Course content

The course is teaching the methodology and the petroleum engineering skills needed to plan the life cycle of gas and oil fields from the discovery, through the assessment phase, the project and development phases, the field operations period and the abandonment phase. It addresses topics as reserve and recovery estimation, reservoir depletion, production scheduling, number of wells and well placement, planning of production gathering and testing systems, designing well construction, well and production system performance, field processing facilities and export product control.
The course introduces the concept of Integrated Field Mangement, including performance and optimization of field production from the reservoir to the export point.

Learning outcome

Ingress:
The students should understand the petroleum engineering aspects of planning, developing and operating oil and gas fields.

Knowledge:
The students should understand the process of planning and developing of offshore oil and gas fields and the petroleum engineering aspects governing the operation of offshore fields. They should know the principle of material balance and reservoir management, inflow from the reservoir to the wells, temperature management in production systems, flow in wells and production systems, flow equilibrium, production planning and production control, and the basic of field processing of oil and gas. They should understand the risks, uncertainties, and economical factors involved in field development and operations. They should understand the decision variables, the optimization objectives and the constraints involved in optimalization of field production.

Skills:
The students will develop skills in executing engineering working processes involved in planning and operating offshore oil and gas fields. They should have the capability to use computer programs to execute the engineering tasks (Prosper, Gap, Hysys) and should be able to develop Excel based sheets, to perform production engineering calculations.

General competence:
The students should know the mathematical methods used in: estimating uncertainties, in solving sets of non-linear equation and in performing optimization tasks. They should know how these methods are used in the executing engineering tasks.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures and exercises including one small individual project. The exercises and the project account for 40% of the final grade of the course. The course is taught in English and the examination papers will be given in English only. Students are free to choose Norwegian or English for written assessments. The lectures and exercises will relate to an offshore field in Norway (North Sea, Norwegian Sea and Barents Sea) and will use this field as the focus of the learning.

Compulsory assignments

• Exercises

Recommended previous knowledge

TPG4145 Reservoir Fluids and Flow or equivalent petroleum engineering knowledge. Engineering courses in flow and process technology. Previous courses in reservoir, drilling, production and petrophysics.

Course materials

Given at semester start.

Credit reductions