Foreword Available

I recall with very fond memories my time as a student at Imperial College, London in the late 1970s, studying on the MSc degree course in petroleum engineering. Like all the other students, I absorbed everything I needed to know to begin an exciting career as a petroleum engineer—how to drill wells, analyze the data obtained from those wells (cores, logs, drill stem tests, etc.), understanding the basics of geophysics and seismic interpretation, the mapping of fields, learning the wonders of material balance, poring over the intricacies of offshore platform and pipeline designs, figuring out how the fledgling technology of reservoir simulation worked, etc., etc.