Background and activities

Born September 18, 1951, Norwegian.

  • Professor Emeritus in reservoir engineering, NTNU.

  • Research Associate, PoreLab, Norwegian Center of Excellence, NTN U and University of Oslo.

Siv.ing. ( 1975, NTH) and Dr.ing. (1983, NTH) both in petroleum technology / reservoir engineering. 

Experience: Ole Torsæter is Professor Emeritus in reservoir engineering at NTNU and research associate at PoreLab, Norwegian Centre of Excellence at NTNU and University of Oslo (UiO). Associate Professor at NTH 1983-1990 and Professor at NTH/NTNU 1990-2021. He was Adjunct Professor at Department of Physics, UiO, 2027-2021. He had research positions with SINTEF, Phillips Petroleum Co., USA, and ResLab before he became professor. He has been a visiting professor at New Mexico Tech, Texas A & M, University of Bordeaux and visiting investigator at A*STAR in Singapore. Torsæter has been the main supervisor for about 220 Master thesis and 25 PhD thesis, and he is author/coauthor of more than 200 research publications.  The subject areas for his teaching and research are experimental reservoir engineering, flow in porous media, fractured reservoirs and enhanced oil recovery methods. Presently Torsæter’s research activity is focused on wettability on pore scale and on mobilizing residual oil by using nanofluids. Ole Torsæter has a Master - degree in petroleum engineering from Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1975 and a Dr.ing. - degree from the same institution in 1983 with a thesis on water imbibition in chalk from the Ekofisk Field where he showed that Ekofisk was a good candidate for water flooding. Torsæter received the Darcy Technical Achievement Award from the Society of Core Analysts in 2014, Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty (2016) and Management and Information Award (2018), both from Society of Petroleum Engineers, North Sea Region. Torsæter is Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Technology.

Academic and professional committees: Presently member of several international technical and review committees on reservoir engineering / EOR.

Doctoral student supervision: Main supervisor for 25 PhD graduates in reservoir engineering.

Research:

Experimental reservoir engineering (routine and special core analysis), Evaluation of fractured reservoirs, Enhanced oil recovery methods, Wettability, Nanofluids for EOR,  Pore scale experimental studies of fluid distribution and flow. 

Teaching:

Reservoir Engineering, Flow in Porous Media, Unconventional Oil and Gas Reservoirs, Fractured Reservoirs.

On-going research:

  • Microscopical characteristics of two phase flow in porous media: 

  • Nanofluids for enhanced oil recovery

  • Wettablility on pore scale

  • Microfluidics in reservoir engineering 

Scientific, academic and artistic work

A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database

Journal publications