Petroleum & Natural Gas

The modern petroleum and natural gas industry began in Pennsylvania on August 27, 1859. Along the banks of Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, Edwin L. Drake completed a 69.5’ deep oil well that quickly stimulated a boom for the industry. Today, society utilizes petroleum and natural gas to produce a myriad of products ranging from transportation fuels and petrochemicals, to heating fuels for homes and businesses, and electricity. Over 3,000 products are manufactured from petroleum.

Penn State is a leader in petroleum and natural gas engineering. Penn State’s petroleum and natural gas program is the longest running in the U.S. and is the only program in the northeast that offers a Ph.D. program in petroleum and natural gas engineering. The EMS Energy Institute Petroleum and Natural Gas Program brings together diverse expertise in the areas of reservoir characterization, petroleum and natural gas extraction, processing, and utilization.

Research

Research Laboratories, Centers, and Initiatives

• Gas Flooding Industrial Affiliate Program
• Center for Quantitative X-ray CT Imaging
• Stripper Well Consortium
• Center for Geomechanics, Geofluids and Geohazards
• 3S Laboratory for Petroleum Research in Well Stimulation
• Unconventional Natural Resources Consortium
• NSF support and Ocean Drilling Program support
• DUSEL Experiment Development Committee

Examples of Current Research

• Gas flooding and surfactant flooding for enhanced oil recovery
• Microbe and CO₂-enhanced oil recovery
• New generation reservoir engineering analysis tools for performance prediction of unconventional natural gas reservoirs
• Well test analysis in ultra-tight and double porosity systems
• Performance prediction of shale gas and oil reservoirs using artificial expert systems (ANN)
• ANN-based field development tools
• Fluid flow modeling and experiments in coalbed methane reservoirs systems
• Trapping and leakage mechanisms during geologic carbon storage
• Digital rock physics and pore-scale transport mechanisms in reservoir environments
• Hydraulic fracturing technology
• Simulation of complex, multi-lateral well configurations
• Paradoxical behavior and maldistribution in natural gas transportation systems
• Salting/scale mechanisms, diagnosis and solutions
• Hydrocarbon recovery from mineral matter