Howard F. Moore has been involved in petroleum processing and synthetic oils research for Marathon Petroleum Company (MPC) since 1974, when he represented the University of Kentucky in a National Science Foundation-funded partnership between UK and Ashland Oil to develop a coal pyrolysis unit.
Moore joined Ashland Oil as a research engineer after receiving his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from UK. As a research engineer, Moore worked on scaling down fluid catalytic cracking processes and designed and built Ashland’s first fully circulating Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) units, which became industry-recognized for their ability to process heavy feeds and simulate commercial operations.
From 1977 until 1983, Moore was group leader and manager of Ashland Oil’s proprietary Synthetic Oils refining research programs. During this period, he also served as program engineer for Ashland’s Air Force-funded shale oil refining program in addition to other synthetic oils efforts. His innovative research resulted in several novel developments in extraction and catalytic cracking, demonstrated the first commercial FCC processing of coal liquids and produced fuels from synthetic sources for demonstration of the applicability for national defense purposes.
From 1984 until 1998, Moore managed the process section within Ashland Petroleum R&D. He guided the efforts of 12 staff professionals and 14 research technologists toward the goal of maximizing the economic return from Ashland’s refinery investments. His key successes included cooperative development programs for FCC and reforming processes and commercializing the MagnaCat® process technology.
As a hydroprocessing technologist since 1998, Moore has taken responsibility for coordinating 32 hydrotreaters in seven refineries. He has formed and headed separate technical advisory groups, implemented intranet availability for internal and external information, developed written best practices, maintained state-of- the-art review of technology status and served as an internal expert. Since 2018, Moore has been manager, Hydroprocessing and Heavy Oils Technology, leading a group of six subject matter experts.
Howard has over 24 patents and, in 2022, MPC recognized Moore as the company’s most prolific inventor. He is also known for mentoring young engineers coming into the industry. Moore’s daughter, Beverly, is an engineer at MPC who credits her father as her role model for being a working mother.
Moore served in the United States Army’s Strategic Communications Command from 1970 to 1972 and was honorably discharged as Specialist Fourth Class. He has delivered lectures to area schools, the University of Kentucky and other universities, and served on the board of governors for the United States Eventing Association, Masterson Equestrian Trust and the Kentucky Horse Council.
Moore lives in Louisa, Kentucky. He has two daughters and one granddaughter.
