MMS Director Johnnie Burton, Nick Glover, Cort Cooper, and
        Offshore Minerals Management Associate Director Tom Readinger

Over the past year, Mr. Cort Cooper of Chevron/Texaco has provided outstanding assistance to MMS on a regular, volunteer basis in coordinating the follow-up work to implement the findings from the DeepSpill Joint Industry Project (JIP). Mr. Cooper continued his excellent work as leader of the JIP in successfully concluding the project.

This year, however, on his own initiative, Mr. Cooper kept the work group, comprised of 23 industry partners and MMS, functional and effective with numerous conference calls, reviews, and meetings. Using the data from DeepSpill, Mr. Cooper also planned and recently led a large workshop that brought the results of the DeepSpill field experiments to bear on potential deepwater blowout and pipeline spill plume models. These numerical models will soon be available for deepwater development spill response and contingency planning. This will address the requirements for deepwater contingency planning that MMS originally identified in NTL 2000-G02.

At great cost to his own personal and work time, Mr. Cooper has always been there for MMS, whether it’s serving on the Scientific Committee, reviewing ideas for research proposals, or furthering the goals of deepwater spill response.

For these reasons, Mr. Cooper is most deserving of the MMS Corporate Leadership Award.