A legend in the oil and gas engineering profession

The "Legends of Artificial Lift" honorary title was awarded to Dr. Gábor Takács, Professor Emeritus of UM’s Institute of Petroleum and Natural Gas, also Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, at the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Artificial Lift Conference on, which was held in Galveston, Texas, on 23-25 August. He was the thirteenth recipient of the award, but the first non-American to be honoured.

Dr. Takács taught at Texas Tech University from 1988-1989, and served as Acting Director of the Petroleum Engineering Program at the Abu Dhabi (UAE) Petroleum Institute (now Khalifa University) from 2007 to 2010. He also taught more than 70 one-week industrial courses on mechanical oil production for oil companies in Libya, Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Romania, Malaysia, Peru, Oman, India, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Vietnam and Austria.

Dr. Takács played an important role in the establishment of the SPE Hungarian Section, of which he was the first president between 1992 and 1994. From 1992 to 2003, he was technical editor of the SPE Production and Facilities journal and is currently co-editor of the journal SPE Production and Operations, where he is responsible for articles on mechanical production equipment. He was awarded the SPE Regional Production and Operations Award in 2017 for his contributions.

In 2021, he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit of for his work in UM’s Master's programme in Petroleum Engineering taught in English.

For more information on the 2022 Legends of Artificial Lift award, see https://jpt.spe.org/legends-of-artificial-lift