Abstract
The continued surge of development activity in unconventional resource plays over the past years has led to a significant increase in newly hired engineers within the oil and gas industry. As operating and service companies increase hiring rates with these increasing activity levels, field operations often take priority to training and development of employees, which can result in a workforce with limited training beyond that which they receive in their first year or two with the company. At the same time, many operators are increasing their focus beyond operational efficiency and more toward maximizing hydrocarbon production rates and recoverable reserves through better reservoir understanding and advanced technical solutions. This optimization process, particularly true for unconventional reservoirs, requires engineers to have a broad multidisciplinary knowledge and to be able to participate in a collaborative work environment.
Therefore, the question can be posed of where this leaves engineers with limited advanced training. This paper describes a training program for early to mid-career engineers offering a unique learning experience intended to deliver an advanced skill set with respect to exploitation of unconventional reservoirs. After successfully completing their initial training, students enter the advanced program and are offered a curriculum including the areas of subsurface understanding, completion design, and reservoir optimization. The students develop expertise in unconventional well completions, providing value to well operators and teams with which they interact while gaining professional growth opportunities during the process.
