This is an archived copy of the 2022-23 catalog. To access the most recent version of the catalog, please visit http://catalog.utexas.edu/.

Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering

Master of Science in Engineering
Doctor of Philosophy

For More Information

Campus address: Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building (CPE) 2.502, phone (512) 471-3161, fax (512) 471-9605; campus mail code: C0300

Mailing address: The University of Texas at Austin, Graduate Program, Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, 200 East Dean Keeton Stop C0300, Austin TX 78712-1585.

E-mail: pgegradoffice@mail.utexas.edu

URL: http://www.pge.utexas.edu/

Objectives

This program is designed to educate engineers to solve problems related to exploring and recovering subsurface resources such as oil and gas. The program allows students to take courses in a broad range of areas, including computational geosystems engineering, drilling engineering, environmental and geosystems engineering, formation evaluation, petroleum economics, production engineering, and reservoir engineering.

Once students have chosen a degree option, they may choose to work closely with a faculty member conducting research in their area of interest. The program offers a doctoral degree based on a combination of coursework and research, and a master’s degree based on either a thesis or a report, or on coursework alone.

Facilities for Graduate Work

Excellent facilities for graduate research in petroleum and geosystems engineering are available in the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Building. In addition to departmental offices and classrooms, the building houses over 40,000 square feet of laboratory space, providing unique capabilities for studies in production logging, vertical and inclined flow in wells, artificial lift, core flooding for enhanced oil recovery, subsurface environmental remediation, drilling, stimulation, rock mechanics, well log digitizing and interpretation, PVT analysis, reservoir simulation development and application, and unconventional resources. Additional laboratory space at the J. J. Pickle Research Campus is used for research. A machine shop is maintained to fabricate and support research equipment.

In addition to the facilities of Information Technology Services, students have access to a host of computers housed in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, including numerous PCs, workstations, and supercomputing facilities at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. Excellent library facilities include the Mallet Chemistry Library, the Walter Geology Library, and the Kuehne Physics Mathematics Astronomy Library.

Graduate Studies Committee

The following faculty members served on the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) in the spring 2022 semester.

Matthew Thomas Balhoff
Hugh C Daigle
Mojdeh Delshad
David DiCarlo
David N Espinoza
John Timothy Foster
Kenneth E Gray
Zoya Heidari
Larry W Lake
Yingda Lu
Kishore Mohanty
Quoc Phuc Nguyen
Ryosuke Okuno
Jon E Olson
Masa Prodanovic
Michael Pyrcz
Kamy Sepehrnoori
Mukul M Sharma
Wen Song
Carlos Torres-Verdin
Eric van Oort
Mary F Wheeler

Admission Requirements

All prospective degree candidates must have a background satisfactory for study of advanced petroleum engineering as determined by the Graduate Studies Committee. For students without this background, such as those without degrees in engineering or in the petroleum-related fields, the Graduate Studies Committee will recommend a program of coursework designed to prepare the student for graduate study. Complete requirements for admission are available online


What Starts Here Changes the World