By Alexandra Macia
Special from UTPB
The Petroleum Engineering Department in collaboration with West Texas Geology Society, recently hosted a two-day course for both oil and gas professionals and UTPB students.
About 70 students, faculty, and industry professionals participated in the course on the fundamentals of hydraulic fracturing.
“Currently, fracking is a routine completion step to produce from unconventional formations like shale and enhance production from conventional formations. Without fracking, production from shale wouldn’t be possible and the U.S. wouldn’t be an energy independent country,” said Petroleum Engineering Department Coordinator Dr. Ahmed Kamel.
Students and professionals had access to GOHFER software, one of the premier software packages used in the industry for fracturing treatment design. The course increased their knowledge on a variety of things including hydraulic fracturing, treatment planning, technical design, operational considerations, post job analysis, and economics.
“This course benefited both students and faculty as it was taught by the premier developer of one of the state-of-the-art fracking simulators, GOHFER, which is available at our department. This enriched their knowledge of the fracking process itself and advanced their hands-on experience with the simulator,” said Dr. Kamel.
