Here, you will find some of the most reputable and reliable resources for the petroleum engineering industry. Everything from industry news, scholarships, to academic journals.
We’ll find it and populate it here for your reference. If you would like to recommend a resource, please contact us.
Contents
Recommended Books
Standard Handbook of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering
The 3rd edition of this seminal, industry-standard tome. Written by experts, updated constantly since its first print 65 years ago, this is still up-to-date and full of illustrations and information about the entire scope of the industry. A true ‘must-have’.
Schaum’s Outline of Thermodynamics for Engineers
More than 500 fully solved problems, examples, and practice exercises to sharpen your problem-solving skills. More than 40 million students have trusted Schaum’s to help them succeed in the classroom and on exams.
Schaum’s Outline of Organic Chemistry
1806 solved problems and 24 videos. Read the comments on that link if you’re struggling to find the videos. This book is a thorough and understandable aid to improving your chemistry grades.
Schaum’s Outline of Physics for Engineering and Science
788 solved problems and 25 videos. Though plagued by typos, this remains one of the best guides to understanding and passing your physics classes.
Industry Resources
The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)
The #1 member organization serving professionals in the oil and gas industry. They provide leadership, best practices, and research reports related to exploring, developing, and producing oil and gas. Their mission is to help increase the competency of engineers, scientists, managers, and related professionals as it relates to petroleum engineering.
SPE’s List of Industry Resources
The Society of Petroleum Engineers has its own resource page that list some of their own internal resources, as well as some from third parties. Of particular interest are their salary and training surveys, and they also have info about the various disciplines of this lucrative industry.
Scholarship Listings
SPE Scholarships
This is a great list of scholarships that are either sponsored by the Society of Petroleum Engineers or are from related organizations. You can get information on eligibility requirements as well as a step-by-step process for applying.
University of Houston Scholarships
Many schools have their own petroleum engineering scholarships. If you plan on attending UH’s program, check out this page to get a list of available scholarships.
Energy4Me’s Scholarship List
Energy4ME , which is affiliated with the Society of Petroleum Engineers, has a list of scholarships and fellowships from across the web. Scholarships are from dozens of different organizations – perhaps there is one for you.
Industry News
ScienceDaily Petroleum News
Get the latest news and updates on everything related to petroleum. Includes research from journals, universities, and other related organizations.
University of Pittsburgh Petroleum Engineering News Feed
The University of Pittsburgh does a great job of providing their take on the latest events in petroleum engineering. You can check out their news archive for all of their articles.
University of Houston’s Petroleum Engineering News of Interest
This is the University of Houston’s take on petroleum engineering news around the world written by their staff.
Oil Price News
The internet’s self-proclaimed number one resource for oil and energy news.
Academic Resources
PetroWiki
Affiliated with the Society of Petroleum Engineers, PetroWiki provides an extensive resource for all learnings related to petroleum engineering. There’s a TON of information, so you’ll have to check it out for yourself to see what interests you.
OnePetro
OnePetro is an extensive library of technical and academic articles and journals serving the oil and gas industry. You can find the most recent or most downloaded content to further your education.
UL Lafayette’s Library Resource for Petroleum Engineering
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has an online library resource, which includes a dedicated page on petroleum engineering. Search for articles, books, and online journals.
University of Houston’s Library Resource for Petroleum Engineering
This is UH’s own library system where you can search for projects, papers, journal articles, books, and much more.
Oil Men and Women in the Media
Petroleum Engineering is a career for people of all creeds, colors, and nationalities, but if there’s one thing we all have in common it’s our shared habit of being awesome. Petroleum Engineers are routinely, disproportionately, high-achievers. Go team!
Here are some of my favorite articles, videos, and podcasts about petro engineers.
NPR’s Planet Money ‘We Buy Oil’ Series
Our industry explained in a way everyone can understand. Part 2 has an explanation for how the price of oil is set that I’ve never heard before and is simple, clear, and easy to explain to your friends and relatives! Listen here:
101 years later, posthumous degree for UW-Madison student who left for World War I
Milton Pettit Griswold’s education was interrupted by his service in the Navy. He became a successful petroleum engineer and now his granddaughter will be able to accept a posthumous degree – a rare honor at Madison.
