Our popular 5 day continuing professional development (CPD) training course examines the engineering challenges and wider economic impacts (past and present) of oil and gas exploration, drilling and production.
The course is intended primarily for those from a non-petroleum engineeing background, who wish to embark on a lucrative career in an industry which sometimes struggles with a lack of public awareness about the pioneering technological and industrial advances being made. Would also serve as a useful refresher to existing oil industry professionals.
Includes a petroleum lab visit, worked examples and plenty of discussion in which participation is encouraged.
Course content
- Global energy (including petroleum) demand and supply.
- Petroleum geology: process of formation and migration of petroleum; suitable geological structure, type and mineralogy of hydrocarbon reservoir rocks.
- Petroleum geophysics: the application of earth's gravitational, magnetic and sound velocity properties in hydrocarbon exploration; 2D, 3D and 4D seismic surveys and their applications explained.
- Formation pressure as the primary energy source of hydrocarbon production
- Production mechanisms: primary, secondary, tertiary; enhanced oil recovery and improved oil recovery.
- Drilling operations: techniques; offshore drilling and directional drilling; rig components (including drilling mud).
- Well logging: application and interpretation of the earth's response to natural and forced electric and nuclear sources.
- Petroleum reserves estimation.
- Well completion techniques: casing, cementing, downhole and surface components; perforation and multiple zone completion.
- Operation considerations when retrieving underground physical rock samples and information that can be obtained.
- Reservoir rock properties: porosity, mobility, permeability, relative permeability, capillary pressure; methods of determination.
- Phase behavior, reservoir fluid properties and methods of determination.
- Gas reservoirs: thermodynamic equation of states (including ideal/real gas laws); non-linear (laminar) and non-linear (inertia, turbulent, flow behaviour).
- Material balance: initial hydrocarbon in place, future reservoir performance, ultimate recovery calculations.
- Fluid flow through porous media: mathematical and numerical modeling approaches; classification.
- Transient pressure response evaluation by Well testing techniques: information obtained, basic assumptions, equations, well productivity and skin calculations.
- History of the industry (economic growth, market control questions), current structure (private actors, public sectors, business models), industry trends (unconventional and IOR), wider issues and "above-ground" risk (resource ownership, future energy needs and alternative energy carriers, climate change).
For further information please contact our CPD Administrator