Note that graduate level courses are generally 500 and above. The most up to date descriptions can always be found in the USC Catalogue. For the courses offered during any given term, consult the Schedule of Classes.
PTE 411x Introduction to Transport Processes in Porous Media (3) Properties of porous rocks; capillary effect, single phase and multiphase flow through porous media; diffusion and dispersion, miscible displacement, heat transfer. Not available for credit to Petroleum Engineering majors.
PTE 412x Petroleum Reservoir Engineering (3) Properties of reservoir fluids, volumetric and material balances for gas and oil reservoirs; reservoir modeling concepts. Not available for credit to Petroleum Engineering majors.
PTE 461 Formation Evaluation (3) Concepts of petroleum geology, interpretation of downhole surveys and measurements including well logs, MWD, mud logs and samples. Not available for credit to Petroleum Engineering majors.
PTE 466 Petroleum Geology (3) Introductory topics of physical and historical geology will be focused on the components that relate to the formation of oil and gas accumulations. Not available for credit to Petroleum Engineering majors.
PTE 500 Computational Reservoir Modeling (3) Introduction to mathematical and computational methods in modeling the subsurface flow and transport phenomena.
PTE 502 Advanced Reservoir Characterization (3) Modern well logs from both open and cased holes, and methods for analyzing them to obtain information on reservoir rock properties and fluid saturations.
PTE 503 Technology of Unconventional Oil & Gas Resources Development (3) Geology of resources, exploration development, laboratory testing, drilling, formation evaluation, design and monitoring of hydraulic fracturing, forecasting, technology of oil sand and environmental issues. Recommended preparation: PTE 507.
PTE 504 Geophysics for Petroleum Engineers (3) Geosciences concepts and technologies with applications in petroleum engineering: 2D, 3D, 4D seismic, borehole geophysics, passive seismic, controlled source electromagnetics, geophysical and geological modeling and inversion. Recommended preparation: Familiarity with Matlab.
PTE 505 Inverse Modeling for Dynamic Data Integration (3) Introduction to fundamentals of deterministic and stochastic inverse modeling, integration of dynamic data into predictive reservoir models, reservoir parameterization, derivation of adjoint models. Recommended preparation: PTE 508, Basic knowledge of calculus, linear algebra and probability/statistics.
PTE 506 Geothermal Reservoirs (3) Geothermal reservoirs, heat and mass flow in fracture network, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), exploration methods, exploitation of hydrothermal and EGS fields, stimulation, forecasting, power generation. Recommended preparation: Familiarity with Matlab.
PTE 507 Engineering and Economic Evaluation of Subsurface Reservoirs (3) Studies data and methods for estimating size of underground fluid deposits for predicting physical and economic behavior of designed flow schemes, and for quantifying uncertainty.
PTE 508 Numerical Simulation of Subsurface Flow and Transport Processes (3) Formulation and solution of the equations describing the underground flow of fluids through porous media. Includes mass (contaminant) transport in a single and multiphase flow. Prerequisite: PTE 507 or graduate standing in engineering.
PTE 511 Advanced Phase Behavior of Petroleum Reservoir Fluids (3) From classical thermodynamics to engineering application; equations of state based calculations; PVT experiments; reservoir fluid characterization; PT-flash calculations and stability analysis; compositional grading; transport properties. Recommended preparation: CHE 330, MATH 226.
PTE 512 Gas Injection Processes Analytical Solutions and Analysis (3) Gas injection and enhanced oil/gas recovery; conservation equations; flow and phase behavior; displacement efficiency; dispersion; method of characteristics; development of multi-contact miscibility in multicomponent systems. Open only to graduate students. Recommended preparation: CHE 330, MATH 226 and MATH 245 (or similar).
PTE 514 Drilling Engineering (3) Rock mechanics; rotary drilling processes; bit selection; optimizing bit weight and rotational speed; well hydraulics and control; casing design and cementing; directional and offshore drilling.
PTE 515 Natural Gas Engineering (3) Characterization, development and prediction of natural gas reservoirs, including natural gas surface production equipment and systems, forecasting natural gas well and reservoir performance and current LNG developments.
