sphericity to provide an efficient conduit for production of fluid from the reservoir to the wellbore.
A well proppant-packed fracture should have a much higher permeability than the reservoir rock, having linear flow and negligible pressure drop through the fracture to the wellbore, giving rise to increased well productivity. The reservoir can now flow from the extremities of the fracture to the wellbore through the highly conductive proppant pack. The effectiveness of the propping agent has great bearing on the success of a fracture treatment.
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