AUTHORS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Saeid Mokhatab is one of the most instantly recognizable names in the

natural gas industry with dedicated technical expertise in the midstream
sector. He has been on the international advisory board of a number of
petroleum/energy consulting firms around the world and has been actively
involved in several large-scale gas-field development projects, concentrating
on design, precommissioning, and startup of processing plants. He has over
200 technical publications to his credit, including two reference books.
He founded the Elsevier peer-reviewed Journal of Natural Gas Science and
Engineering, has held editorial positions in many prestigious journals/book
publishing companies for the hydrocarbon processing industry, and served
on various IGU, SPE and ASME technical committees and conferences
worldwide. As a result of his work, he has received a number of international
awards, including the Albert Einstein Gold Medal of Honor and the
Chilingar Gold Medal of Scientists Without Borders; and is listed in several
international biographical directories.
William A. Poe is a business consultant for Invensys Operations Manage-
ment in Houston, TX, USA. He has over 30 years of experience in chemical
and gas processing plants design and operations and has developed business
relationships with several domestic and international gas processors, chem-
ical plants, and gas transmission pipelines owners. His main area of focus the
past two decades has been automation, multivariable predictive control
(MPC), advanced process control (APC), and optimization design and
implementation for the natural gas processing and treating, sulfur recovery,
ammonia synthesis, methanol synthesis, liquefied natural gas, and power
generation industries. Working under contracts to the Gas Research Insti-
tute, he developed new multivariable control applications in the natural gas,
ammonia, and methanol industries. Poe developed APC and Optimization
Master Plans for international companies such as Saudi Aramco, Statoil, and
PDVSA, as well as automation and advanced process control feasibility stud-
ies for about 100 natural gas processing, power generation, ammonia, and
methanol plants worldwide. He spent over a decade in natural gas processing
operations and engineering experience with Shell Oil Company. Poe has
project management experience with Shell Oil and GE Continental Con-
trols with multimillion-dollar projects. He assumed the technical leadership
xxv
of Continental Controls, a privately held company, through acquisition
by GE. After joining GE as part of the Continental Controls acquisition,
he became vice president of this division of GE, which included direction
of product development, projects, technical sales support, and customer
service. He has authored over 40 papers, presented at numerous technical
conferences, received the GE Innovators Award in 1999, and attained the
Invensys Circle of Excellence in 2011.
xxvi Authors Biographical Sketches