Graduate Programs in Petroleum Engineering at Stanford University

Abstract

Abstract The described graduate degree programs in Petroleum Engineering at Stanford have been Petroleum Engineering at Stanford have been developed to meet the diverse needs of engineers and researchers involved with petroleum production. The M.S. program is essentially a production. The M.S. program is essentially a professional curriculum with only minor emphasis professional curriculum with only minor emphasis on research. The Ph.D. program emphasizes research and requires courses in engineering, science and mathematics. The Engineer's degree program, intermediate in goals and requirements, program, intermediate in goals and requirements, has one option which emphasizes professional engineering and another (the Management Option) which combines engineering and business courses and requires a thesis based on a combined engineering-economic study. Introduction Graduates of today's petroleum engineering departments may be expected to carry out a variety of tasks. While their undergraduate training can provide fundamental training for these, there is usually not enough time in a baccalaureate program to give much more than an introduction to production and reservoir engineering methods. Specialized training in these fields as well as in research must be left for the graduate level. Because the goals of graduate study are multipurpose and generally different from those of undergraduate study, we have found that several distinct graduate programs are necessary. We would like to describe programs are necessary. We would like to describe those which have been devised in our petroleum engineering department with the hope that this description may be of interest and help to others. A dozen years ago most of our graduate students were M.S. candidates who had received their B.S. from our Department the previous year and so the undergraduate and graduate programs were closely related. Now most of our programs were closely related. Now most of our graduate students are Ph.D. candidates who have either taken their M.S. degree here or more usually, obtained it elsewhere. Thus our undergraduate courses are often taken by graduate students as electives to make up deficiencies. These courses are also taken by our own undergraduates as well as by students from other departments. In addition to the M.S. and Ph.D. degree programs which require graduate residency of programs which require graduate residency of one and three years, respectively, we also have two programs leading to professional Petroleum Engineer degrees, and each requires two years of graduate residency.