Academic literature on the topic 'Degree Discipline: Petroleum Geoscience'

The Australian petroleum exploration research program is customer-driven and reflects the balance between the need for the petroleum industry to reduce exploration risk in the short term and the government need to improve the perception of prospectivity in the longer term. Higher prospectivity will lead to greater exploration investment and competition, whereas risk-reduction will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the exploration industry. Thus the objectives of the primary customers may be significantly different, with government intent on increasing the amount of investment and competition between explorers, whereas industry is intent on keeping expenditure to a minimum and maintaining competitive advantage. Despite the differences, collaboration between all groups involved in exploration and exploration-related research in Australia is essential to solve the range of exploration problems and generate new paradigms. Collaborative research ventures are most successful when new ideas stimulate explorer and researcher alike to focus resources on the key questions despite factors such as competitive advantage. Government geoscience researchers must play a significant role in generating and marketing new concepts to help maintain Australia's supply of domestic petroleum products.The scale of the petroleum research undertaken, and the degree of collaboration between industry and research groups in Australia, is remarkable. There is a productive balance between groups developing and applying new technology and those undertaking regional geological and petroleum systems research. This balance has been reached because of the long-term commitment by the Australian Government, via legislation and funding, to ensure the preservation of exploration data in national geoscience database systems, and that basic and applied research at all scales, from basins to wells, is undertaken in support of petroleum exploration and development.Despite the success of a number of collaborative research projects, research and development resources are still under-utilised by the Australian petroleum industry. Government research agencies must develop a higher marketing profile to ensure that the utilisation of the resources is at a maximum.

Convergence means that independently existing entities create a new entity with a larger value through chemical bonding. Such convergence requires consilience of knowledge or discipline. Green technology shows a strong nature of convergence, having strong links between technologies rather than being an independent technology. Green technology can help the energy convergence society by producing energy through renewable energy, abandoning the way of growth of inputting large amount of fossil fuel like petroleum and gas, managing energy through a smart grid, storing energy in energy storage facility, and using LED or environment-friendly vehicle. In this study, we will measure the degree of convergence in green technology field to consider which field of technology actually converges in green technology. In the result, it was found that convergence was continuously increasing in green technology field, and the link between solar energy and LED lighting technology was especially strong. This means that convergence is happening between a technology of energy production and a technology that uses energy, and that the society is going forward to energy convergence society through green technology.

In some respects, the prospect of returning to some degree of normality is evident on the horizon. However, climate and the future of energy show little sign of a return to prepandemic normalcy. The future of our energy system is being transformed, and oil and gas are crucial for energy stability as well as the transformation. One of the miracles over the past year has been the accumulated knowledge around the human genome and application of this science to the rapid development of efficacious vaccines. As within oil and gas, humans can rise to the challenge to solve complex problems when identified. This is playing out as we see societal drivers around climate change and net-zero carbon emissions. Over the past year, SPE produced 11 events focused on the energy transition and continued the development of the Gaia Sustainability Program initiated by the SPE Health, Safety, Environment, and Sustainability (HSES) discipline. It is now a thriving community of SPE members across all disciplines committed to enabling and empowering all members and other interested parties who wish to engage in the alignment of the future of energy with sustainable development. An on-demand library of Gaia Talks and other resources has been built using the strategic programming framework (www.spe.org/en/gaia). Advances in our understanding and application of technology, and the development of those who can use it to better the world, are highlighted in the selections made for this month’s Technology Focus—genome sequencing of invasive species, technology to identify fatigue, and development of human capital for the industry in Kazakhstan. We must not forget the key element in any strategic improvement of performance: the human being. This starts with developing human capital at the university level. The industry is also working on progressing our understanding and application of human factors and human performance. As mentioned in the October 2020 JPT, the oil and gas industry has formed the Human Performance Oil and Gas (HPOG) alliance modeled after the very successful Dropped Objects Prevention Scheme program. The return to a more-normal life also means that our traditional conference model can reengage membership. Face-to-face meetings accelerate networking and the transfer of knowledge, which is core to the SPE mission. Events focusing on HSES this year include a planned in-person gathering the first week of November: HSES Focus on the Future—Responding to Changes and How the HSES Function Will Grow (3–5 November). This event will primarily cover health, environment, and sustainability with one panel on land transportation safety. It is strategically planned for the same week and at the same hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, where the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers will hold its first Joint Congress on Safety (1–3 November). A key element in building strategies within the SPE HSES discipline is the future of the function. Leading the efforts around this will be the newly formed HSES Executive Advisory Committee (EAC). This EAC, led by Fawaz (Fuzzy) Bitar, senior vice president of HSE and carbon at BP and former chair of the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers, includes HSE leadership from various upstream operators and contractors and will help with guidance and direction for SPE HSES Technical Director Annamaria Petrone. The EAC will hold a meeting and participate in plenary panels during the SPE HSES event in November. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. SPE 202737 6×6 Occupational Health Hazard Risk Rating Matrix: A Useful Tool in the Determination of Risk Levels of Workplace Health Hazards by Bufford Ang, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, et al. OTC 30840 Self-Certification and Safety Compliance for Robotics Platforms by Osama Farouk Zaki, Heriot-Watt University, et al. SPE 201312 Long-Term, Periodic Aerial Surveys Cost-Effectively Mitigate Methane Emissions by Sri Sridharan, Pioneer Natural Resources, et al.

