Distinguished Engineer Citations

                 

Alan L. Smith

Distinguished Engineer

2012

Degree

B.S., Petroleum Engineering – 1985

 

Citation

At Time of Nomination in 2012

Alan L. Smith is chief executive officer of Quantum Resources Management, LLC in Houston, Texas.

Smith was born in Abilene and graduated from Abilene High School in 1981. He left for Texas Tech on a tennis scholarship to study petroleum engineering. He received a Bachelor of Science in petroleum engineering and moved to Longview, Texas in 1985, where he began his career in the oil and gas business with ARCO Oil and Gas Company.

He worked in East Texas for several years before ARCO sent him to Lafayette, Louisiana to gain south Louisiana and offshore Gulf of Mexico experience. After seven years, Smith left ARCO for an independent company, Burlington Resources. After multiple jobs at Burlington, he then worked for a reservoir consulting firm, Ryder Scott Company, and then XPLOR Energy.

XPLOR Energy was a small independent company where he learned about small company operations. After XPLOR was sold to Harken Energy in 1998, Smith went to Ocean Energy as vice president of business development and was ultimately involved with the Ocean Energy/Devon Energy merger in 2003. After the merger, he decided to start his own company, Chalker Energy Partners.

Smith served as president and CEO of Chalker Energy Partners. This organization was funded by the private equity firm Quantum Energy Partners in 2003. Chalker built an oil and gas business in East Texas and eventually sold to Forest Oil in 2006. He then formed Chalker II, adding leadership and assets. By 2008, Chalker II had built another business in East Texas that was very similar to Chalker I and was sold to NFR Energy.

He was then recruited to join the private equity firm, Quantum, which had originally backed his company. Smith was an industry partner in the firm and served on the boards of many of Quantum's portfolio companies. He was involved with the strategic, operational, and merger/acquisition activities of the companies.

In 2009, he was asked to step in and take over Quantum Resources, a direct investment private equity fund, which was located in Denver, Colorado. He and his partner moved the company to Houston where he is currently the CEO of Quantum Resources and QR Energy (NYSE: QRE), a publicly traded master limited partnership. Smith continues to utilize his petroleum engineering skills that he acquired at Texas Tech, as well as the commercial and leadership skills gained through his oil and gas experience, to run the day-to-day operations and chart the strategic direction of both companies.

He serves on the board of the Southeastern Region IPAA and serves in an advisory capacity to the Texas Tech Bob L. Herd Department of Petroleum Engineering. He is also currently a co-chair of the Bob L. Herd Petroleum Engineering Campaign Committee. He is a board member at Stoney Creek Ranch, a non-profit aimed toward getting urban kids to camp and sharing the Gospel. He is a former board member of the Houston Producer's Forum and the Texas Tech Whitacre College of Engineering Dean's Council.

He and his wife Michelle live in Houston and have two children: Tiffany and Kendall.

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