Course Descriptions
Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering
W. B. Ayers, M.A.Barrufet, T.A.Blasingame, C. H. Bowman, D. B. Burnett, J. C. Calhoun, Jr., P. B. Crawford, A. Datta-Gupta, C. Ehlig-Economides, J. L. Gidley, S. A. Holditch* (Head), A. D. Hill, J. L. Jensen, H. C. Juvkam-Wold, W. J.Lee, D.D.Mamora, W. D. McCain, D. A. McVay, L. D. Piper, J. E. Russell, D. S. Schechter, J. J. Schubert, S. L. Scott, R. A. Startzman, P. P. Valko, R. A. Wattenbarger, D. Zhu
* Graduate Advisor
The Department of Petroleum Engineering offers graduate degree programs and course work at both the master's and doctoral levels. The graduate program in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University is recognized for excellence in teaching and research both nationally and internationally, and this program is consistently rated as one of the best graduate programs in Petroleum Engineering by U.S. News and World Report. Details concerning the faculty, current research projects and technology specialties can be found at our website www.pe.tamu.edu.
Degree Programs
The Department offers traditional MS and PhD degrees that emphasize technical skills and research capabilities and MEng and DEng degrees that emphasize practical engineering skills along with business and management practices. In all degree programs, students who enter with undergraduate degrees (BS or equivalent) in other fields of engineering or closely related study (including physics and geosciences) will be required to take at least three courses from a core curriculum that represents each of the major areas of study in the industry; these courses will count as part of th degree requirement.
Students who enter the program with degrees other than engineering, physics, or geosciences will be required to complete preparatory study at the undergraduate level before beginning graduate course work. These prerequisite courses will not count toward degree requirements.
These are the minimum requirements for each degree after prerequisites have been completed:
MS Degree Program. Minimum 32 semester hours and a thesis.
MEng Degree Program. Minimum 30 semester hours and an engineering report.
Distance Learning. Minimum 36 semester hours and an engineering report.
International Petroleum Management. Minimum 36 semester hours, 18 from the Mays Business School.
Institut-Francais du Petrole (IFP). Acceptance at both IFP and Texas A&M University. Minimum 32 semesters at Texas A&M University, 2 semesters at IFP. Emphasis on business or reservoir geoscience at IFP.
PhD Degree Program. Minimum 96 semester hours beyond the baccalaureate (BS) degree, qualifying exam, preliminary exam, and dissertation.
DEng Degree Program. Minimum 96 hours beyond the baccalaureate (BS) degree, including 80 hours of course work and 16 hours of a professional internship and a written record of study.
Petroleum Engineering
(PETE)
602. Well Stimulation. (3-0). Credit 3.
Design and analysis of well stimulation methods, including acidizing and hydraulic fracturing; causes and solutions to low well productivity.
603. Advanced Reservoir Engineering I. (3-0). Credit 3.
Petroleum reservoir simulation basics including solution techniques for explicit problems.
604. Advanced Reservoir Engineering II. (3-0). Credit 3.
Advanced petroleum reservoir simulation with generalized methods of solution for implicit problems. Prerequisites: PETE 603.
605. Phase Behavior of Petroleum Reservoir Fluids. (3-0). Credit 3.
Pressure, volume, temperature, composition relationships of petroleum reservoir fluids.
606. EOR Methods--Thermal. (3-0). Credit 3.
Fundamentals of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods and applications of thermal recovery methods. Prerequisites: PETE 323.
608. Well Logging Methods. (3-0). Credit 3.
Well logging methods for determining nature and fluid content of formations penetrated by drilling. Development of computer models for log analysis.
609. Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes. (3-0). Credit 3.
Fundamentals and theory of enhanced oil recovery; polymer flooding, surfactant flooding, miscible gas flooding and steam flooding; application of fractional flow theory; strategies and displacement performance calculations. Prerequisites: PETE 323.
610. Numerical Simulation of Heat and Fluid Flow in Porous Media. (3-0). Credit 3.
Various schemes available for the numerical simulation of heat and fluid flow in porous media. Application to hot water and steam flooding of heavy oil reservoirs and to various geothermal problems. Prerequisites: PETE 604; approval of instructor.
