TABLE OF CONTENTS The upstream of the petroleum industry involves itself in the business of oil and gas exploration and production (E & P) activities. While the exploration activities find oil and gas reserves, the production activities deliver oil and gas to the downstream of the industry (i.e., processing plants). The petroleum production is definitely the heart of the petroleum industry.
Petroleum production engineering is that part of petroleum engineering that attempts to maximize oil and gas production in a cost-effective manner. To achieve this objective, production engineers need to have a thorough understanding of the petroleum production systems with which they work. To perform their job correctly, production engineers should have solid background and sound knowledge about the properties of fluids they produce and working principles of all the major components of producing wells and surface facilities. This part of the book provides graduating production engineers with fundamentals of petroleum production engineering. Materials are presented in the following eight chapters:
