Introduction

Abstract

The function of petroleum engineering is to provide a basis for the design and implementation of techniques to recover commercial quantities of natural petroleums It is of necessity a broadly based technology drawing upon the foundations of engineering, geology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics and geostatistics. As an engineering subject it is a little anomalous, in that design is based on observation of production performance and on a representation of the reservoir inferred from very limited sampling. Unlike many branches of engineering, reservoirs cannot be designed to fulfill a particular task, but rather an ill-defined naturally occurring reservoir is induced to produce some fraction of its contents for as long as is considered commercially attractive. With the passage of time and cumulative production, more information on the nature of the reservoir can be accumulated and the production methods can be modified. Petroleum engineering can thus represent an exercise in the application of uncertainty to design. A route to problem solution in petroleum engineering shown as Table 1.1 has been adapted from Timmerman ^[15]. The terminology of the subject contains varying degrees of confidence in the representation of the inplace and recoverable resource base. In Chapter 8 we discuss the representation of ‘proven’ quantities of hydrocarbon in terms of the availability of information and the existence of the technology to exploit recovery on commercially attractive terms. The economics of hydrocarbon recovery processes is inextricably linked with the practice of petroleum engineering. On a project basis, a petroleum engineer has a responsibility to present analyses of schemes that are both technically and financially attractive.