Training

Knowledge transfer is our mission

PETROLERN Training designs and delivers practical courses on a wide range of topics related to subsurface engineering and geosciences. Our public courses are available in different locations around the world, providing maximum accessibility and convenience to our clients. Customized, in-house courses are designed to fit our clients’ specific needs and involve the most knowledgeable international experts to fulfill the requirements. As of today, PETROLERN has conducted more than 200 public and in-house courses on different topics for a variety of companies in several locations.

PETROLERN is in the processes of developing a series of green energy courses focused on two main topics:

  • Carbon Capture and Storage
  • Geothermal Energy

More information will be provided shortly.

More than 300 courses worldwide. Attendees from more than 50 countries and 25 companies.

Geothermal Energy Training Course

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Geothermal Resource Decision Workshop: Virtual Hands-on Introduction

 

Date: May 24 – 27th, 2021, 9am – 5pm CDT

Price:

Registration Fee

$1,800 USD

Un-employed Discount Fee*

$900 USD

Student Fee*

$400 USD

* For un-employed and student discount, you must email proof to [email protected].

Click here to learn about the course description

During geothermal exploration and development, a resource team predicts reservoir properties and estimates uncertainty to support high-value decisions. This workshop simulates the decision process from geothermal prospect identification to power plant commitment. During the workshop, participants get immediate feedback on decision outcomes in order to improve prediction reliability and decision effectiveness. Teams of 3 to 5 participants complete hands-on exercises with support from expert coaches, ensuring progress regardless of participants’ backgrounds. Participants use real data to construct geothermal conceptual models, use these conceptual models to generate probabilistic outcomes for well targets and electrical power generation capacity, make decisions based on those predictions and economic constraints, and test those decisions against real outcomes. Interspersed among the exercises are lectures that introduce key concepts on geothermal geochemistry, geology, geophysics, the thermodynamics of water flow in rock, well temperature log and production test interpretation, decision risk assessment and economic criteria for decision making.

This virtual, interactive, and hands-on workshop has received outstanding reviews by geoscientists and reservoir engineers from both the geothermal and petroleum industries. It is based on the Geothermal Resource Decision Workshop curriculum that has been used worldwide since 2000 for training geothermal industry professionals and within academic courses. The workshop demonstrates the application of current resource analysis technology and offers participants the opportunity to interact with geothermal industry experts. Each day concludes with a virtual social hour where participants have the opportunity to mingle with presenters and coaches to clarify concepts, discuss specialized interests or make contacts.

Petrolern At-Home Seminar Series – P.A.S.S.

PETROLERN conducted a series of free online seminars by industry leaders for the COVID-19 home quarantine time to keep our knowledge transfer mission going on. The objective was to keep our technical community learning and motivated while passing through this difficult time. The seminars cover topics related to oil and gas, geothermal energy and CCS.

You may watch the recordings on PETROLERN’s YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVGqjqaA9XXYoRdrebYRbTg.

 

Other Available Courses

  • Field Development Geomechanics: from 1D to 4D, Well to Field Scale
  • Non-conventional Geomechanics for Unconventional Resources
  • Drilling Geomechanics and Wellbore Stability
  • Sand Production Prediction
  • Shale Gas Geomechanics
  • Geomechanics for Hydraulic Fracturing and Solid Injection
  • Geomechanical Aspects of Fractured Reservoirs
  • Oilfield Rock Mechanics Testing
  • Deep-water Drilling Geomechanics
  • Well Design and Construction
  • Underbalanced Drilling (UBD)
  • Deviated and Horizontal Drilling
  • Casing and Tubing Design
  • Deep-water Drilling Design and Operations
  • Dynamic Pressure Drilling
  • Formation Pressure Predictions
  • Petroleum Reservoir Rock and Fluid Properties
  • Reservoir Characterization and Simulation
  • Phase Behavior and PVT
  • Naturally Fractured Reservoirs
  • Tight Reservoirs Characterization and Modeling
  • Enhanced Oil Recovery
  • Hydraulic Fracturing: Design and Execution
  • Basic and Advanced Petrophysics
    • Introductory Numerical Techniques for Petroleum
    • Development of Unconventional Resources
    • Basin Analysis
    • Fluid Inclusion
    • Hydrocarbon Reserves and Resources
    • Image and Advanced Log Analysis
    • Petroleum Geochemistry
    • Risk Analysis, Prospect Evaluation and Exploration

Our Instructors

Joseph Batir

Joseph Batir is a research geoscientist with exploration experience in East Texas, Permian Basin (Central Basin Platform), and Alaska resulting in new insights and prospect generation within existing and emerging plays. He holds a doctorate of philosophy in geophysics from Southern Methodist University. He is a technology-driven researcher with a literacy of multiple industry softwares, numerical code writing experience, and perpetual review of new software and technologies that has resulted in new funding, resource, and research opportunities. His previous research areas include Alaska (Cook Inlet and Interior), British Columbia, Permian Basin, offshore West Africa, Illinois Basin, Michigan Basin, Snake River Plain, and Hellisheidi geothermal field – Iceland.

