About Tom

Thomas Manuel (Tom) Ortiz started his career at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he performed experimental research to characterize the thermodynamic performance of high pressure metal hydrogen systems. He then published a first and second law thermodynamic analysis of solar or waste heat driven cogeneration plants which used hydrogen as the working fluid. Tom then transitioned to a study of recycled carbon dioxide as a net zero (global warming potential) working fluid for residential air-source heat pumps, developing software to predict their performance.

Tom then spent the next fifteen years in technical roles spanning the upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry. He is one of the developers of ExxonMobil's proprietary petroleum reservoir simulator, writing code to model the flow of injected gas through the reservoir and associated surface facilities. He later served as a technical product manager for Siemens Energy's PS PPM software solution for managing pressure safety risk in oil refineries and petrochemical plants. He also served as a production engineering software product manager at Halliburton.

After leaving Halliburton, Tom served in Texas state government for seven years, writing permits for Class I UIC waste disposal wells, issuing surface commingling permits for oil and gas production on state-owned lands, and serving on a committee which recommended leasing contracts to the School Land Board for offshore geologic carbon sequestration in the Gulf of Mexico. After the completion of his government service, he was Director of Research and Development at the National Propane Gas Association.

Tom is now an independent author, speaker, and engineer. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN and an M.B.A. in finance from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Texas. Tom lives in Austin with his wife.