611. Application of Petroleum Reservoir Simulation. (3-0). Credit 3.
Use of simulators to solve reservoir engineering problems too complex for classical analytical techniques. Prerequisites: PETE 400 and 401.
613. Natural Gas Engineering. (3-0). Credit 3.
Flow of natural gas in reservoirs and in wellbores and gathering systems; deliverability testing; production forecasting and decline curves; flow measurement and compressor sizing. Prerequisites: PETE 323 and 324.
616. Engineering Near-Critical Reservoirs. (3-0). Credit 3.
Identification of reservoir fluid type; calculation of original gas in place, original oil in place, reserves and future performance of retrograde gas and volatile oil reservoirs. Prerequisites: PETE 323, 400, 401.
617. Petroleum Reservoir Management. (3-0). Credit 3.
The principles of reservoir management and application to specific reservoirs based on case studies presented in the petroleum literature.
618. Modern Petroleum Production. (3-0). Credit 3.
An advanced treatment of modern petroleum production engineering encompassing well deliverability from vertical, horizontal and multilateral/multibranch wells; diagnosis of well performance includes elements of well testing and production logging; in this course the function of the production engineer is envisioned in the context of well design, stimulation and artificial lift.
620. Fluid Flow in Petroleum Reservoirs. (3-0). Credit 3.
Analysis of fluid flow in bounded and unbounded reservoirs, wellbore storage, phase redistribution, finite and infinite conductivity fractures; dual-porosity systems. Prerequisites: PETE 323.
621. Petroleum Development Strategy. (2-3). Credit 3.
Applications of the variables, models and decision criteria used in modern petroleum development; case approach used to study major projects such as offshore development and assisted recovery. Both commercial and student-prepared computer software used during the lab sessions to practice methods.
622. Exploration and Production Evaluation. (2-3). Credit 3.
Selected topics in oil industry economic evaluation including offshore bidding, project ranking and selection, capital budgeting, long-term oil and gas field development projects and incremental analysis for assisted recovery and acceleration.
623. Waterflooding. (3-0). Credit 3.
Design, surveillance and project management of waterfloods in reservoirs. Prerequisite: PETE 323.
624. Rock Mechanic Aspects of Petroleum Reservoir Response. (3-0). Credit 3.
Reservoir rocks and their physical behavior; porous media and fracture flow models; influence of rock deformability, stress, fluid pressure and temperature. Prerequisites: PETE 604.
625. Well Control. (3-0). Credit 3.
Theory of pressure control in drilling operations and during well kicks; abnormal pressure detection and fracture gradient determination; casing setting depth selection and advanced casing design; theory supplemented on well control simulators. Prerequisites: PETE 411.
626. Offshore Drilling. (3-0). Credit 3.
Offshore drilling from fixed and floating drilling structures; directional drilling including horizontal drilling; theory of deviation monitoring and control. Prerequisites: PETE 411.
628. Horizontal Drilling. (3-0). Credit 3.
Changing a wellbore from vertical to horizontal; long- and short-radius horizontal wells; bottomhole assemblies for achieving and maintaining control of inclination and direction; drilling fluids; torque and drag calculations; transport of drilled solids. Prerequisites: PETE 411.
629. Advanced Hydraulic Fracturing. (3-0). Credit 3.
Physical principles and engineering methods involved in hydraulic fracturing; an advanced treatise integrating the necessary fundamentals from elasticity theory, fracture mechanics and fluid mechanics to understand designs, optimization and evaluate hydraulic fracturing treatments including special topics such as high permeability fracturing and deviated well fracturing.
630. Geostatistics. (3-0). Credit 3.
Introductory and advanced concepts in geostatistics for petroleum reservoir characterization by integrating static (cores/logs/seismic traces) and dynamic (flow/transport) data; variograms and spatial correlations; regionalized variables; intrinsic random functions; kriging/cokriging; conditional simulation; non-Gaussian approaches. Prerequisites: Introductory course in statistics or PETE 322.