Hoss Belyadi

Hoss is currently a Senior Reservoir Optimization Engineer specializing in production and completions optimization, completions and reservoir modeling, machine learning, and project evaluation. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Marietta College and Saint Francis University teaching Natural Gas Engineering, Enhanced Oil Recovery, and Hydraulic Fracture Stimulation Design. Previously he was an adjunct professor at West Virginia University teaching Hydraulic Frac Stimulation Design. After working the first two years of his career as a completions engineer designing and pumping Marcellus, Utica, and Upper Devonian Shale plays, he has been a reservoir optimization engineer focusing on optimizing completions, reservoir, production, automation and ML, and economic aspects of unconventional reservoirs. Mr. Belyadi is the primary author of “Hydraulic Fracturing in Unconventional Reservoirs: Theories, Operations, and Economic Analysis”, peer reviewed and published by Gulf Professional Publishing (Elsevier). Mr. Belyadi has been a member of Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) since 2006 and has authored and coauthored several SPE papers on completions optimization and production enhancement. Hoss earned his BS and MS, both in Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering from West Virginia University.

Andrew Buffin

Andrew has over 35 years’ experience in the petroleum industry, primarily in Australia, North Sea, South America, New Zealand and Libya. Andrew has worked for a variety of service companies, consultancies and operators, including Baker Hughes, Senergy, Woodside, Shell and Santos where he held both management and senior technical roles with extensive subsurface petroleum experience with expertise in all aspects of well site operations, exploration and development geology, petrophysics, and reservoir management across various types of reservoirs and diverse geological settings. Andrew is presently Principal Petrophysicist and Managing Director at ResEval Consulting Pty Ltd based in Perth (WA) and the main petrophysics instructor for Petrolern LLC.

William Cavazza

Dr. William Cavazza is a Professor of Stratigraphy and Sedimentology at the University of Bologna since 2002. His current research focuses on the combined application of structural geology, geodynamics, sedimentology, and stratigraphy to the analysis of ancient and modern sedimentary basins. He has directed a number of international scientific cooperation projects involving UNESCO, IUGS, NATO, Italian and foreign research institutions, as well as the oil/mining industry. He has organized fieldwork in the Rocky Mountains, the Chilean Andes, the Rio Grande Rift, the Alps, the Greater and Lesser Caucasus, and Iran.

Abhijit Dandekar

Dr. Abhijit Dandekar is a Professor and chair of petroleum engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), where he has taught since January 2001. Before joining UAF, he was an assistant research professor at the Technical University of Denmark. In the summer of 2002, he also worked as visiting faculty at the University of Petroleum Beijing, P.R.C. He has also been a visiting professor at the African University of Science and Technology (AUST) in Abuja, Nigeria. He holds a B.Tech degree in chemical engineering from Nagpur University, India and a Ph.D. degree in petroleum engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. Abhijit Dandekar is an active member of SPE and the author or co-author of over 30 peer-reviewed technical papers, over 45 technical conference papers in the petroleum literature and numerous research reports, in areas as diverse as special core analysis, PVT and phase behavior, gas-to-liquids, gas hydrates, viscous oils, wettability alteration and CO2 sequestration. He is also the author of the CRC Press book Petroleum Reservoir Rock and Fluid Properties.

Afshin Fathi

Dr Afshin Fathi is an organic geochemist-basin modeler expert with extensive experience in different applications of petroleum geochemistry and source rock evaluation in oil and gas exploration, production and flied development. He has conducted or managed several industrial and research projects in conventional and unconventional reservoirs all over the world. Afshin holds BSc in Mining Engineering, MSc in Petroleum Exploration Engineering and PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Leoben University in Austria. He has given different industry short courses for the Research Intitule of Petroleum Industry, National Iranian Oil Company, Leoben University, National Iranian South Oil Company, POGC, Exploration Direction of NIOC, the FerVID group, TerraEx, and PETROLERN.

