_ Robert Barree is the president of Barree and Associates. He’s also a legend. Barree is the primary author of the GOHFER 3D hydraulic fracture simulator, as well as more than 70 technical papers. GOHFER, or the Grid Oriented Hydraulic Fracture Extension Replicator, is now licensed by Halliburton. For his vast contributions to the industry over his decadeslong career, Barree was named to the list of SPE Legends of Hydraulic Fracturing at the 2026 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition in The Woodlands, Texas. Barree has been a member of SPE since his days at The Pennsylvania State University, where he earned a BS degree in petroleum engineering in 1977. He went on to earn a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer on the topic of new philosophies in hydraulic fracturing in 1999–2000. Before Barree and Associates, Barree was a senior technical consultant at Marathon’s Petroleum Technology Center. In addition to being among the Legends of Hydraulic Fracturing, Barree has received multiple awards for his work, including the SPE Denver Petroleum Section Henry Mattson Technical Achievement Award in 1995, the 2017 SPE Rocky Mountain Section Award for Completion Optimization and Technology, and the SPE/AIME Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal for Technical Leadership in 2018. JPT: How did you get started in the oil and gas industry, and what led you to focus on hydraulic fracturing? Barree: My entrance and introduction to the oil and gas industry was largely accidental. My older brother and I were the first in our family history to enroll in college, and our family had no association with the industry. When I graduated from high school, I enrolled at the local Altoona campus of The Pennsylvania State University with a major in mechanical engineering. I got a call from J. C. Calhoun, who was the Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Department chairman at the time. He told me that, if I changed my major, he would guarantee that I would receive a full 4-year scholarship. Given my financial situation, I readily agreed without knowing what I was getting into. At this time, I had never heard of hydraulic fracturing. The scholarship was sponsored by Marathon Oil Company, and I was fortunate to have two summer internships with them. During these internships, I witnessed my first hydraulic fracturing treatment. After graduation, I started work at Marathon’s Denver Research Center, where I worked on special core analysis and some Gulf of Mexico (now America) shale geomechanics projects. I was also able to pursue my graduate studies at the Colorado School of Mines. The first graduate class I had there was well completions and stimulation. This was what got me interested in hydraulic fracturing technology. After studying the development of the PKN (Perkins-Kern-Nordgren) and KGD (Khristianovich-Geertsma-DeKlerk) fracture models, which were the industry standards at the time (1977–1978), I realized that much more could be done.
Adam Wilson (2026) studied this question.