Course descriptions index


Petroleum Engineering

A per semester student computing facility user fee is assessed for CEM engineering courses. This fee is in addition to any lab/material fees. Please see the class schedule for details.


PETE F103 Survey of the Energy Industries

1 Credit     Offered Fall

Overview of global energy supply and demand, alternate energy options, Alaska alternate energy resources and impact on the state economy. Special fees apply. (1+0)


PETE F104 Fundamentals of Petroleum

1 Credit     Offered Spring

Fundamental principles on the origin, migration, accumulation and exploration of petroleum. Influence of rock and fluid properties on the principles of petroleum recovery. Special fees apply. (1+0)


PETE F205 Fundamentals of Drilling Practices

1 Credit     Offered Fall

Fundamental principles of drilling, drilling practices, drilling fluids and drilling problems dependent on mud control. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. (1+0)


PETE F206 Introduction to Petroleum Production

1 Credit     Offered Spring

Overview of production practices, surface production equipment, special production problems and workover and petroleum transportation. Special fees apply. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor. (1+0)


PETE F211 Drilling Laboratory

1 - 2 Credits     Offered Spring

Measurement of physical properties of drilling mud. Optional BOP certification and drilling rig operation experience during spring break. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F205 or permission of instructor. (0+3 or 6)


PETE F301 Reservoir Rock and Fluid Properties

4 Credits     Offered Fall

Fundamental concepts of reservoir rock and fluid properties including porosity, permeability, fluid saturations, capillary pressure, relative permeabilities, classification of petroleum reservoirs by fluid phase contents, oil, gas and water properties, fluid sampling, and PVT analysis. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: MATH F201X; ES F346; GEOS F101X or GE F261. (4+0)


PETE F302 Well Logging

3 Credits     Offered Spring

Comprehensive treatment of modern well logging methods including formation and production logging tools, and techniques and basic concepts of log interpretation. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Junior standing in engineering or geoscience. (3+0)


PETE F303W Reservoir Rock and Fluid Properties Laboratory

1 Credit     Offered Spring

Measurement of properties of reservoir rock and reservoir fluids. Determination of porosity, permeability, fluid saturations, capillary pressures, specific gravity density, viscosity, surface tension, PVT properties and interpretation of PVT reports for reservoir fluid samples. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ENGL F111X; ENGL F211X or ENGL F213X or permission of instructor; PETE F301. (0+3)


PETE F407 Petroleum Production Engineering

3 Credits     Offered Fall

Production system analysis, inflow performance analysis, gas lift design, sucker rod pumping and production decline analysis. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ES F341 and ES F346. (3+0)


PETE F411W Drilling Fluids Laboratory

1 Credit     Offered Spring

Design, composition and measurement of drilling fluid properties, evaluation of mud activities and chemical treatment of contaminated drilling fluid. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ENGL F111X; ENGL F211X or ENGL F213X or permission of instructor; PETE F205; concurrent enrollment in PETE F426. (0+3)


PETE F421 Reservoir Characterization

3 Credits     Offered Spring

Reservoir rock properties and their spatial variations; estimation of reserves; introduction to theory and application of geostatistics to reservoir characterization; presentation of fundamental geostatistical concepts including: variogram analysis, estimation variance, kriging and stochastic simulations. Impact of geologic structure on oil recovery methods. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F301; PETE F302; GEOS F370. (Stacked with PETE F621.) (3+0)


PETE F426 Drilling Engineering

3 Credits     Offered Spring

Principles of drilling, drilling fluids and rheology, drilling problems, drilling hydraulics, well control techniques and casing seat selection. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ES F331; ES F341. (3+0)


PETE F431 Natural Gas Engineering

2 Credits     Offered Fall

Natural gas production and condensate reservoirs. Design of processing, transportation, distribution and flow measurement systems. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F301. (2+0)


PETE F456 Petroleum Evaluation and Economic Decisions

3 Credits     Offered Spring

Economic appraisal methods for oil field developmental project evaluations including risk analysis, probability and statistics in decision making and evaluations. Case studies. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: MATH F202X and PETE F476. (3+0)


PETE F458 Petroleum Engineering Internship

1 Credit     Offered As Demand Warrants

Practical experience in a supervised petroleum engineering environment. Participation in professional petroleum operations including drilling, production, formation evaluation, reservoir engineering, petroleum property evaluation, management and economics. Written and oral presentation of technical report describing experience is required. Course may be repeated for up to 4 credits. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Junior standing or permission of instructor. (0+0)


PETE F466 Petroleum Recovery Methods

3 Credits     Offered Fall

Flow and physicochemical principles of oil recovery by water, chemical, thermal and miscible floods. Prediction of recovery for each of these methods. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F301 and PETE F476. (3+0)


PETE F476 Petroleum Reservoir Engineering

3 Credits     Offered Spring

Quantitative study and prediction of the behavior of oil and gas reservoirs under primary, secondary and tertiary recovery mechanisms. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F301; PETE F405. (3+0)


PETE F478 Well Test Analysis

2 Credits     Offered Spring

Transient flow of fluids through porous media, application of solutions of the diffusivity equation to pressure buildup, drawdown, interference testing and log-log type curve analysis and effect of reservoir heterogeneities on pressure behavior. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F476 and MATH F302. (2+0)


PETE F481W Well Completions and Stimulation Design

3 Credits     Offered Fall

Design of casing programs, cementing, open-hole and set-through completions, well stimulation; completion and workover fluids; and evaluation of sand control and workover operations. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ENGL F111X; ENGL F211X or ENGL F213X or permission of instructor; ES F341; PETE F205; PETE F426. (2+3)