2022 SPE President Kamel Ben-Naceur Kamel Ben-Naceur is CEO of Nomadia Energy Consulting, where he advises on sustainable energy policies and global and regional energy economics and outlooks. He has worked as the chief economist for a major oil and gas company and for an oilfield services company. Ben-Naceur has also worked as a director of the International Energy Agency and as the industry, energy, and mines minister for the Tunisian government. He has chaired several SPE global committees, including Business Management and Leadership, the International Forum Series, and CO2 Capture, Utilization, and Storage. He has also taught several SPE courses on global energy and strategic thinking and planning. He was technical director for the Management and Information discipline on the SPE International Board of Directors from 2008 to 2011. Ben-Naceur was also an SPE Distinguished Lecturer during the 2009–2010 season and received an SPE Distinguished Member Award and SPE Distinguished Service Award in 2014, the AIME Charles F. Rand Memorial Gold Award in 2019, and the 2020 Sustainability and Stewardship in the Oil and Gas Industry Award. He has coauthored more than 150 publications and 17 books. Ben-Naceur holds the Agrégation de Mathématiques degree from the École normale supérieure and a master’s degree in engineering from École Polytechnique in Paris. What key issues will you emphasize as 2022 SPE President? Our industry, along with many other economical sectors, has experienced a major impact from the pandemic. The magnitude of the drop in oil demand in 2020, both in absolute and relative terms, is unprecedented. It led also to a major reduction in oilfield investment activity around the world, in the order of 30% compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. The fast-track development of vaccines and their availability, even though progress is still required to ensure that they are distributed fairly around the world, is raising hope that the worst may be behind us. SPE members have also been impacted in their ability to meet at technical conferences and exhibitions and participate in workshops or forums. As 2022 SPE President, the theme I wish to develop is the “sustainable recovery” for our industry and for SPE. The industry has experienced in 2020–2021 a major loss of valuable employees ranging from young professionals to senior members. This has followed a major downcycle in 2014–2015. After a 30% drop in Capex in 2020 compared to 2019, 2021 should see a modest recovery in activity (6–8% increase). The next year should welcome a 10–12% activity surge, providing an increase in employment opportunities for our members in transition, as well as for our student members. Barring new negative developments in the pandemic, the recovery in activity should strengthen to reach pre-COVID levels by 2025, albeit 15–20% below the level that was expected before. The recovery of demand and activity should also be linked to a more sustainable trajectory of energy demand and supply. Sustainability will be my second area of focus, with SPE having already engaged significantly. I had the opportunity to participate in the startup of the SPE GAIA Sustainability Program, which is now developing into many different directions, thanks to the efforts of SPE volunteers. 2019 SPE President Sami Al-Nuaim had put sustainability at the heart of his presidency, and I am pleased to see several of his initiatives materialize. The third area of focus will be a gradual restart of physical meetings, where we will transition with the increase of hybrid (in-person/virtual) events, which is eagerly anticipated by our members. The fourth area of focus is related to the development of the new SPE Strategic Plan. Last but not least, is the proposed merger between SPE and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG).

Due to current Pandemic circumstances, the 2021 Colloquium & Annual General Meeting was held for the first time using a virtual venue (Zoom) on February 5th and 6th. Although not ideal from the networking and social point of view, not travelling in the unpredictable winter weather of Atlantic Canada was a bonus. On behalf of the society, we thank Colloquium organizers Donnelly Archibald, Rob Raeside, and Chris White, as well the numerous session chairs and judges, for facilitating an excellent meeting with about 200 registrants. AGS acknowledges support from the corporate sponsors and partners for the meeting: Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines (Geological Survey and Petroleum Resources), New Brunswick Department Natural Resources and Energy Development, Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada, and Acadia University (Department of Earth and Environmental Science).In the following pages, we are pleased to publish the abstracts of oral and poster presentations from the meeting on a variety of topics. Best undergraduate and graduate student presentations are recognized and indicated by an asterisk in the authorship. The meeting included five special sessions: (1) Defining the controls on onshore and offshore Pliocene-Quaternary processes; (2) Sedimentological and paleontological investigations from the onshore and offshore realms; (3) Developments in geoscience education; (4) Developments in mineral resources research in the northern Appalachians; (5) Karst research in AtlanticCanada; and a general session on mineralogy, igneous and metamorphic geology, and structural geology.Also included with the conference was a day-long, short course on “Applications of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) to Earth Science” delivered by Robin Adair (University of New Brunswick). In addition, a Workshop was held on “Looking to the Future; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as a way of being in our discipline” chaired by Anne-Marie Ryan (Dalhousie University) and Deanne van Rooyen (Cape Breton University). The traditional Saturday evening banquet and social were replaced by a virtual Awards Banquet at which society awards were announced, as well as student prizes for best poster and oral presentation. The student award winners are noted at the end of the appropriate abstract.Although the abstracts have been edited as necessary for clarity and to conform to Atlantic Geology format and standards, the journal editors do not take responsibility for their content or quality.

