Related Research Articles
Petroleum engineering is a field of engineering concerned with the activities related to the production of hydrocarbons, which can be either crude oil or natural gas. Exploration and production are deemed to fall within the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry. Exploration, by earth scientists, and petroleum engineering are the oil and gas industry's two main subsurface disciplines, which focus on maximizing economic recovery of hydrocarbons from subsurface reservoirs. Petroleum geology and geophysics focus on provision of a static description of the hydrocarbon reservoir rock, while petroleum engineering focuses on estimation of the recoverable volume of this resource using a detailed understanding of the physical behavior of oil, water and gas within porous rock at very high pressure.
Petroleum geology is the study of origin, occurrence, movement, accumulation, and exploration of hydrocarbon fuels. It refers to the specific set of geological disciplines that are applied to the search for hydrocarbons.
Hydrocarbon exploration is the search by petroleum geologists and geophysicists for deposits of hydrocarbons, particularly petroleum and natural gas, in the Earth's crust using petroleum geology.
The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit professional organization.
A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen is created in surrounding rock by the presence of high heat and pressure in the Earth's crust.
Enhanced oil recovery, also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. Although the primary and secondary recovery techniques rely on the pressure differential between the surface and the underground well, enhanced oil recovery functions by altering the chemical composition of the oil itself in order to make it easier to extract. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using primary and secondary recovery. According to the US Department of Energy, carbon dioxide and water are injected along with one of three EOR techniques: thermal injection, gas injection, and chemical injection. More advanced, speculative EOR techniques are sometimes called quaternary recovery.
Reservoir engineering is a branch of petroleum engineering that applies scientific principles to the fluid flow through a porous medium during the development and production of oil and gas reservoirs so as to obtain a high economic recovery. The working tools of the reservoir engineer are subsurface geology, applied mathematics, and the basic laws of physics and chemistry governing the behavior of liquid and vapor phases of crude oil, natural gas, and water in reservoir rock. Of particular interest to reservoir engineers is generating accurate reserves estimates for use in financial reporting to the SEC and other regulatory bodies. Other job responsibilities include numerical reservoir modeling, production forecasting, well testing, well drilling and workover planning, economic modeling, and PVT analysis of reservoir fluids. Reservoir engineers also play a central role in field development planning, recommending appropriate and cost-effective reservoir depletion schemes such as waterflooding or gas injection to maximize hydrocarbon recovery. Due to legislative changes in many hydrocarbon-producing countries, they are also involved in the design and implementation of carbon sequestration projects in order to minimise the emission of greenhouse gases.
Petrophysics is the study of physical and chemical rock properties and their interactions with fluids.
Reservoir simulation is an area of reservoir engineering in which computer models are used to predict the flow of fluids through porous media.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding is a process in which carbon dioxide is injected into an oil reservoir to increase the output when extracting oil. This is most often used in reservoirs where production rates have declined due to depletion.
Heavy oil production is a developing technology for extracting heavy oil in industrial quantities. Estimated reserves of heavy oil are over 6 trillion barrels, three times that of conventional oil and gas.
The Flow Rate Technical Group is a group of scientists and engineers from the United States federal government, universities, and research institutions created May 19, 2010, for an official scientific-based estimate of the flow of oil in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It issued an interim report on May 27. It was convened again on June 10 by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen after the drilling riser from the well was cut by Maxx3 ROV Dive #35 on May 31, 2010, in an attempt to redirect the flow. Large amounts of oil were not being captured and the group was convened to estimate how much.
Gary A. Pope currently holds the Texaco Centennial Chair in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a B.Sc. from Oklahoma State University and a Ph.D. from Rice University, both in chemical engineering. He has previously worked at Shell for more than 7 years and has graduated more than 110 graduate students. He is noted for research in reservoir engineering, reservoir simulation, enhanced oil recovery, phase behaviour and fluid properties. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1999 for contributions to understanding multiphase flow and transport in porous media, and applications of these principles to improved oil recovery and aquifer remediation. He has received numerous awards, among them the SPE John Franklin Carll Award in 2002 and the SPE Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal in 2004. Notable students include Mojdeh Delshad, Akhil Datta-Gupta, and Bang Vishal.