Steven Fehr

Steven Fehr is an oil finder with 34 years of global experience in oil and gas exploration, development, global new ventures, and technical assurance. Steven has been exposed to most basins and plays and has detailed exploration experience in over 25 basins spanning the globe. He is expert in integrated and holistic evaluations of exploration opportunities with excellent understanding of petroleum economics and commercial decision making. He has strong background in setting exploration strategies and effectively managing exploration portfolios. Steven has been involved in the discovery of Talisman Energy Kurdamir/Topkhana in Kurdistan (~600 MMBOE), Talisman Energy Acacias in Colombia (~250 MMBOE) and Chevron Hibernia Southern Extension in Canada (230 MMBOE). He has led the teams that set the standards for “Exploration New Ventures Evaluations: Chevron”, Play Analysis: Chevron, Talisman Energy, Maersk Oil”, and “Risk and Resource Estimation: Talisman Energy and Maersk Oil”. As part of the implementation of these standards and through the assurance of evaluations which were guided by these standards, he was involved in regular formal training as well as daily informal training on risk analysis and prospect evaluation. Steven led an initiative in both Talisman and Maersk, to promote early integration of prospect risk and resource evaluations with economic evaluations to foster more effective exploration decision making. He has intimate understanding of the components of exploration economic evaluations and have brought this business focus to every subsurface evaluation.

Abdelaziz Khlaifat

Dr. Abdelaziz Khlaifat is Professor at American University of Iraq in Sulaimani. Prior to that, he was the Petrochemical Engineering Department Head at Abu Dhabi Polytechnic and the Research and Development Manager of Dhahran Research Centre at Weatherford International, and erstwhile, he worked as a Senior Reservoir Engineer, specialized in unconventional resources (tight and shale gas) at Weatherford in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Before joining Weatherford, he was a full professor of chemical engineering at Mutah University, Jordan. He obtained his BSc degree in petroleum engineering from Moscow Institute of Oil & Gas in Russia, and his Master and PhD in chemical/reservoir engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA. Dr. Khlaifat has been actively involved in scientific R & D of novel methodologies and techniques in tight and shale gas reservoirs, shale gas resources development workflow and tight gas staged field experiments. Abdelaziz has authored over 100 publications including journal articles, book chapters and specialized conference proceedings in the areas of fluid flow inside porous media, reservoir engineering, unconventional tight and shale gas, oil shale non-aqueous phase liquid transport, photocatalysis, two phase flow modeling and Dead Sea related research.

Kevin Klitz

Kevin Kitz is a Professional Engineer and geothermal specialist who seeks to innovatively use existing technology to create new or better energy investment opportunities. Kevin has worked in almost all aspects of commercial geothermal development across his 35-year international career.  He has been involved with all geothermal resource types, and his work has included, reservoir modeling., drilling,  production facilities, power plants, O&M, PPAs, Transmission, marketing, and financing.  He has been an independent consultant since 2018 working on conventional and innovative approaches to geothermal development, always with an eye toward quality investment opportunities.

David Marshall

David has over 35 years of experience as an international Drilling and Completions Manager responsible for delivering exploration, appraisal and production wells worldwide most recently with Hess Corporation. Projects completed by David include deep-water, remote offshore wells far from resupply, high pressure wells requiring ice-reinforced drillships in the Canadian Arctic Ocean, HPHT wells onshore and offshore, remote desert land wells and unconventional shale oil wells. He has been Production Manager for an offshore field in Indonesia and General Manager for an oil and gas exploration company in the Sultanate of Oman. His career has also included 5 years in a management role with a major drilling contractor in the USA and France. In addition, he has undertaken research work with emphasis on casing design. Since 2015, David is involved in preparing and presenting industry courses on Deepwater Design and Operations, HPHT Design and Operations, Drilling Project and Risk Management and Principles of Casing Design.

Maria Richards

Maria Richards, SMU Geothermal Laboratory Director in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, researches geothermal resources and oversees Federal and State government grants and company contracts for SMU Geothermal Lab’s faculty, staff, and students. Maria was President of the Board of the Geothermal Resources Council (GRC) in 2017-18, and a Named Director of the 2015-16 Board for the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Alliance (TREIA). Her research is focused on expansion of geothermal energy utilization into sedimentary basins.  This work includes improving heat flow and temperature-depth maps, on-site geothermal exploration and data collection, and assessment of low temperature heat sources for utilization potential such as the conversion of oil and gas fields into production of geothermal energy. Her field work experience includes temperature measurements and sample collection in the Northern Mariana Islands, South Korea, Peru, and Montana.  Along with Cathy Chickering Pace, Richards coordinated the SMU Node of the National Geothermal Data System funded by the Department of Energy, and, with David Blackwell completed the 2004 Geothermal Map of North America, Dixie Valley Synthesis, and the resource assessment for the MIT Report on the Future of Geothermal Energy. Maria coordinated nine “Power Plays” conferences focused on geothermal energy in oil and gas fields. Through the SMU Geothermal Lab outreach efforts, Maria assists numerous companies and students world-wide to disseminate information on geothermal energy and resources. Maria holds a Master of Science degree in Physical Geography from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and a B.S. in Environmental Geography from Michigan State University.