Abstract Since emerging more than a century ago, petroleum engineering (PE) education has increasingly kept its popularity despite significant downturns in the industry. During these downturn periods, observed at least four times since the 1973 oil crisis, structural changes in university programs have been considered. On the other hand, during the "heyday" periods, institutions have had to tackle enormous demand from industry, severely increased enrollments, and reestablish resources to provide a proper service. In light of these observations and while experiencing the fifth downturn period over the last five decades, it is time again to ask the same question: "Shall we continue with the same PE education model or radically shift to a new model?" In this paper, after reviewing more than fifty articles published over the last 85 years reporting the attempts made towards reshaping PE education, an option of restructuring PE programs is discussed. This option is less oil industry (and oil prices) dependent and more of a "general" engineering education program with an emphasis on the "geoscience" or "subsurface" engineering aspects of the PE discipline. Detailed discussions focus on curriculum updates to address the industry practice of "subsurface" related engineering applications. Viability of this option was discussed from industry, academia, and students’ perspective. This restructuring option requires substantial changes to curricula, skill development, and teaching and learning styles. Fundamentals are essential to include in PE education similar to other general (or major) engineering disciplines such as mechanical, civil, chemical, and electrical engineering. The essential elements of engineering skills such as creative design, decision making, problem description and solving, management under high degree of uncertainty, and data collection and processing for optimization are to be included in the new model. Finally, the model proposed is critically discussed and analyzed from different perspectives (industry, academia, and students) considering current and prospected subsurface engineering applications.

Abstract Defined by SPE as the application of basic and engineering sciences to the finding, development, and recovery of oil, gas and other resources from wells, petroleum engineering (PE) has been throughout the years falsely thought of as an amalgamation of other disciplines applied to the exploration and recovery of hydrocarbons. Integrating all PE subdisciplines in a manner efficient for teaching and learning is essential for securing the abundance of well-rounded market-attractive professionals. This paper discusses advantages individuals with PE background experience should exhibit in their employment in the oil and gas industry and academia. There is no point for students in going to school for a degree that will not hand them a competitive edge within their discipline. For graduate PEs, the job market is dependent on the quality of their respective academic programs and by extension to the quality of the teaching faculty. A steady oil and gas job market may not necessarily warrant robust employment opportunities, particularly straight after graduation. In a discipline like PE, where almost everything that matters takes place thousands of feet underground, apportioning credit for successes or responsibility for failures is itself a challenge. Decreases in student enrollments in PE programs reported by various universities during times of low oil and gas prices poses questions about the future of the PEs discipline, despite the steady demand for oil and gas in the world's energy mix. Academic programs interested in facilitating a smooth transition of their graduates into the industry should work in conjunction with practitioners to provide the correct balance between theory and practice in their coursework ensuring that once employment opportunities are created, they get filled with candidates of relevant education and training. PE degree-holding candidates should be the natural first choice for PE positions. This means that their educational and professional backgrounds should be providing them with an undisputed advantage which places them a leg above candidates from other disciplines. For instance, for a well completions job opening, there should not be a better alternative than a good PE specialized in well completions. If every PE graduate comes out of his or her program with a skillset which is superior to that of his or her competition, he or she will be the preferred choice for an oil and gas job.

Discipline formation in information management is investigated through a case study of the origination and development of information services for scientific and technical information in Australia. Particular reference is made to a case of AESIS, a national geoscience, minerals and petroleum reference database coordinated by the Australian Mineral Foundation. This study provided a model for consideration of similar services and their contribution to the discipline. The perspective adopted is to consider information management at operational, analytical and strategic levels. Political and financial influences are considered along with analysis of scope, performance and quality control. Factors that influenced the creation, transitions, and abeyance of the service are examined, and some conclusions are drawn about an information management discipline being exemplified by such services.

