Tawfik Nasr

Tawfik Nasr is one of Alberta’s foremost researchers in the petroleum industry. He has been working with the Alberta Research Council (ARC) for twenty-two years and is a member of the Petroleum Society of Canadian Institute of Mining, the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the Canadian Heavy Oil Association. Having graduated from the University of Alexandria in Egypt, he moved to Canada and received his PhD in physics from the University of Manitoba. Nasr made the move to Edmonton, Alberta when he joined the geothermal project for the University of Alberta. He then joined ARC’s heavy oil sands group and began developing models for early thermal recovery. Dr. Nasr is the team leader of the Thermal Gravity Processes Group in the Heavy Oil and Oil Sands Business Unit. One of his unit’s projects is called SAGD or steam assisted gravity drainage. It allows for improved access to oil sands that are much deeper than the surface deposits mined in open pits.

Currently, Dr. Nasr and his team are working on Field Research Energy Database (FRED). It is a database that stores data from the SAGD project, and includes a special viewer that facilitates access and interpretation of data from the SAGD projects. The team has licensed the FRED Viewer and has begun selling it to many companies in the industry.