Guo, Boyun / Petroleum Production Engineering, A Computer-Assisted Approach Guo-prelims Final Proof page ix

29.12.2006 10:39am

Preface
The advances in the digital computing technology in the
last decade have revolutionized the petroleum industry.
Using the modern computer technologies, todays petroleum production engineers work much more efficiently
than ever before in their daily activities, including analyzing and optimizing the performance of their existing production systems and designing new production systems.
During several years of teaching the production engineering courses in academia and in the industry, the authors
realized that there is a need for a textbook that reflects the
current practice of what the modern production engineers
do. Currently available books fail to provide adequate
information about how the engineering principles are applied to solving petroleum production engineering problems with modern computer technologies. These facts
motivated the authors to write this new book.
This book is written primarily for production engineers
and college students of senior level as well as graduate
level. It is not authors intention to simply duplicate general information that can be found from other books. This
book gathers authors experiences gained through years of
teaching courses of petroleum production engineering in
universities and in the petroleum industry. The mission of
the book is to provide production engineers a handy guideline to designing, analyzing, and optimizing petroleum
production systems. The original manuscript of this book
has been used as a textbook for college students of undergraduate and graduate levels in Petroleum Engineering.
This book was intended to cover the full scope of petroleum production engineering. Following the sequence
of oil and gas production process, this book presents its
contents in eighteen chapters covered in four parts.
Part I contains eight chapters covering petroleum production engineering fundamentals as the first course for
the entry-level production engineers and undergraduate
students. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the petroleum production system. Chapter 2 documents properties
of oil and natural gases that are essential for designing and
analysing oil and gas production systems. Chapters 3
through 6 cover in detail the performance of oil and gas
wells. Chapter 7 presents techniques used to forecast well
production for economics analysis. Chapter 8 describes
empirical models for production decline analysis.
Part II includes three chapters presenting principles and
rules of designing and selecting the main components of
petroleum production systems. These chapters are also
written for entry-level production engineers and undergraduate students. Chapter 9 addresses tubing design.
Chapter 10 presents rule of thumbs for selecting components in separation and dehydration systems. Chapter
11 details principles of selecting liquid pumps, gas compressors, and pipelines for oil and gas transportation.
Part III consists of three chapters introducing artificial
lift methods as the second course for the entry-level production engineers and undergraduate students. Chapter 12
presents an introduction to the sucker rod pumping system
and its design procedure. Chapter 13 describes briefly gas
lift method. Chapter 14 provides an over view of other
artificial lift methods and design procedures.
Part IV is composed of four chapters addressing production enhancement techniques. They are designed for
production engineers with some experience and graduate

students. Chapter 15 describes how to identify well problems. Chapter 16 deals with designing acidizing jobs.
Chapter 17 provides a guideline to hydraulic fracturing
and job evaluation techniques. Chapter 18 presents some
relevant information on production optimisation techniques.
Since the substance of this book is virtually boundless in
depth, knowing what to omit was the greatest difficulty
with its editing. The authors believe that it requires many
books to describe the foundation of knowledge in petroleum production engineering. To counter any deficiency
that might arise from the limitations of space, the book
provides a reference list of books and papers at the end of
each chapter so that readers should experience little difficulty in pursuing each topic beyond the presented scope.
Regarding presentation, this book focuses on presenting and illustrating engineering principles used for
designing and analyzing petroleum production systems
rather than in-depth theories. Derivation of mathematical
models is beyond the scope of this book, except for some
special topics. Applications of the principles are illustrated
by solving example problems. While the solutions to
some simple problems not involving iterative procedures
are demonstrated with stepwise calculations, complicated problems are solved with computer spreadsheet
programs. The programs can be downloaded from the
publishers website (http://books.elsevier.com/companions/
9780750682701). The combination of the book and the
computer programs provides a perfect tool kit to petroleum production engineers for performing their daily work
in a most efficient manner. All the computer programs
were written in spreadsheet form in MS Excel that is
available in most computer platforms in the petroleum
industry. These spreadsheets are accurate and very easy
to use. Although the U.S. field units are used in the companion book, options of using U.S. field units and SI units
are provided in the spreadsheet programs.
This book is based on numerous documents including
reports and papers accumulated through years of work in
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the New
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The authors
are grateful to the universities for permissions of publishing the materials. Special thanks go to the Chevron and
American Petroleum Institute (API) for providing Chevron Professorship and API Professorship in Petroleum
Engineering throughout editing of this book. Our thanks
are due to Mr. Kai Sun of Baker Oil Tools, who made a
thorough review and editing of this book. The authors
also thank Malone Mitchell III of Riata Energy for he
and his companys continued support of our efforts to
develop new petroleum engineering text and professional
books for the continuing education and training of the
industrys vital engineers. On the basis of the collective
experiences of authors and reviewer, we expect this book
to be of value to the production engineers in the petroleum industry.
Dr. Boyun Guo
Chevron Endowed Professor in Petroleum Engineering
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
June 10, 2006