The role of a production engineer

The role of a production engineer is to maximize oil and

gas production in a cost-effective manner. Familiarization

and understanding of oil and gas production systems are

essential to the engineers. This chapter provides graduat-ing production engineers with some basic knowledge

about production systems. More engineering principles

are discussed in the later chapters.

As shown in Fig. 1.1, a complete oil or gas production

system consists of a reservoir, well, flowline, separators,

pumps, and transportation pipelines. The reservoir sup-plies wellbore with crude oil or gas. The well provides a

path for the production fluid to flow from bottom hole to

surface and offers a means to control the fluid production

rate. The flowline leads the produced fluid to separators.

The separators remove gas and water from the crude oil.

Pumps and compressors are used to transport oil and gas

through pipelines to sales points.

1.2 Reservoir

Hydrocarbon accumulations in geological traps can be clas-sified as reservoir, field, and pool. A ‘‘reservoir’’ is a porous

and permeable underground formation containing an indi-vidual bank of hydrocarbons confined by impermeable rock

or water barriers and is characterized by a single natural

pressure system. A ‘‘field’’ is an area that consists of one or

more reservoirs all related to the same structural feature. A

‘‘pool’’ contains one or more reservoirs in isolated structures.

Depending on the initial reservoir condition in the phase

diagram (Fig. 1.2), hydrocarbon accumulations are classi-fied as oil, gas condensate, and gas reservoirs. An oil that

is at a pressure above its bubble-point pressure is called an

‘‘undersaturated oil’’ because it can dissolve more gas at

the given temperature. An oil that is at its bubble-point

pressure is called a ‘‘saturated oil’’ because it can dissolve

no more gas at the given temperature. Single (liquid)-phase

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