Single mom handles degree, raising family
“I wasn’t sure between mechanical and petroleum until I had my first geology course. It won me over. I fell in love.”
Taking on the world: Can-do petro engineering grad beats the odds
A neat bio of Brooklyn Vosen. Best quote? “I didn’t come to Tech to be anybody’s mama,” said Vosen confidently. “I came here to be the boss.”
Second best? “If I was going to make a mold, she would be the model,” he added. “We have a lot of good students here at Tech, and she’s at the very top of the group.”
Mark Miller for President!
Mark Miller is a petroleum engineer and sometime teacher at UT Austin with 18 years experience in the industry. Who better to run the Texas Railroad Commission? Wait, did you say railroad? That’s right – the name is somewhat outdated – it is really the oil and gas commission. Mark is a Libertarian who believes the existing commissioners are too cozy with the industry they are supposed to regulate.
Energy Spotlight: M. Christopher Doyle
A fairly standard bio with one part that really made me go ‘huh, yeah’ – Mr Doyle talking about the extremely long-term nature of this industry. “One of the real challenges some companies have … is you need to take this 100-year view of development. We’ll be partners for 100 years,” he said of working with leaseholders. “It’s rare to be around a company that already has that view with a 104-year legacy.”
Scott Sheffield Will Retire As CEO Of Pioneer Natural Resources
One tidbit from this article blew my mind. Announcing the retirement of Mr. Sheffield, the Oil and Gas Investor said, “Pioneer began as a $32 million company in 1985 and is now worth $28 billion.”
Holy smokes. That’s some serious growth. I’m pretty sure those numbers put Mr. Sheffield in a category of success even above Jack Welch.
The first female president of the OU chapter of Society of Petroleum Engineers
Madeline Bull graduated from the University of Oklahoma last month president of the OU branch of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. She will soon start work at Informage Energy in Houston as a field engineer.
Best quote from the article: “It’s such a great job path,” Bull said. “Not only are you getting an incredible degree in four years that pays just as well as most graduate degrees pay, but it’s just fun. Problem solving in engineering is challenging and stimulating.”
True that.
New SPE President, Board Members Nominated
The next President of the SPE will be Sami Al-Neaim, who has been with Saudi Aramco for 30 years. He holds several patents and teaches P.E. at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. He also looks like the actor Mark Ruffalo.
New Technology Could End Costly Crude Oil Pipeline
Konstantinos Kostarelos, a petroleum engineer from the University of Houston has reportedly built a prototype device to address the problem of pipe blockages, which currently requires the use of chemical dispersants and inhibitors or a physical process to remove the accumulated solids.
Petroleum Engineering Technology Timeline
Petroleum engineering makes use of technology in a variety of ways depending on the specialization that you are working in. The reason for this is because the ability to extract hydrocarbons has become more complex as the terrain has become more difficult including deep-water, arctic and desert conditions.
Therefore, new solutions have had to be constructed in order to access these hard to reach deposits and this means that Petroleum Engineers need to understand different areas such as thermo-hydraulics, geo-mechanics and intelligent systems. As a result petroleum engineering technology applications have played an increasing role in aiding engineers in their work.
1848-1960
1848 World’s First Oil Well (in Azerbaijan)
1859 Oil Discovered in USA
1878 First Oil Tanker, designed by Nobel (Sweden)
1891 First Gasoline Engine (Daimler)
1901 First US Deep Oil Well (Spindletop, Texas)
1909 Roller-Cone Drill Bit (Hughes and Sharp)
1927 Electrical Logging (France)
1929 Controlled Directional Drilling (H. John Eastman)
1933 Tricone Roller-Cone Drill Bit
1935 Catalytic Cracking
1941 First Horizontal Well Drilling
1949 First Commercial Hydraulic Fracturing
1949 Offshore Drilling
1954 Jack-up Drilling Rig
1958 First Pipelay Vessel Launched
1959 Offshore Alaska; Rotating Hoists; High-Temperature Cement
Educational Videos
I enjoyed the old-school delivery and bombast of this one:
And this one is more of a documentary style – might be a bit easier to watch if you find the first one a bit slow and boring!