Mukul M. Sharma is a professor who holds the W. A. "Tex" Moncrief, Jr. Centennial Chair in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He received a B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (1980) and then M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Southern California in 1981 and 1985 respectively. He has been on the faculty at the University of Texas for the past 37 years and served as chairman of the department from 2001 to 2005.
Akhil Datta-Gupta is Regents Professor and holder of L. F. Peterson ‘36 Endowed Chair in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX (USA). Dr. Datta-Gupta is well known for his contributions to the theory and practice of Streamline Simulation in petroleum reservoir characterization, management and calibration of high resolution geologic models. 3-D streamline simulation is considered to be one of the major developments in petroleum reservoir simulation and performance forecasting. Dr. Datta-Gupta is a co-author of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) textbook Streamline Simulation: Theory and Practice.
Mohamed Yousef Soliman is a professor and the former chairperson of the department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas Tech University. After working for Halliburton for 32 years, he joined Texas Tech in January 2011. He obtained his bachelor's degree in petroleum engineering from Cairo University in 1971. Having completed his bachelor's degree he came to the United States to continue higher education. He received his master's degree and doctorate degrees, both in Petroleum engineering, from Stanford University in 1975 and 1978 His M. S. Thesis was "Rheological Properties of Emulsion Flowing Through Capillary Tubes Under Turbulent Conditions,"; his PhD thesis, "Numerical Modeling of Thermal Recovery Processes."
In the petroleum industry, allocation refers to practices of breaking down measures of quantities of extracted hydrocarbons across various contributing sources. Allocation aids the attribution of ownerships of hydrocarbons as each contributing element to a commingled flow or to a storage of petroleum may have a unique ownership. Contributing sources in this context are typically producing petroleum wells delivering flows of petroleum or flows of natural gas to a commingled flow or storage.
Morris Muskat was an American petroleum engineer. Muskat refined Darcy's equation for single phase flow, and this change made it suitable for the petroleum industry. Based on experimental results worked out by his colleagues, Muskat and Milan W. Meres also generalized Darcy's law to cover multiphase flow of water, oil and gas in the porous medium of a petroleum reservoir. The generalized flow equation provides the analytical foundation for reservoir engineering that exists to this day.
Fred I. Stalkup is a native of Texas and known for his work in the field of oil and gas production. After graduation from high school in Waco, Texas, he was admitted to Rice University where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in chemical engineering in 1957 and a Ph. D. in chemical engineering in 1961. Stalkup joined the ARCO Oil and Gas Company in 1961 as a senior research engineer. He became director of process research in 1965, senior research advisor in 1985, and distinguished research advisor in 1993. Stalkup remained with the ARCO organization until 2002, when he joined PetroTel Inc, where he is currently Vice President of EOR and Distinguished Engineering Advisor.
Oil and gas reserves denote discovered quantities of crude oil and natural gas that can be profitably produced/recovered from an approved development. Oil and gas reserves tied to approved operational plans filed on the day of reserves reporting are also sensitive to fluctuating global market pricing. The remaining resource estimates are likely sub-commercial and may still be under appraisal with the potential to be technically recoverable once commercially established. Natural gas is frequently associated with oil directly and gas reserves are commonly quoted in barrels of oil equivalent (BoE). Consequently, both oil and gas reserves, as well as resource estimates, follow the same reporting guidelines, and are referred to collectively hereinafter as oil & gas.
References
- 1 2 3 "Larry W. Lake" (PDF). University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 25, 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
- 1 2 "UT Larry W. Lake's Faculty Page". University of Texas at Austin. 3 August 2010. Archived from the original on June 8, 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
- ↑ Lake, Larry W. (2007), Petroleum Engineering Handbook, Society of Petroleum Engineers, ISBN 978-1555631260
- ↑ Statistics for Petroleum Engineers and Geoscientists, Elsevier
- ↑ Lake, Larry W.; Bryant, Steven Lawrence; Bryant, Steven L.; Araque-Martinez, Aura N. (2002), Geochemistry and Fluid Flow, Gulf Professional Publishing, Gulf Professional, ISBN 9780444505699
- ↑ Walsh, Mark P.; Lake, Larry W. (2003), A Generalized Approach To Primary Hydrocarbon Recovery Of Petroleum Exploration & Production, Volume 4, Elsevier Science, Elsevier Science, ISBN 0444506837
- ↑ Reservoir Characterization II: Conference Proceedings, Academic Press, Academic Press, 2 December 2012