Program Overview

 

About the Program

The oil and gas industry faces several challenges in the supply of oil and gas, both as energy and sources of chemical raw materials. There are a large number of areas in the world where reservoirs are in decline and a number of new reservoirs that are more challenging to produce from. Both present major technical challenges to the oil and gas operators. Of equal difficulty is maintaining the number of engineers within the industry who have the necessary skills and knowledge needed to produce oil and gas. This programme was developed to provide engineers entering the oil and gas industry with the background and knowledge of these challenges.

This program of study provides students with practical skills and knowledge necessary to have a career in the oil and gas industry. The module covers many subjects and prepares the student for a multitude of positions within the industry.

This program was been designed with the help of the industry to provide a cross over between surface and sub-surface engineering functions with the intent that future oil and gas operations can be better optimised to enhance recovery of the reserves. In order to maximise recovery, surface engineers in an operating company must communicate effectively with the reservoir and production engineers within their own company as well as develop relationships with and assess the work of contractors and vendors when designing and constructing facilities. Therefore, surface engineers need to be competent not only in the areas of process design, pipeline engineering, but also be familiar with reservoir engineering, production technology and a variety of other engineering and management subjects, such as safety and control, management of projects, economics and planning, etc.

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Module Outcome

After successfully completing this unit, students should be able to:

• To comprehend all concerns linked to sour gas treatment and sulfur recovery

• To review sulfur and acid pollutants main physical properties, specificities, and induced hazards

• To understand operating principles and conditions of gas sweetening and sulfur recovery / handling processes

• To grasp main operating problems encountered in sour gas processing and sulfur recovery and handling

• Understand the properties; specifications and uses of Natural Gas and its by-products

• Understand Gas Processing Operations; Compression; Dehydration; Gas Sweetening; Liquid recovery (from Condensate, through LPG; Ethane and LNG).

• Understand the operation of the major Gas Processing hardware.

• Be able to operate the equipment safely and efficiently.

• Be able to trouble shoot major equipment.

• Understand the capital vs operating cost benefits of various equipment options (eg Gas vs Electric Driven equipment)

• Understand the cost benefits of different Maintenance programs.

• Understand the safety and environmental issues pertaining to Gas Processing.

• Understand the relative benefits of Glycol vs Dessicant Dehydration systems.

• Understand safe product storage and transportation practices.

• Be able to optimize Gas Processing control issues.

• Understand the relative benefits of Capacity optimization vs Energy efficiency and where BOTH may be attained simultaneously.

• Be able to co-ordinate with both Project and Production Engineers and understand their differing priorities.

 

Module List

 

Semester 1

Process Engineering

Technical Writing

Fluid Transportation and Storage

Thermodynamics

 

Semester 2

Reservoir Engineering

Project Research Methods

Oil and Gas Process Engineering

Advanced Mathematics for Engineering

 

Semester 3

Petroleum Economics

Production Technology

Field Development

Final Project