PETE F487A Petroleum Project Design

1 Credit     Offered Fall

Two-semester course with emphasis on design and analysis of petroleum exploration, production and reservoir engineering systems by analytical, experimental and computer methods. Identification of requirements, conceptual and detailed project design and cost analysis. Completion of an engineering project. Note: Oral communication intensive and writing intensive credits are earned upon successful completion of PETE F487B. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Senior standing. (2+0)


PETE F487B W,O Petroleum Project Design

1 Credit     Offered Spring

Two-semester course with emphasis on design and analysis of petroleum exploration, production and reservoir engineering systems by analytical, experimental and computer methods. Identification of requirements, conceptual and detailed project design and cost analysis. Completion of an engineering project. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: COMM F131X or COMM F141X; ENGL F111X; ENGL F211X or ENGL F213X or permission of instructor; senior standing. (2+0)


PETE F489 Reservoir Simulation

2 Credits     Offered Spring

The theory and use of computer reservoir simulation in petroleum reservoir and production engineering. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: MATH F310 and PETE F476. (2+0)


PETE F607 Advanced Production Engineering

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Production system analysis, production optimization, downhole equipment design, surface facilities design, oil and gas processing, gas and oil treating systems, disposal well systems, project organization and field development. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Graduate standing, PETE F407 or equivalent; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F610 Advanced Reservoir Engineering

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Concepts and tools for solving petroleum reservoir engineering problems; advances in petroleum reservoir engineering. Emphasis on material balance methods and their application to estimate reserves and calculate water influx; diversity equations and solutions; gas and water coning; streamline tracking; and decline curve analysis, productivity index and well performance models for vertical, horizontal and multilateral wells. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F476 or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F621 Applied Reservoir Characterization

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Review of reservoir rock properties and their spatial variations; estimation of reserves; introduction to theory and application of geostatistics to reservoir characterization; presentation of fundamental geostatistical concepts including: variogram analysis, estimation variance, kriging and stochastic simulations. Impact of geologic structure on oil recovery. Use of computer software for reservoir characterization and class project. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Graduate standing in Petroleum Engineering; or permission of instructor. (Stacked with PETE F421.) (3+0)


PETE F630 Water Flooding

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

A study of the fundamental concepts and procedures for the design of waterflooding processes in petroleum reservoirs. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F301; PETE F476; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F656 Advanced Petroleum Economic Analysis

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Economic analysis of petroleum production leading towards increasing cost efficiency in the petroleum and related industries. Qualitative and quantitative description of production forecasts and reserve estimation; oil and gas pricing; cash flow analysis; risk and uncertainty of operation of oil and gas production (financing, debt/equity ratio, depreciation and taxation). Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F407, PETE F456; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F661 Applied Well Testing

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Equations for transient flow of single phase fluids through porous media, extension to sample multiphase flow, isolated and developed multi-well flow, conventional drawdown and buildup analysis, log-log type curve analysis, interference testing, fractured wells, pulse tests, and drill stem tests. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F476; PETE F610; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F662 Enhanced Oil Recovery

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Secondary and tertiary oil recovery processes, including waterflooding and chemical and thermal recovery methods. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F476 or PETE F610 or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F663 Applied Reservoir Simulation

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Mathematical description of the reservoir, organization of reservoir simulation study, history matching and prediction for several published case studies of reservoir simulations. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Reservoir Engineering course - e.g. PETE F476 or PETE F610 or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F665 Advanced Phase Behavior

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

The development and application of phase equilibrium simulators to predict fluid properties for reservoir fluids. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F321 or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F666 Drilling Optimization

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Principles of drilling optimization: drilling cost analysis and control; rheological properties of drilling fluid for optimum hole cleaning; planning an optimum mud program for vertical, directional and horizontal wellbores; optimizing bit hydraulics. Use of software packages in optimized hydraulics. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: Graduate standing in engineering discipline or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F670 Fluid Flow Through Porous Media

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

The study of transport phenomena in porous media and application to petroleum engineering. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F301; PETE F476; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F680 Horizontal Well Technology

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Review of the state of the art of horizontal well technology covering recent advances in drilling and completion of horizontal wells. Emphasis on field practices, reservoir engineering aspects including well testing and well performance estimation, application of horizontal wells to gas and water coning problems as well as enhanced oil recovery. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F426; PETE F476; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F683 Natural Gas Processing and Engineering

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Natural gas reservoir engineering and gas production practices. Transient flow of real gases, gas field development, gas well testing, transportation and gas storage reservoirs. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: PETE F431; PETE F476; or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F685 Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Characteristics of stress in fluids, flow models of non-Newtonian fluids (Bingham plastic fluids, fluids without yield stress), couette flow analysis of non-Newtonian fluids, surge and swab pressure models for plugged and open-end pipes. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ES F341; PETE F426 or permission of instructor. (3+0)


PETE F689 Multiphase Fluid Flow in Pipes

3 Credits     Offered As Demand Warrants

Multiphase flow in pipes, modeling of fluid flow of complex mixtures in pipes, empirical correlations developed in the literature, and calculation of pressure gradients and flow rates during the flow of multiphase fluids through vertical, inclined and horizontal pipes. Special fees apply. Prerequisites: ES F341; MATH F310 or ES F301; PETE F407; or permission of instructor. (3+0)