Dave Mohrbacher, who has more than 30 years of experience in providing petroleum, chemical and program management to industry-leading corporations, has been hired as director of the Enhanced Oil Recovery Institute (EORI) at the University of Wyoming.
Mohrbacher's appointment marks a return to the Cowboy State. He worked the first 10 years of his career as a petroleum and facilities engineer with the Amoco Production Company in Wyoming and Colorado, working on projects at Beaver Creek, Winkleman Dome and Bairoil.
"Wyoming is fortunate to have all the resources it does as it relates to the oil and gas industry and it's just exciting for me to come back and help implement the technologies we began to develop in the 1980s," says Mohrbacher, who succeeds the retiring Jim Steidtmann as EORI director. "My mission as the director is to leverage the success of the last five years and move the institute to the next level, which means the demonstration of new technologies in the real world and in our field projects.
"The EORI is in great shape, thanks to the efforts of Jim and many other people, and I look forward to continuing to their fine work."
The EORI's mission is to help Wyoming oil companies extract oil left in the ground after conventional production, a venture that Mohrbacher says can lead to "billions of dollars for the Wyoming economy," both in mineral taxes and jobs.
"We have remarkable resources in Wyoming that have yet to be developed," he says.
In addition to working six years for Amoco, Mohrbacher has worked for Hargis & Associates,
Retec, Inc., Texas Eastman Company and the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project (TORP). He
has spent the past 13 years at the Denver-based URS Corporation, one of the world's
largest engineering design services firms.
A graduate of the University of Kansas (B.S., ‘76; M.S., ‘80), Mohrbacher began full-time duties March 31 at UW.
