Surveillance or production engineering and simulation modeling are the two most common types of reservoir engineer jobs. Petroleum engineering, which deals with the development and maintenance of oil and gas fields, encompasses both types of reservoir engineer jobs. Reservoir engineer jobs are also available in geothermal engineering, which is a related field. This entails the construction and upkeep of hot water or steam reservoirs.
A reservoir engineer’s responsibilities include optimizing production rates and conducting simulation studies to locate potential reservoirs, among other things. These engineers also determine the performance of individual wells and estimate the amount of reserves available in existing reservoirs. Analyzing pressure data is another aspect of the job.
Existing reservoirs are monitored as part of surveillance engineering. In this case, the reservoir engineer’s primary responsibility is to maximize the reservoir’s output while avoiding overproduction. Simply put, overproduction occurs when more product is produced than can be stored, transported, processed, or sold in a given amount of time. This usually results in a waste of resources and reduces the reservoir’s lifespan.
Overproduction in geothermal reservoirs is avoided returning the extracted water to the reservoir. This keeps the reservoir productive for a long time maintaining pressure. A reservoir management program is designed to maximize the reservoir’s lifespan through surveillance engineering. Decline curve analysis and material balance monitoring are two tools used in surveillance engineering.
Finding and examining potentially viable oil, gas, or geothermal reservoirs is part of simulation modeling. The reservoir engineer’s main job is to figure out whether a new oil field, gas field, or hot water reservoir has enough resources and a long enough lifespan to warrant drilling a well. The costs of drilling and maintaining the well are compared to the potential earnings from the newly discovered reservoir. Drilling is only considered for reservoirs with a lot of resources.
An oil platform necessitates a significant financial investment on the part of the company. The reservoir engineer is responsible for accurately modeling the potential oil reserve and determining whether drilling is feasible. The estimated reserve level, reservoir characterization studies, and petrophysical studies are usually factored into the model. The reservoir engineer is in charge of the majority of the studies. Whether it’s peterochemical engineering, chemical engineering, or mechanical engineering, all reservoir engineer jobs require a background in engineering.