We are pleased to welcome Susan Howes to our March 2026 meeting to present on ethical decision-making in the petroleum industry. This lecture will provide SPE members with a practical toolkit for navigating ethical dilemmas encountered across all career stages—from students and individual contributors to managers and executives.

Biography

C. Susan Howes is President at Subsurface Consultants & Associates (SCA), leading the firm's consulting, recruitment, and training services with a commitment to technical excellence. She brings industry experience from her tenure at Anadarko and Chevron, where she held roles in business development, HR, organizational capability, and reservoir management. She has coauthored papers and articles on the topics of ethics, uncertainty management, risk management, and talent management. Howes received the SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal, is an Honorary Member and Distinguished Lecturer for 2019-20, and is 2027 SPE President. Howes is a member of the Advisory Council at the Jackson School of Geoscience at the University of Texas (UT). Howes holds a BS degree in Petroleum Engineering (PGE) from UT and was named a 2024 PGE Distinguished Alumna.

Abstract

This lecture is designed to raise ethical awareness and to develop insights in SPE members into the significance of the preamble and the twelve canons in SPE's Code of Conduct. An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility is paramount to every SPE member working in the petroleum industry. However, the ethical dilemmas members experience while progressing through their career stages can vary in nature and complexity, spanning a broad spectrum from issues for students, for individual contributors, or issues encountered at managerial and executive level positions.

Common ethical issues include expert witness testimony, employment, competitive bidding, confidentiality, conflict of interest, copyrights, intellectual property, data selection and management, operating standards, regulations, reserves booking, third party opinions, corruption, plagiarism, and citations of others' work. Ethical behavior is required to manage professional relationships with stakeholders including contractors, vendors, partners, landowners, competitors, governments, regulatory agencies, employees, management, and coworkers. Members will take away from this lecture a toolkit to enable them to make better decisions when faced with an ethical dilemma.