Petroleum Engineering and Natural Gas Recovery

Reservoir Engineering & Reservoir Simulation

Reservoir Engineering involves assessing oil and gas deposits. Reservoir Engineers firstly estimate the size of a reservoir, then determine how much oil and gas reserves are in the reservoir and finally work out how to maximize the economic return from extracting them. They work together with geologists and geophysicists to find the reserves of oil and gas while relying on the basic laws of physics and chemistry. These include applying the behavioural effects of liquid and vapour phases of oil, natural gas, and water in rock. The next step is to determine the economic feasibility of extracting the gas. The ultimate responsibility of the reservoir engineer is to maximize the output of the reservoir without causing overproduction.

Reservoir simulation is an area of reservoir engineering in which computer models are used to predict the flow of fluids (typically, oil, water, and gas) through porous media. Reservoir simulation models are used by oil and gas companies in the development of new fields. As building and maintaining a robust, reliable model of a field is often time-consuming and expensive, models are typically only constructed where large investment decisions are at stake. Improvements in simulation software have lowered the time to develop a model.