EG501P: NON CONVENTIONAL HYDROCARBON ENGINEERING (2016-2017)

Course Aims

To provide a detailed understanding of the occurrence and engineering of hydrocarbon resources which, with some exceptions, are not widely used in the production of petroleum products but do have the potential to supply hydrocarbons, if the extraction process is efficiently engineered.

Main Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course students should:

A) have knowledge and understanding of:
• The occurrence and potential of various forms of non-conventional hydrocarbon sources
• The fundamentals of hydrocarbon retention and transport mechanism in different non-conventional hydrocarbon sources
• The reservoir engineering aspects of dual porosity and dual permeability reservoir systems
• The  coupled effects of fluid transport and reservoir geomechanics and its impact of non-conventional hydrocarbon recovery
• Application of routine and specialised resource estimation techniques with the use of laboratory and field test measurements
• Specific challenges associated with primary and enhanced recovery from coal and shale
• Resource based design for well completion and stimulation of coal and shale
• Mining methods for oil shales, heavy oil and tar sands
• Environmental impact of activities associated with non-conventional hydrocarbon extraction
• New technologies for improving productivity of non-conventional hydrocarbons

B) have gained intellectual skills so that they are able to:
• Formation evaluation of non-conventional hydrocarbon reservoirs
• Combine data from various exploratory and laboratory sources to derive material balances and produce a comprehensive and robust resource estimation
• Analyse the reservoir engineering aspects to identify the challenges and the key parameters affecting the hydrocarbon recovery
• Quantitatively assess the efficiency of various primary and enhanced hydrocarbon recovery processes
• Identify and propose well stimulation techniques for enhanced hydrocarbon production from low permeability formations
• Non-conventional hydrocarbon field development
• Carry out an environmental impact assessment of  non-conventional resource utilisation

C) have gained or improved transferable skills so that they are able to:

• Write well-reasoned concise business recommendations for non-conventional resource exploitation
• Specialised laboratory core floods (eg. Simultaneous measurement of permeability and swelling strain in coals) and field based methods (eg. in situ gas content measurement for coalbed methane resource estimation )

Course Content

This course examines various natural resource forms which are source of hydrocarbons but its extraction poses an engineering challenge. This course analyses the utilisation coal in the form of methane production from its seams and underground coal gasification, hydrocarbon production from shale, oil sands and methane hydrates.  The course encompasses a wider approach from the fundamentals of hydrocarbon placement, its retention and transport phenomena in porous media to environmental impact assessment of extraction activities. Resource estimation and reservoir engineering aspects specific to each of the aforementioned resources will be discussed. Strategies for primary and enhanced hydrocarbon recovery will be discussed with an emphasis on application of technologies for improving the productivity from low permeability reservoir formations. Case studies of geological basins with successful unconventional hydrocarbon recovery will be analysed.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt: 1 three-hour written examination paper (70%), continuous assessment (30%).
The continuous assessment will be based on in-class tests (20%) and report on computer lab (reservoir simulation) exercise (10%).

Resit: 1 three-hour written examination (70%) plus the continuous assessment mark from the first attempt (30%)

There are no assessments for this course.

Students can receive feedback on their progress with the Course on request at the weekly tutorial/feedback sessions.

For in-class tests: Solutions to in-class tests will be made available to the students on MyAberdeen and can receive further feedback on request.

For computer lab(reservoir simulation) exercise: Marked computer lab reports will be made available to the students in one of the tutorial sessions and students can receive feedback on their submitted report.