631. Petroleum Reservoir Description. (3-0). Credit 3.
Engineering and geological evaluation techniques to define the extent and internal character of a petroleum reservoir; estimate depositional environment(s) during the formation of the sedimentary section and resulting effects on reservoir character. Prerequisites: PETE 324 and 620.
632. Physical and Engineering Properties of Rock. (3-3). Credit 4.
Physical and engineering properties of rock and rock masses including strength, deformation, fluid flow, thermal and electrical properties as a function of the subsurface temperature, in-situ stress, pore fluid pressure and chemical environment; relationship of rock properties to logging, siting and design of wells and structures in rock.
633. Data Integration for Petroleum Reservoirs. (3-0). Credit 3.
Introduction and application of techniques that can be used to incorporate dynamic reservoir behavior into stochastic reservoir characterizations; dynamic data in the form of pressure transient tests, tracer tests, multiphase production histories or interpreted 4-D seismic information. Prerequisites: PETE 620; STAT 601.
634. Petroleum Reservoir Modeling and Data Analysis. (3-0). Credit 3.
Introduces methods for modeling and integration of reservoir data required to apply these methods; emphasizes the integration of geological information into these models.
648. Pressure Transient Testing. (3-0). Credit 3.
Diffusivity equation and solutions for slightly compressible liquids; dimensionless variables; type curves; applications of solutions to buildup, drawdown, multi-rate, interference, pulse and deliverability tests; extensions to multiphase flow; analysis of hydraulically fractured wells. Prerequisites: PETE 324 and 620.
661. Drilling Engineering. (3-0). Credit 3.
Introduction to drilling systems: wellbore hydraulics; identification and solution of drilling problems; well cementing; drilling of directional and horizontal wells; wellbore surveying abnormal pore pressure, fracture gradients, well control; offshore drilling, underbalanced drilling.
662. Production Engineering. (3-0). Credit 3.
Development of fundamental skills for the design and evaluation of well completions, monitoring and management of the producing well, selection and design of article lift methods, modeling and design of surface facilities.
663. Formation Evaluation and the Analysis of Reservoir Performance. (3-0). Credit 3.
Current methodologies used in geological description/analysis, formation evaluation (the analysis/interpretation of well log data), and the analysis of well performance data (the design/analysis/interpretation of well test and production data); specifically, the assessment of field performance data and the optimization of hydrocarbon recovery by analysis/interpretation/integration of geologic, well log, and well performance data. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor or graduate classification.
664. Petroleum Project Evaluation and Management. (3-0). Credit 3.
Introduction to oil industry economics, including reserves estimation and classification-, building and using reservoir models, developing and using reservoir management processes, managing new and mature fields, and investment ranking and selections.
665. Petroleum Reservoir Engineering. (3-0). Credit 3.
Reservoir description techniques using petrophysical and fluid properties; engineering methods to determine fluids in place, identify production-drive mechanisms, and forecast reservoir performance; implementation of pressure-maintenance schemes and secondary recovery. Prerequisite: Approval of instructor or graduate classification.
666. Conservation Theory and Applications in Petroleum Engineering. (3-0). Credit 3.
Includes formulation, modeling, and interpretation of drilling fluid systems, production systems, tracer testing, hydraulic fracturing, EOR/water flooding, polymer flooding, compositional simulation, thermal recovery, and coal-bed methane production; Mathematics as the symbolic/numeric computing platform.
681. Seminar. Credit 1 each semester.
Study and presentation of papers on recent developments in petroleum technology.
685. Directed Studies. Credit 1 to 12 each semester.
Students undertake and complete limited investigations not within their thesis research and not covered in established curricula. Prerequisites: Graduate classification; approval of instructor.
689. Special Topics in... Credit 1 to 4.
Special topics in an identified area of petroleum engineering. May be repeated for credit.
691. Research. Credit 1 or more each semester.
Advanced work on some special problem within field of petroleum engineering. Thesis course.
692. Professional Study. Credit 1 to 12.
Approved professional study or project. May be taken more than once but not to exceed 6 hours of credit towards a degree.