What is Petroleum Engineering?

Petroleum engineering is the application of the basic sciences to the development, recovery and field processing of oil and gas. Students are educated in the principles, procedures and practices of drilling, formation evaluation, reservoir studies, production, environmental protection, and profitability analysis.

The primary objective of the freshman and the sophomore years is to provide the students with necessary background in science and engineering. The junior and senior years are concentrated on petroleum engineering courses.

The job of petroleum engineers starts after the discovery of a structure suitable for oil and gas accumulation. Exploration wells are first drilled and tested to evaluate the economic aspects of the discovery and to obtain necessary data for the planning and development of the field. Petroleum reservoir engineers are normally responsible for determining the optimum number and locations of the wells and for establishing the production and recovery methods to achieve the maximum recovery in the most economical manner. This involves the utilization of basic and advanced sciences and computer technology.

The role of the petroleum production engineers comes next. These engineers, with the information provided by the reservoir engineers, are responsible for the design and implementation of well completions and subsurface and surface production facilities which are needed to produce the field and treat the produced fluids to produce oil and gas with the specifications needed for transportation and refining operations. Petroleum drilling engineers are responsible for the design, planning and supervision of the well drilling activities.

The Department's teaching and research laboratories are fully equipped with state-of-the art equipment. Covering drilling fluids, oil well cementing, rock and fluid properties, rock mechanics, quantitative analysis, thin sectioning, formation evaluation, enhanced oil recovery, production engineering, drilling simulator and drilling fluid flow loop.

The Department is linked to the University's main computer facilities in addition to having its own personal computer laboratory. The Department maintains its own reference library, which has a collection of references and textbooks in all Petroleum engineering areas.