Glenn Schurman

Portland OR 97219

Glenn Schurman spent his professional lifetime in the oil industry, where he made significant contributions to oil production, development, and exploration, areas in which he holds close to a dozen patents. Before attending Caltech, he received his BA from Washington State University in 1944 and then served on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (now NASA), performing research on combustion gas turbines. After graduating from Caltech, Schurman joined the Oil Field Research Laboratory of Chevron Oil Company, in La Habra, California, where he undertook numerous projects related to finding, developing and producing petroleum. He left the laboratory in 1963 for an operating assignment in New Orleans, Louisiana, and during the next 10 years he held a number of positions on the Gulf Coast and in Texas and the Rocky Mountain states. In 1975 he moved to London to oversee Chevron's activities in the United Kingdom sector of the North Sea, where he supervised the design and installation of what was then the world's largest oceanic oil-producing platform to develop oil from the Ninian Field, the North Sea's third largest oil field. He returned to the United States in 1981 and was corporate vice president of oil field development and production operations when he retired from Chevron in 1987. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, and the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Schurman was named an Honorary Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for his role in developing the North Sea oil fields.