Page 2 - Petroleum Production Engineering, A Computer-Assisted Approach

Guo, Boyun / Petroleum Production Engineering, A Computer-Assisted Approach Guo-prelims Final Proof page ix 29.12.2006 10:39am

Preface

The advances in the digital computing technology in the students. Chapter 15 describes how to identify well prob-
last decade have revolutionized the petroleum industry. lems. Chapter 16 deals with designing acidizing jobs.
Using the modern computer technologies, today’s petro- Chapter 17 provides a guideline to hydraulic fracturing
leum production engineers work much more efficiently and job evaluation techniques. Chapter 18 presents some
than ever before in their daily activities, including analyz- relevant information on production optimisation tech-
ing and optimizing the performance of their existing pro- niques.
duction systems and designing new production systems. Since the substance of this book is virtually boundless in
During several years of teaching the production engineer- depth, knowing what to omit was the greatest difficulty
ing courses in academia and in the industry, the authors with its editing. The authors believe that it requires many
realized that there is a need for a textbook that reflects the books to describe the foundation of knowledge in petro-
current practice of what the modern production engineers leum production engineering. To counter any deficiency
do. Currently available books fail to provide adequate that might arise from the limitations of space, the book
information about how the engineering principles are ap- provides a reference list of books and papers at the end of
plied to solving petroleum production engineering prob- each chapter so that readers should experience little diffi-
lems with modern computer technologies. These facts culty in pursuing each topic beyond the presented scope.
motivated the authors to write this new book. Regarding presentation, this book focuses on presen-
This book is written primarily for production engineers ting and illustrating engineering principles used for
and college students of senior level as well as graduate designing and analyzing petroleum production systems
level. It is not authors’ intention to simply duplicate gen- rather than in-depth theories. Derivation of mathematical
eral information that can be found from other books. This models is beyond the scope of this book, except for some
book gathers authors’ experiences gained through years of special topics. Applications of the principles are illustrated
teaching courses of petroleum production engineering in by solving example problems. While the solutions to
universities and in the petroleum industry. The mission of some simple problems not involving iterative procedures
the book is to provide production engineers a handy guide- are demonstrated with stepwise calculations, compli-
line to designing, analyzing, and optimizing petroleum cated problems are solved with computer spreadsheet
production systems. The original manuscript of this book programs. The programs can be downloaded from the
has been used as a textbook for college students of under- publisher’s website (http://books.elsevier.com/companions/
graduate and graduate levels in Petroleum Engineering. 9780750682701). The combination of the book and the
This book was intended to cover the full scope of pe- computer programs provides a perfect tool kit to petrol-
troleum production engineering. Following the sequence eum production engineers for performing their daily work
of oil and gas production process, this book presents its in a most efficient manner. All the computer programs
contents in eighteen chapters covered in four parts. were written in spreadsheet form in MS Excel that is
Part I contains eight chapters covering petroleum pro- available in most computer platforms in the petroleum
duction engineering fundamentals as the first course for industry. These spreadsheets are accurate and very easy
the entry-level production engineers and undergraduate to use. Although the U.S. field units are used in the com-
students. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the petro- panion book, options of using U.S. field units and SI units
leum production system. Chapter 2 documents properties are provided in the spreadsheet programs.
of oil and natural gases that are essential for designing and This book is based on numerous documents including
analysing oil and gas production systems. Chapters 3 reports and papers accumulated through years of work in
through 6 cover in detail the performance of oil and gas the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the New
wells. Chapter 7 presents techniques used to forecast well Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The authors
production for economics analysis. Chapter 8 describes are grateful to the universities for permissions of publish-
empirical models for production decline analysis. ing the materials. Special thanks go to the Chevron and
Part II includes three chapters presenting principles and American Petroleum Institute (API) for providing Chev-
rules of designing and selecting the main components of ron Professorship and API Professorship in Petroleum
petroleum production systems. These chapters are also Engineering throughout editing of this book. Our thanks
written for entry-level production engineers and under- are due to Mr. Kai Sun of Baker Oil Tools, who made a
graduate students. Chapter 9 addresses tubing design. thorough review and editing of this book. The authors
Chapter 10 presents rule of thumbs for selecting com- also thank Malone Mitchell III of Riata Energy for he
ponents in separation and dehydration systems. Chapter and his company’s continued support of our efforts to
11 details principles of selecting liquid pumps, gas com- develop new petroleum engineering text and professional
pressors, and pipelines for oil and gas transportation. books for the continuing education and training of the
Part III consists of three chapters introducing artificial industry’s vital engineers. On the basis of the collective
lift methods as the second course for the entry-level pro- experiences of authors and reviewer, we expect this book
duction engineers and undergraduate students. Chapter 12 to be of value to the production engineers in the petrol-
presents an introduction to the sucker rod pumping system eum industry.
and its design procedure. Chapter 13 describes briefly gas
lift method. Chapter 14 provides an over view of other Dr. Boyun Guo
artificial lift methods and design procedures. Chevron Endowed Professor in Petroleum Engineering
Part IV is composed of four chapters addressing pro- University of Louisiana at Lafayette
duction enhancement techniques. They are designed for June 10, 2006
production engineers with some experience and graduate