Course content

The course is teaching a selection of topics in petroleum production engineering and skills needed for the planning, and operation of oil and gas wells and to understand, model and analyze their production performance. Topics typically covered in the course are: flow equilibrium, inflow performance relationship of radial and horizontal wells, inflow control, flow in choke, tubing performance of liquid, dry gas and multiphase flow, artificial lift and temperature calculations in wells. The course will focus on developing digital competences and will include some aspects on CO2 injection systems, mechanical behavior of tubulars and skill transfer for the energy transition.

Learning outcome

Ingress: The students should understand the fundamentals of petroleum production engineering.

Knowledge: At the end of the term, students should understand the fundamentals of petroleum production engineering. Students should be able to describe the main components of the production system. Students should be able to describe the most common well completions, artificial lift methods and configurations of production systems. Students should be able to describe, understand and explain the functionality of the main components of a production system. Students should understand the factors involved in the planning and operation of oil and gas wells. The students should understand the inflow performance of a well, the fundamentals of flow equilibrium calculations and the flow performance of conduits. Students should understand and recognize the decision variables, objectives and constraints involved in well planning.

Skills: At the end of the term, the student should be able to perform production engineering calculations such as flow equilibrium in production and injection systems, estimation of inflow performance relationship and capture the effect of depletion, tubing performance relationship, flow equilibrium calculations with gas-lift and electric submersible pumps. Computational tools typically used during the course are Excel, Excel VBA, Prosper, Pipesim, Hysys and Python.

The students should be able to be self-critical and quality control their results, analyze them and perform sensitivity studies. The students should be able to develop their own computational tools to study simple cases or to use wisely and critically premade routines and simulators.

General competences: The student should be able to learn to solve engineering problems and develop and practice digital engineering skills such as modeling, programming and simulation. The student should be able to develop critical engineering thinking including energetic and environmental aspects. The student should have a good starting point to apply the knowledge obtained to other areas such as pipe transport and wells of CO2, hydrogen, natural gas storage and geothermal energy. The student should be able to practice and develop written engineering communications skills.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures and compulsory exercises.

During the course the students will develop computational workflows and routines (typically using Excel sheets). The students will also use some pre-made utilities (in Excel and Python) and commercial simulators such as Prosper, Pipesim and Hysys.

The course is taught in English.

A reference group will be established to evaluate the course.

Compulsory assignments

• Exercises

Recommended previous knowledge

Mandatory courses equivalent to the first 3 years of the programme Petroleum Geoscience and Engineering (MTPETR).

Course materials

Given at semester start.

Credit reductions