Q&A With 2026 SPE President Jennifer Miskimins: Energizing Tomorrow: Solutions, People, Energy

_ As the 2026 President of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Jennifer Miskimins is preparing to lead the organization through a year of transformation, outreach, and technical progress. With a longstanding commitment to both industry and academia, she brings a unique perspective to the role—only the third SPE president from academia and the sixth woman to hold the position. In this exclusive Q&A, Miskimins shares her roadmap for the year ahead, touching on key initiatives, the importance of member engagement, and how SPE can evolve to meet the changing needs of the energy sector. _ Jennifer L. Miskimins is a professor and the department head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines (Mines), where she holds the F.H. Mick Merelli/Coterra Energy Distinguished Department Head Chair. She has over 35 years of experience in the petroleum industry, starting with Marathon Oil Company as a production engineer and production supervisor. Miskimins began teaching at Mines in 2002 and has held various appointments since then. From 2013 to 2015, she held a part-time appointment at Mines while working at Barree & Associates. In 2016, she returned full-time to the university and has served as the department head since 2019. Miskimins served as the first Completions Technical Director on the SPE International Board of Directors from 2015 to 2018. She was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2010–2011 and 2013–2014 on hydraulic fracturing in unconventional reservoirs. She was awarded the 2014 SPE Completions Optimization and Technology Award, the 2022 SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty, and is an SPE Distinguished Member. Miskimins has served on numerous conference organizing committees, including chairing the 2023 and 2024 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Conference and Exhibition, and as a technical editor for SPE journals, including serving as the executive editor of the Production & Operations Journal for 3 years. She was the editor in chief for the 2019 SPE Monograph update “Hydraulic Fracturing: Fundamentals and Advancements.” Miskimins served on the AIME Board of Trustees from 2018 to 2024 as an SPE trustee and was the 2022 AIME President. Miskimins holds a BS from the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology and MS and PhD degrees from the Colorado School of Mines, all in petroleum engineering. PB: Jennifer, welcome and congratulations. Thank you for joining me today. JM: Thanks, Pam. It is indeed an honor to be sitting in this position today. PB: Let’s go ahead and dive into some of your thoughts, as you’ll soon be taking this role. First, what are the main goals for your presidency, and how do you hope to shape the future of SPE during your term? JM: This is always a good question, a good place to start off, isn’t it? So, SPE has a new tagline, and some people might have heard it, others might not, but the new tagline for the Society of Petroleum Engineers is ‘Solutions. People. Energy.’ And obviously that’s a little bit of a play on our name, but I think it does a really wonderful job of summarizing what SPE is all about. We’re a member-driven Society. We provide the world with energy needs, and we have the solutions to do so. Building on that, what I’d like to do is to help provide some ways to help our membership with the public perception of SPE and the good our industry does when it comes to providing energy and raising the standard of living worldwide.