REIDAR B BRATVOLD is a Professor of Petroleum Investment and Decision Analysis at the University of Stavanger, Norway where he is teaching and supervising graduate students doing research in uncertainty assessment, risk management, investment analysis, decision sciences, and market based valuation. He is also chief scientist at IRIS – International Research Institute of Stavanger. Before joining the University of Stavanger, Reidar was professor and discipline head of petroleum engineering & management at the University of Adelaide, Australia, where he still retains a position as adjunct professor. As a Vice President of Landmark Graphics Corporation he was responsible for all of Landmark’s solutions in reservoir management, production and drilling. Later, he was the VP in charge of Landmark’s solutions in decision analysis, economic evaluation and business modelling. Prior to joining Landmark Reidar was General Manager of Smedvig Technologies Software Solutions (now Roxar). He was the Founder-General Manager of ODIN Reservoir Software & Services where he initiated and oversaw the development of software and consulting solutions for stochastic reservoir modelling (STORM) and other reservoir management applications. He was also Senior Scientist for five years with IBM, working on high-performance reservoir simulation and spent several years as a reservoir engineer with Statoil. Reidar spent his early working years as a roughneck in the North Sea and as a seaman in the Norwegian merchant marine.

He has provided advanced investment- and decision-analysis consulting and professional development services for major operating companies such as ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Unocal, Petronas, Saudi Aramco, Norsk Hydro, Mærsk, RAG, Statoil, DONG, as well as for other organizations such as the executive program at the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley and the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Reidar is a member of the Stanford University Petroleum Investment Committee

as well as a board member of an oil company and an IT company. Twice invited to serve as SPE Distinguished Lecturer, in 1998/99 on the topic Uncertainty Assessment and Risk Management in Exploration & Production and in 2003/04 with the topic Would You Know a Good Decision if You Saw One?, he is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events. He has published numerous papers on topics such as investment modeling, decision-making, stochastic reservoir modelling, fuzzy logic and reservoir management. Reidar is a co-author of the book: Decision-Making and Uncertainty Management, which will be published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers in early 2009.

Reidar holds a PhD degree in petroleum engineering and an MSc degree in mathematics both from Stanford University, an MSc degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Tulsa, a BSc degree from University of Stavanger, Norway. He also has extensive executive education from INSEAD (International Executive Program), Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford’s department of Management Sciences and Engineering, and the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 2007 Reidar was honoured with a membership of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences for his contributions in petroleum investment and decision analysis.