Selim Shaker

Dr. Selim Shaker, with over 35 years of experience in oil and gas industry, works as Consulting Geoscientist for Geopressure Analysis Services Inc. (G.A.S). He holds BSc, MSc and PhD in Geology from ASU, Egypt and a diploma in Hydrogeology from Prague University (UNESCO). He started his career in Egypt as a well-site stratigrapher and structural geologist. During his 30 years of U.S. domestic service, his main function as Exploration Geologist was prospects generation and risk assessment in offshore Gulf of Mexico (Shelf and Deepwater), onshore TX and LA, Egypt, NW Australia, Algeria, Libya, North Sea and China. After retiring from Phillips Petroleum in 2000, he joined KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM INC (KSI) for 4 years to collaborate on building their DrillWorks software, finalizing the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater DEA-119 study and several domestic and abroad projects.

Hamed Soroush

Dr. Hamed Soroush is an internationally recognized geomechanics expert with extensive experience in geomechanics and rock mechanics, including teaching academic and industry courses. He has conducted or managed more than 200 consulting and research projects worldwide. Hamed is currently the CEO of PETROLERN LLC providing strategic planning, project management, technical leadership, support and training for geomechanics and petroleum engineering applications. Prior to that, he held several positions with companies such as Dong Energy, Shell, PDVSA, Weatherford, Senergy, GMI, CSIRO, and TSL in various locations in the Middle East, Australia, North Sea, and Americas. Hamed holds BSc in Mining Engineering and MSc in Rock Mechanics from Amirkabir University and PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Curtin University of Technology in Australia. He has given different industry short courses for PETROLERN, SPE, AAPG and EAGE and has served as steering committee on several SPE and EAGE conferences and workshops. He served as SPE Distinguished Lecturer for the 2012-2013 and 2017-2018 programs.

Syed Tariq

Dr. Syed Tariq is currently Reservoir Engineering Director at Petrolern LLC. He retired from ExxonMobil in 2016 after 40 years of service in the upstream oil and gas industry both in the US and overseas. During his long career, he held various technical and management assignments working on ExxonMobil’s assets. He managed the largest gas field in the world (North Field, Qatar) in support of the mega LNG projects. Later on, he also managed one of the largest oil fields in the world (Upper Zakum field, Offshore Abu Dhabi). He has experience of implementing ExxonMobil’s EOR projects in USA, West Africa and Middle East and has taught internal courses and conducted research in EOR. Dr. Tariq is a senior member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and has been an active participant in its activities since 1973. He served as SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 1987, as Technical Editor of the SPE Journal from 1985-1994 and Director of SPE’s Qatar section from 2003-2006. He has contributed to oilfield technology with over 50 technical papers, SPE’s monograph on Oilfield Perforating Technology and US patents. He earned the ‘Advanced Professional Skills Award’ from ExxonMobil Corporation in November 2015 for his services to advance the engineering profession in ExxonMobil. He earned a Ph. D. in Petroleum Engineering from Stanford University in 1977.

Paco Vieira

Paco Vieira holds a BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela and a MSc degree in Petroleum Engineering from the Tulsa University in Oklahoma, USA. His oilfield career started in 1995 as a Drilling Engineer for PDVSA (Venezuelan National Oil Company). In PDVSA he worked as drilling engineer, being part of a team created for the Underbalanced and Dynamic pressure drilling technologies implementation in PDVSA fields. He worked in several research studies related multiphase flow hydraulics. In 2004 he joined Weatherford International on the Controlled Pressured Drilling & Testing Services for the Middle East and North Africa region having several positions associates with Dynamic pressure drilling technologies (Senior Field Engineer, Regional Engineering Manager, Regional Product line manager being directly involved in the implementation of the most challenging projects for dynamic pressure drilling (MPD onshore in Saudi, Oman, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, India, Morocco – MPD Offshore UAE, Oman, Egypt – UBD Algeria, Oman, Kuwait, Pakistan, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Egypt – AD Oman, UAE, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Mauritania). Including extreme narrow pressure windows in HPHT environments.

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