1961-1982
1961 Use of guar in fracturing fluid; Digital Dipmeter Logs; Shell completes first subsea well
1962 Semisubmursible Drilling; Coiled Tubing Unit
1964 Invert Emulsions
1965 Deepwater Coring
1966 Thermal Decay Time Tool
1967 Oil Sands Commercial production starts in Alberta, Canada; Subsea Completion
1969 O-ring sealed journal bearing drill bit
1970 Deepwater Mining; Bright-spot seismic technology
1971 Logging System
1972 Polycrystalline diamond compact drill bit; Mud-pulse Telemetry
1974 Ship-shape Production
1977 Floating Production Storage; First pipelay barges with 1,000-ft capability; Trans-Alaska oil pipeline
completed
1978 Measurement-While-Drilling
1980 Electrical Submersible Pump
1982 First commercial offshore horizontal well; Tubing-conveyed Perforation; 3D seismic processing
Technology in Reservoir Petroleum Engineering
To start, Reservoir Engineers are responsible for analyzing and determining whether a particular field deposit is feasible for extraction. In order to do this, they need to estimate the amount of hydrocarbons stored in the field and then determine the best ways to access it.
Reservoir Engineers use technology such as advanced computers to construct detailed models of reservoir capacity based on field data received by intelligent sensors and test drill samples. Then detailed statistical analysis is done using the latest mathematical packages to determine the field’s potential capacity. Once this is done, the engineer can use multi-cell simulation software to determine the best drill location for a field and the type of drilling technology that will be most effective.
Finally, Reservoir Engineers also provide production projections to determine which type of wells will produce the best output. For this, powerful forecasting tools are used to help the engineer determine the optimal flow and the resulting revenue that can be earned from a particular field.
1983-2019
1983 Guyed Tower; Logging While Drilling; Subsalt Drilling
1984 Steerable Drilling; Tension-Leg Platform
1991 3D seismic modelling; Guidelineless Subsea Tree
1993 Multilateral Valves; Subsea Electrical Submersible Pump; First Floating Production Facility
1994 Multilateral Completion; Campos Basin; 4D Seismic
1995 Triple Combo Logging Platform
1996 Sonic Imaging; First large liquid natural gas (LNG) exporting facility (Qatar); Through-tubing Multilateral Intervention
1997 Rotary Closed Loop Drilling System; Intelligent Wells
1999 Dual-activity Drillships (Discoverer Enterprise)
2000 Marine Seismic
2001 Subsea Christmas Tree
2003 Semisubmersible Host Facility (Na Kika)
2004 High-performance water-based mud (Baker Hughes)
2007 Jack Well reaches 7000ft in water
Technology for Production Engineers
For Drilling and Production Engineers, their job profile includes two roles which have technology applications. The first is in determining the best equipment needed for productive drilling and extraction operations. For this, the engineer needs to be able to design a variety of different tools and equipment based on the terrain and strata of the field. To achieve this, they use advanced computer aided design (CAD) software to aid in the design process to build cost-effective but efficient machinery.
Secondly, these engineers help design and contribute to the operating systems that run the machines involved in the drilling and extraction process, as well as actually operate the machines themselves. A typical technology application is the use of computer-controlled drilling or fracturing to connect disparate areas of an oil and gas deposit to a single well, thereby reducing costs and increasing output at the same time.
The Importance of Petroleum Engineering Technology
Petroleum engineering technology continues to improve and there have been advances in computer modeling and simulation, statistical and probability analysis, as well new technical innovations such as horizontal drilling and enhanced oil recovery. These applications and technologies have substantially improved the tools used by the Petroleum Engineer in recent years, and they will continue to play an important part in their activities as they seek to research and develop new ways to extract new deposits, while lowering the cost of drilling and production.