During the 2014 SPWLA Topical Meeting on “Educating the Petrophysicist”, it recommended that “A minimum set of standards in terms of both knowledge and skills (competencies) for an entry level petrophysicist (SPWLA, 2014). Similar proposal has been raised before as well (Loermans, 2002). With the rapid advance in technology, continuous crew change, and a natural pandemic affecting the oil and gas industry, the learning pattern has been changing from traditional in-person structured courses to more online, on-demand, short course training. For those interested in entering petrophysics discipline or furthering their petrophysics knowledge and skills, the learning path is less clear than other discipline like reservoir engineering, or geology, due to the lack of university degree program in Petrophysics. SPWLA Education SIG has taken on this challenge and developed skill set guidelines for petrophysicists as independent contributors. The current version of the guidelines covers topics including: General Geoscience and Engineering Operations, Fundamental Petrophysical Data Acquisition, Integrated Formation Evaluation, LWD Petrophysics in Formation Evaluation and Geosteering, Reservoir Dynamic Surveillance, Integrated Petrophysical Modeling, and Data Driven Petrophysics. In each topic, it includes basic skills as well as specialized skills. The document was developed with oil and gas industry in mind and can be adapted for petrophysicists working in related fields such as geothermal, mining, carbon management, water resources evaluation, etc. The document will be useful for students interested in learning to be a petrophysicist, a company interested in developing a training program for petrophysicists, and an organization interested in developing skill assessment program for Petrophysicists.

Hands-on, design oriented experiences have been shown to increase the visibility of the engineering profession; inspiring pre-college students to better prepare in math and science, and pursue an engineering degree. Most of these programs are successful, but they primarily focus on the creative aspects of highly specialized industries with little regard to the detail process of real world engineering design. Many students enroll in engineering programs believing the profession is solely focused on creativity and “building stuff” from a provided set of components. Once faced with the analysis and detail-oriented aspects of engineering practice, or the reality that most engineers are not employed by NASA or in robotics related industries, many students abandon engineering programs for other degree plans. The University of Texas at Tyler is using process control systems design as a theme to expose pre-college and college-level students to “common” engineering practices. This outreach program is part of a National Science Foundation funded project to provide hands-on opportunities to design, build, and test thermal/fluid based process control systems in an effort to attract and retain increased numbers of engineering students. This paper describes the proof of concept Process Control Breadboard System developed to provide a broad spectrum of students with exposure to the design of “common” engineering systems. Pre-college students come to realize that a wide range of engineering disciplines including: agricultural, chemical, electrical, mechanical, and petroleum engineering, consider process controls a part of their discipline. In addition, middle school students get exposed to the detail oriented aspects of real world engineering design; gaining experience in CAD modeling and producing bills of material prior to the hands-on build and test of their systems. Results from a variety of outreach and university level curriculum integration activities, conducted during the first two years of grant funding, will be presented, along with a summary of lessons learned and plans for future activities.

Assessment and development of pipeline projects in northern Canada, such as the proposed Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline (MGP), are hampered by a lack of baseline terrain geoscience information including drift thickness, sediment type, presence of massive ground ice, and the availability of granular aggregate resources. Clearly there is a need by Industry, Regulators, Aboriginal groups, and others, to understand the nature and character of near-surface earth materials, in order that pipeline proposals can be properly developed, evaluated, and when approved, proceed with the greatest degree of environmental sustainability and economic efficiency. While numerous field-based reports and surficial geology maps have been prepared for the MGP, there are long stretches along the proposed route for which little near-surface geoscience information is available. This is even more apt for areas outside the defined MGP corridor, where the likelihood of tie-in and gathering pipeline systems exist. Drillers’ logs, recorded during auger drilling of seismic shotholes, represent a virtually untapped resource of regional baseline geoscience information. The Geological Survey of Canada recently produced a digital archive of 76,000 shothole records from the Northwest Territories and Yukon, which had originally been collected on file cards in response to the 1970’s MGP proposal. Released in 2007 as a freely downloadable Open File report (#5465), the archive provides users with an Access database of drillers’ logs and derivative GIS maps in which shapefiles of drift isopach thickness, potential granular aggregate resources, geohazards, permafrost and ground ice occurrences, and muskeg thickness can be opened, viewed, and queried, or otherwise incorporated into GIS platforms of the user’s choice. Realizing the amount of additional archival shothole information held by Industry, and the great utility of bringing this forth in a public database and derivative GIS, a subsequent project has focused on capturing and integrating additional data. Receiving near-universal support by the Petroleum Industry, a Version 2 of the database and GIS is currently being assembled, and is scheduled for release in 2009 with some quarter million individual shothole drillers’ records. This presentation highlights the nature, character and distribution of shothole drillers’ logs in northern Canada. It also reviews the derived GIS layers, and how this baseline geoscience information can be beneficially utilized by the Pipeline and related infrastructure development industries, particularly as it may apply to focusing future field studies. It also serves as a key reference tool for those assessing pipeline development proposals.