Bachelor of Applied Technology Petroleum Engineering

Describes the properties of petroleum reservoir fluids (gas, oil, and water) important to understanding and predicting reservoir behaviour. These properties include the effects of temperature, pressure, and composition on gas solubility in oil and water, fluid volume/density, and fluid viscosity. The course also includes the fluid behaviours required for numerical reservoir flow simulation. These behaviours will include single component fluid phase changes (e.g. liquid and vapour), multi-component fluid phase changes, gas-liquid equilibrium, and various Equations of State.

This course will introduce learners to a variety of technical communications, including technical documents, reports, career portfolios, and professional presentations produced in relevant industry settings. Learners will gain an understanding of the strategies and skills required for effective communication in a professional environment. Course work will require learners to work in individual and collaborative settings.

This course will provide the student with an overview of the drilling operation, including hardware and operational technologies, drilling rig components, drillstring properties and components, BOP and other safety system fundamentals, kick detection, mud formulation and property determination and adjustment, pressure drop calculations in the drillstring and annulus, and casing systems.

The course will introduce basic economics concepts with their terminology, including the time value of money and discounted cash flows, and cover taxes and land resource ownership in Alberta, partnership agreements, Alberta Government agencies and their roles, oil and gas production rate limitations in Alberta, sales contracts in Alberta, and profitability analysis. The "day program" course offering will also include an introduction to a petroleum economic evaluation program widely used by industry and a project assignment will be given that includes the use of the program.

Physical geology principles will be reviewed, including the dynamic nature of the Earth, plate tectonics, the formation of rocks, especially sedimentary rocks, and the geologic history of western Canada.  Emphasis will be placed on the relationship of these principles to their applications in the petroleum industry.  This foundational knowledge builds a common base, allowing the exploration of critical petroleum geology topics including: the relationship of sedimentary rock formation to reservoir characteristics, hydrocarbon generation, hydrocarbon trapping mechanisms, and petroleum exploration techniques.

This course deals with the procedures involved in placing a well on production, including completion methods, well stimulation by acidizing or fracturing, wellheads, chokes, artificial lift methods, valves and surface lines. Methods of analyzing an oil well pressure buildup test are handled with example problems to determine the reservoir permeability and skin factor on the well. Problem areas such as hydrate formation, corrosion, emulsion problems and phase measurement are discussed. Surface facilities such as separators, treaters, dehydration systems and metering are introduced, with calculation methods for sizing two and three phase separators, and pressure drop estimation methods in surface lines and fittings.

The course provides an introduction to the different types of reservoirs, production drive mechanisms, absolute and effective porosity, permeability and relative permeability concepts, phase behaviour of hydrocarbon fluids, and Darcy's Law. Oil and gas reserves categorization and estimation will also be introduced, including volumetric, material balance, and decline curve analysis methods.

This course enables the student to obtain a level of proficiency in both applied engineering fluid mechanics and introductory thermodynamics, to apply those principles to scientific and technological problems, to critically analyze fluid systems, and to solve practical applications. Topics include basic fluid properties, fluid pressure, manometers, flow rate, Bernoulli's equation, fluid laminar and turbulent flow, Reynold's number, major and minor friction losses, pipeline systems, pump selection, heat, temperature, internal energy, laws of thermodynamics, calorimetry, and ideal gases in a closed system.

This course is designed to assess and to verify the student's competency in a variety of technical, professional, and interpersonal functions in a job situation within the energy industry. Upon arranging a work experience practicum assignment, the student will create and then complete a work experience verification report. The student will be responsible for submitting a series of quarterly reports based on the student's activities in the employment setting.

In this course, the student will prepare a major technical report from experience and data gathered on the job. The student will outline this report in conjunction with a job supervisor and a program advisor, and will then present the completed report to a jury for explanation and further analysis and approval.

Pre-requisites:

• PRAC 400

Much of today's business is accomplished more through teamwork than individual effort. This course presents current concepts of teams and team skills through the following topics: team performance and improvement, commitment, painting the vision, leadership in today's business, obstacles and trouble, achievement celebration, teams in changing organizations, quick change organizations and coaching the team. Students participate as team members and will complete four team projects.

Beginning the financial plan with goals, this course will touch on forecasts and estimates, financing, and cash flow. The processes of budgeting and financial control involving authorization, feedback and analysis will be covered in more detail. Student workshop exercises will simulate real business situations.

Beginning with project planning methods and tools, this course concentrates on schedule and cost control from inception to completion of a project, overcoming obstacles to success, measurement of progress, and quality control. The use of software tools will be included, reviewed and discussed as available.

The following topics are covered in this course: building a safety program, safety and environmental law, general industrial safety, process safety management, hazard identification and control, worksite inspections, contractor control, emergency response planning, incident investigation and analysis, and safety program audits. WHMIS and TDG certificates may be earned if time permits.

The following process engineering subjects are covered: diagrams used in process engineering (block flow diagrams, process flow diagrams and process and instrumentation (P&I) diagrams); unit operations of chemical engineering (an overview of fluid flow, heat transfer and mass transfer operations); sizing of typical equipment (process lines, pumps, compressors, heat exchangers, two and three phase separators and fractionation towers). The course includes presentation of a typical mechanical design following a detailed process design and, time permitting, an introduction to computer based design programs such as Hysys and Pipesys.

