Integrity
The right answer and the convenient answer are not always the same answer.
CONNOR AWARD · 2026
The 2026 Connor Award: Dr. William M. “Bill” Cobb
Senior Advisor, Haas & Cobb Petroleum Consultants — Dallas, Texas
Five decades in reservoir engineering, waterflooding, and enhanced oil recovery — and a career spent handing all of it to the next generation.
The Announcement
Announcing the 2026 Recipient
About the Award
The highest standard in reserves engineering
The Connor Award recognizes engineers who have made lasting contributions to their profession, their colleagues, and their community.
Our industry runs on numbers most people never see. A reserve report becomes the basis for lending, for acquisitions, for what a company is worth and what a family inherits. The Connor Award honors the engineers who understood that weight and carried it correctly for decades — whether or not anyone was watching.
Four criteria. No exceptions.
Innovation
The tools we use now did not exist. Somebody had to insist they should.
Service
The standards of this profession are not self-maintaining.
Mentorship
No legacy survives one career unless it is deliberately handed to the next.
At a Glance
Role:
Senior Advisor
Firm:
Haas & Cobb Petroleum Consultants, Dallas, Texas
Formerly:
Founder & President, William M. Cobb & Associates
Education:
PhD, Stanford University — BS & MS, Mississippi State University
2026 Recipient
Dr. William M. “Bill” Cobb
For more than five decades, Dr. Bill Cobb has been one of the petroleum industry’s leading voices in reservoir engineering, waterflooding, and enhanced oil recovery.
He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Petroleum Engineering from Mississippi State University and his Ph.D. in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford. His career has run the full circuit: reservoir engineering professor at Mississippi State, reservoir engineering and research roles at Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), Vice President and Manager of Engineering at Cornell Oil Company, and in 1983, founder of William M. Cobb & Associates.
He served as President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2008, following terms on the SPE Board of Directors and as Vice President of Finance. He has taught reservoir engineering and waterflooding courses to professionals worldwide and served as adjunct professor at Texas A&M University.
Today he is Senior Advisor at Haas & Cobb Petroleum Consultants, still mentoring younger engineers.
The award named for the engineer who demanded that our software respect waterflood physics goes to the engineer who taught this industry what that physics requires.
Past Recipients
The engineers who came before
Each year the Connor Award goes to an engineer who raised the standard for everyone around them.
2026
Dr. William M. “Bill” Cobb
Senior Advisor, Haas & Cobb Petroleum Consultants — Dallas, Texas
Five decades in reservoir engineering, waterflooding, and enhanced oil recovery. President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers in 2008. Founder of William M. Cobb & Associates in 1983, and still mentoring younger engineers today.
2025
Dr. John D. Wright, PhD, P.E.
Chief Engineer, Wright Consulting — Golden, Colorado
Co-author of Oil Property Evaluation and the expanded Oil and Gas Property Evaluation. Taught at the Colorado School of Mines for eight years. Named the 21st Honorary Life Member of the Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers in 2018.
2024
Larry Connor, P.E.
Ryder Scott — the award’s namesake
Forty-two and a half years at Ryder Scott. Shaped PHDwin itself through his collaboration with TRC — the interface, the calculations, the functionality. Held the industry to one standard: good enough was never good enough, only correct was good enough.
ABOUT THE AWARD
Why We Give The Connor Award
The award was created in 2024 and presented for the first time to the man it is named for: Larry Connor, P.E. Everything below is drawn from the ceremony recording.
Larry Connor helped Build PHDwin
Forty-two and a half years at Ryder Scott, and a standard he never lowered: good enough was never good enough, only correct was good enough.
Larry Connor worked directly with TRC Consultants on the development of PHDwin, and his reservoir engineering expertise shaped what the software became. He was a central figure in defining its user interface, its calculations, and its overall functionality — and he stayed hands-on, supporting installations and training teams rather than handing the work over.
He entered the industry in an era when evaluations were still done by hand with French curves and graph paper, and he was among the first to see what computers could do for reservoir evaluation. He pressed TRC continually to push the projection and economic techniques further: flow regime identification for highly fractured wells, more sophisticated economic limit calculations, correct incremental analysis, and complex expense curve allocations.
One example highlighted at the ceremony was his advocacy for water–oil ratio versus cumulative oil projection in waterflooding. He recognized the technique was not confined to mature waterfloods — that wherever a strong water drive was producing at high water cuts, fractional flow was the controlling factor, and curve fitting with Arps projections was not good enough. He then volunteered to present the technical merits at PHDwin Week himself.