PTE 517 Testing of Wells and Aquifers (3) Principles of well testing; down hole device; Aquifer tests; slugtests; DST; pressure transient modeling in homogeneous and heterogeneous systems; parameter estimation; computer aided techniques.
PTE 519 Integrated Physical and Cyber Security for Oil and Gas Operations (3) Infrastructure Security, Resilience and Management of Digital Oil Fields, Process Control Networks in exploration and production, refining and chemical plants, Asset Integrity principles, case histories.
PTE 531 Enhanced Oil Recovery (3) Course surveys current enhanced oil recovery processess, including waterflooding, miscible displacement, and thermal oil recovery. Recommended preparation: PTE 507.
PTE 542 Carbonate Rocks (3) Classification; porosity development; source rocks; wettability; capillary pressure curves; compressibility; surface areas; relative permeabilities; various petrophysical properties; formation evaluation; over pressures; thin section analysis.
PTE 545 Corrosion Control in Petroleum Production (3) Types of corrosion encountered in petroleum production; methods for practical control including use of inhibitors, coatings, and cathodic protection. Prerequisite: CHEM 430a.
PTE 555 Well Completion, Stimulation, and Damage Control (3) This course reviews current practices related to well completion methods, wellbore stimulation, and damage control. Formation damage prevention and stimulation methods are emphasized. Prerequisite: graduate standing.
PTE 572 Geostatistics (3) Use of geostatistical methods for exploration and development of mineral and petroleum resources, application of semi variogram, kriging, cokriging, nonlinear and parametric estimation and conditional stimulation. Prerequisite: graduate standing; knowledge of statistics or departmental approval.
PTE 574 Optimization Methods for Subsurface Energy Resources Development (3) Optimization algorithms for oilfield development, including well control optimization, well placement, open-loop and closed-loop model predictive control, and robust optimization. Prerequisite: PTE 500. Recommended preparation: Familiarity with linear algebra, vector calculus, general reservoir engineering and Matlab programming language.
PTE 578 Advanced Production Engineering (2) Principles of oil well and gas well production; design of artificial lift systems and surface operations; field problems of enhanced oil recovery operations.
PTE 581 Environmental Technology in the Petroleum Industry (3) This course examines engineering and scientific principles necessary for understanding, assessing, and remediating environmental problems in the petroleum industry including drilling, production, transportation and refining operations. Prerequisite: graduate standing.
PTE 582 Fluid Flow and Transport Processes in Porous Media (3) Principles of single and multiphase flow through porous media; mechanisms of immiscible and miscible displacement, momentum, heat and mass transportin porous media.
PTE 586 Intelligent and Collaborative Oilfield Systems Characterization and Management (3) Review of soft computing methods such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, problematic reasoning in reservoir characterization, dynamic reservoir modeling, oilfield data integration and analysis of uncertainty in prediction.
PTE 587 Smart Completions, Oilfield Sensors and Sensor Technology (3) Intelligent Wellbore completion, technology of subsurface and surface sensors, deployment and data acquisition, tele-monitoring and feedback, reliability of sensors, data transmission, systems networks.
PTE 588 Smart Oilfield Data Mining (3) Methods for oilfield data mining, data preparation mining images, prediction and knowledge discovery, subset selection, pattern recognition. Limited to students graduate standing.
PTE 589 Advanced Oilfield Operations with Remote Immersive Visualization and Control (3) Immersive subsurface and surface environments, web based monitoring and feedback, visualizing risk, unattended operation.
PTE 592 Computational Geomechanics (3) Physical, mathematical and simulation aspects of coupled fluidflow and geomechanics in petroleum reservoirs. Conservation laws of mass and momentum applicable to fluid-saturated porous media will be derived. Finite element and finite volume methods for solution of the coupled problem of fluid flow and deformation will be developed. Computer implementation of the numerical methods will be emphasized.
PTE 594 Formation Damage (3) Overview of background and techniques required for understanding, assessing, and mitigating formation damage in petroleum and subsurface reservoirs.