MSc Mature Field Management

The bulk of the world's hydrocarbons come from producing assets – so-called 'mature fields'. In turn, these supply the bulk of the world's energy.

Managing these assets is therefore a central aspect of global energy supply and will become more so as the world's giant fields become progressively more mature. Most industry jobs in exploration and production will be in this arena, requiring a talented workforce to fill them for decades to come.

Heriot-Watt's Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering has therefore created a Masters programme to address this need. The topical content is broader than the existing programmes, embracing not only geoscience, reservoir and well engineering but also surface engineering and the linkage between them in the form of Integrated Asset Management (IAM).

The subject also demands a grasp of incremental petroleum economics and risk analysis, and a methodology for handling decision-making in assets in which production and data gathering are continuous. This methodology provides the link between the programme components and sits at the core of the group exercise, with Edinburgh's own Forth Bridge as a visual metaphor for the process.

Finally, the programme deals with the asset endgame. When does production cease, how can field life be extended, how do we decommission (or then recommission?) and what are the potential uses of these reservoirs in the post-carbon era?