New Ways in Research and Education: The Effect of Real Field Data on Multi-Disciplinary Student Projects in Petroleum Engineering

Abstract

Abstract When abandoning its "diploma curriculum" and implementing its bachelor/master program Petroleum Engineering in 2004, the Institute of Petroleum Engineering (ITE) of Clausthal University of Technology in Germany included a mandatory group project in the new curriculum. Group projects are interdisciplinary full time team efforts by approx. 6-8 students over approx. 8 weeks. Since 2008 all projects are carried out on real data from real fields. The recent group projects are defined around the data for five oil fields abandoned in the 1990ies at 15 USD/bbl scenarios. The data include seismic, logs, core and fluid data, production and injection data, abandonment information, well and field files. The data together with financial assistance were provided by a major oil company in Germany to allow students to work with the data and come up with plans for the redevelopment of the fields. University staff is coaching the groups with further support coming from industry experts. Results achieved by the students are presented at the end of the group projects in front of a panel formed by faculty and industry experts. In the process, the data providing Oil Company will receive a "peer reviewed" concept that may be further adapted to the company utilization. Many SPE papers presented over the years the achievements of various universities through the aid of real field data and the student work. Yet we want to present a "real field data" project that has been successfully implemented at Institute of Petroleum Engineering (ITE), TU Clausthal, Germany. This paper summarizes the experience gained during more than 2 years of integrated group projects with real data and strong industry involvement.