HYSYS software is used to design surface facilities. This includes separators, fractionation columns, dehydration systems, a chemical plant and other equipment design. Dynamic simulation of a chemical plant is included with controller tuning and adjustment; the effect of tuning parameters on process stability and behaviour is investigated. PIPESYS software is used to calculate and simulate flows in pipes and pipeline systems, with heat transfer from the pipeline, and offshore pipelines are modeled which are partly exposed to the atmosphere, immersed in seawater and buried. A design project is carried out by students using the above simulators.

Pre-requisites:

• CHEN 405

The following technical material is presented: principles of process measurement and control; measurement techniques and instrumentation for process variables including pressure, flow rate, temperature, composition, pH, humidity and level control; process control systems, feedback control, PID control systems; systems analysis and modeling techniques and interaction of the process with the control system. Part of the course involves laboratory measurements and practicals using various measurement devices and control systems with evaluation of practical reports forming part of the course evaluation process.

This is an overview of basic drilling practices followed by advanced drilling technology, planning, bit selection, hydraulics, blowout control and mud technology. Drilling of deviated wells, multiwells, horizontal wells and well completions are also covered, in addition to recent advances in drilling such as underbalanced drilling, coiled-tubing drilling, and slim hole drilling.

Pre-requisites:

• DRLG 412

This course was designed to develop skill sets in the areas of: Compliance and Liability/Risk Assessment. This would include: contaminated site investigations, key player involvement and area jurisdiction, investigation processes, and provide the opportunity for individuals to perform monitoring of existing sites, ranging from facility license requirements to reclamation procedures and actual clean up of sites. Audit, Remediation, Sustainable development has become an industrial requirement for: Oil and Gas, Mining, Forestry, Commercial Real Estate, Farming, Banking, and the appraisal industry. Monitoring on existing sites, with detailed abilities to reclaim leases/sites to Alberta regulatory criteria specifications.

This course will emphasize design, equipment sizing criteria, and application to mitigate contaminant release. Topics covered will include air and noise emissions, pollution control, reuse of produced water from heavy oil, contaminant hydrogeology, site remediation, and well abandonment.

Pre-requisites:

• ENVS 402

This course provides an introduction to well log analysis, by discussing the major types of open-hole logs used in oil and gas exploration and their evaluations. Well logs are the most comprehensive and descriptive documents on oil and gas. Your analysis would impact the work of the rest of the team in the industry, from the financing department to the drilling team. This course is designed to deliver the optimum application of well logs by discussing the constraints and limitations of open-hole well logging operations. The principles of physics are explained along with the functioning of modern logging tools and an adequate number of examples for each logging tool will be provided to show the close relationship of petroleum geology and reservoir properties such as water saturation, porosity, and identification of hydrocarbon types. We also review the basics of the Quick- Look analysis enabling us to recognize reservoirs' features- quickly and effectively.

Pre-requisites:

• One of:
  • GEOL 410
  • GEOL 412

This course will cover the following topics: the main oil refining processes; these will include desalting, atmospheric and vacuum tower distillation, cracking, isomerization, alkylation, hydrogenation, desulfurization, coking processes; gaseous products, gasoline and diesel fuel properties and blending, octane numbers and additives, kerosene, lubricating oil and fuel oil properties. Petrochemical production processes will be introduced by considering separation processes for basic components; polymerization processes and the production processes for materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC, ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol, ethyl and isopropyl alcohols, acetic acid, and other basic organic materials used in industry; properties of petrochemical materials, thermoplastics, resins, fibres and foams.

This course will cover the following topics: nodal analysis and production optimization, identification of production bottlenecks; emulsion-breaking and treater operations, types of chemicals used, use of combined thermal and chemical treatments; selected topics in artificial lift methods, pump selection, sucker rod pump dynamometer tests, gas lift design; cementing operations; acidizing and fracturing workover treatment design, additives used, proppant selection, application to vertical and horizontal wells; completion methods for horizontal wells; corrosion and control methods in downhole and surface equipment.

Pre-requisites:

• PTPR 412

Well completions, stimulations and workover operations are important interventions that are required to optimize the economic recovery of petroleum resources. This course includes such topics as well programming, wellbore design and integrity, production logging, formation damage and acid stimulation with an emphasis on hydraulic fracturing.

Pre-requisites:

• DRLG 412
• PTPR 412
• One of:
  • GEOL 410
  • GEOL 412

This course deals with the latest production methods used for recovery of heavy oil using horizontal, vertical and multilateral wells, cold production, thermal techniques with steam flooding, CSS, SAGD, VAPEX, in-situ combustion, waterflooding and EOR techniques. Methods of predicting well and field productivities will be examined for the major recovery processes. The course will examine heavy oil PVT and analytical techniques, geology, field projects both within Canada and internationally, production problems, regulatory and fiscal issues. Comparisons with light oil production methods will be made, and differences in refining, upgrading, pipelining and transportation requirements for heavy oil will be highlighted.

This course examines the methods used for surface mining recovery of oil sands and oil shales, the transportation methods to the processing plant, and various separation methods used to separate the bitumen and heavy oil from the sands. The different separation methods such as flotation and gravity will be discussed.