Advanced Reservoir Engineering

Business context

In the E&P business, Reservoir Engineers play a key role in handling, analysing and interpreting subsurface and production data at all stages of field development. Reservoir Engineering data and models are used in field development plans to optimise economic production of hydrocarbons. In this course understanding of fundamental and advanced reservoir engineering concepts is deepened and key tools of modern practical reservoir engineers are discussed, explained and exercised.

Who should attend

Target categories of staff for the advanced course include Reservoir Engineers with a few years of practical experience and Petroleum Engineers and Geoscientists that require more than general knowledge of reservoir engineering.

Course content

• Reservoir rock properties.
• Capillary pressures, surface tension, wettability, capillary pressure normalisation.
• Distribution of hydrocarbon fluids, pressure regimes, fluid gradients and contacts
• Hydrocarbons-in-place estimation
• The SPE PRMS and SEC system for reserves and resource classification and estimation
• Fluid properties and phase behaviour,  PVT correlations, fluid sampling and laboratory procedures
• Recovery drive-energy, material balance equations, aquifer models and straight line methods.
• Gas reservoir engineering concepts.
• Radial flow equations and well behaviour
• Skin: source and how to minimize it.
• Theory and practice of oil and gas well testing and pressure analysis techniques.
• Design and interpretation of pressure transient well tests
• Production forecasting and Decline Curve Analysis
• Relative permeability, Corey model, movable oil
• Immiscible, incompressible and the Buckley Leverett 1D displacement theory, application to water flooding.  Mobility ratio
• Determination of fractional flow curves and oil recovery.
• Reservoir simulation modelling principles
• Secondary recovery and EOR principles
• Field Development Planning
• Carbonate and fractured reservoirs
• Handling uncertainty 

Day by day Programme 

Day 1 - Fluid behaviour and fluid modeling

• Course Introduction
• Fundamentals recap
• Capillary pressure and saturation height relations, Leveret-J function
• Distribution of hydrocarbon fluids
• Exercise:  permeability averaging and water breakthrough
• Laboratory experiments, constant volume depletion, differential liberation.
• PVT & fluid sampling
• Exercise PVT correlations for oil and gas

Day 2 - Reserves and DCA methods

• Reserves Classification systems- the SPE Petroleum Resource Management System
• The probabilistic method
• Decline Curve Analysis and Production forecasting
• Exercise: oil production forecasting

Day 3 - Reservoir models, wells. well behaviour and well tests

• Oil and Gas Material Balance, aquifers, straight line methods
• Wells, inflow performance, skin, horizontal wells
• Exercise: use of well inflow calculations
• Exercise: gas production forecasting
• Modern well test analysis,  Pressure Draw Down and Build Up analysis 

Day 4 - Displacement, sweep, flow and reservoir modelling

• Relative permeability and capillary pressure, wettingness, drainage vs. imbibition,
• Displacement and Recovery, sweep, heterogeneity,  Buckley-Leverett, movable oil
• Pseudo relative permeability
• Exercise mobility ratio
• Reservoir Simulation - modelling construction and history matching, QA/QC
• Reading and discussion of simulation field cases 

Day 5 - Recovery and development planning

• Fractured reservoirs
• Secondary Recovery, Enhanced Oil Recovery
• Oil Field Development Planning
• Gas field development planning
• Exercise: development planning regulations
• Handling uncertainty
• Course Recap, Quiz and Evaluation 

Assgied Instructor : Wim Swinkels

Independent Reservoir Engineering Consultant, providing project consultancy, quality assurance and reservoir engineering  training for major oil companies, governments, engineering firms and other global customers. Before he retired from Shell in 2012, Wim Swinkels held positions as Senior Reserves Consultant for the Middle East and Reservoir Engineering Discipline Lead. He is a seasoned Petroleum Engineering professional, with global experience in Shell companies and joint ventures (NAM, SSB, SCL, PDO, SKDBV). His technical expertise is in reserves and resource management, reservoir engineering quality assurance, and staff development, as well as carbonate reservoirs,  modelling and reservoir simulation. Wim has a passion for training and is an excellent teacher who speaks from a vast experience in many different geological environments and reservoir settings. Wim is a contributing author of the 2011 industry "Guidelines  for Application of the Petroleum Resources Management System". He holds an MSc in applied Mathematics from the University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.