Editing Petroleum engineering (section)

{{Short description|Extracting crude oil and natural gas}}
{{For|petroleum refinery engineering|Process engineering}}

[[File:Contour map software screen snapshot of isopach map for 8500ft deep OIL reservoir with a Fault line.jpg|thumb| Example of a map used by reservoir engineers to determine where to drill a well. This screenshot is of a structure map generated by contour map software for an 8500 ft deep gas and [[oil reservoir]] in the Earth field, [[Vermilion Parish]], Erath, Louisiana. The left-to-right gap near the top of the [[contour map]] indicates a [[fault line]]. This fault line is between the blue/green contour lines and the purple/red/yellow contour lines. The thin red circular contour line in the middle of the map indicates the top of the oil reservoir. Because gas floats above oil, the thin red contour line marks the gas/oil contact zone.]]

'''Petroleum engineering''' is a field of [[engineering]] concerned with the activities related to the production of [[hydrocarbons]], which can be either [[crude oil]] or [[natural gas]].<ref name="pet eng 2">{{Cite web|url=https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/petroleum-engineers.htm#tab-2|title=Petroleum Engineers: Occupational Outlook Handbook: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics|website=www.bls.gov|language=en-us|access-date=2018-02-06}}</ref> Exploration and production are deemed to fall within the [[Upstream (oil industry)|''upstream'']] sector of the oil and gas industry. [[Hydrocarbon exploration|Exploration]], by [[earth science|earth scientists]], and petroleum engineering are the oil and gas industry's two main subsurface disciplines, which focus on maximizing economic recovery of hydrocarbons from subsurface reservoirs. [[Petroleum geology]] and [[geophysics]] focus on provision of a static description of the hydrocarbon reservoir rock, while petroleum engineering focuses on estimation of the recoverable volume of this resource using a detailed understanding of the physical behavior of oil, water and gas within porous rock at very high pressure.

The combined efforts of [[geologist]]s and petroleum engineers throughout the life of a hydrocarbon accumulation determine the way in which a reservoir is developed and depleted, and usually they have the highest impact on field economics. Petroleum engineering requires a good knowledge of many other related disciplines, such as geophysics, petroleum geology, [[formation evaluation]] ([[well logging]]), [[drilling]], [[economics]], [[reservoir simulation]], [[reservoir engineering]], well engineering, [[artificial lift]] systems, completions and [[petroleum production engineering]].

Recruitment to the industry has historically been from the disciplines of [[physics]], [[mechanical engineering]], [[chemical engineering]] and [[mining engineering]]. Subsequent development training has usually been done within oil companies.