Petroleum Geoscience

[Florene Pothoven]

The Geological Society offers grades of membership for every stage of your career, from student to retirement. Find out about the benefits of membership, and how we can help you achieve and maintain Chartered status.

Information and resources for teachers and students fromprimary education onwards; for those making careers choicesafter A-levels including undergraduate and further degreesat university; and for those seeking professionalgeosciences training or exploring lifelong learningopportunities.

Geoscientist is the Fellowship magazine of the Geological Society: with news about science, people, the Society, features, reviews, opinion, letters and forthcoming events. All this, and more, can be found at our dedicated website Geoscientist Online

The Geological Society of London is the UK's national society for geoscience, providing support to over 12,000 members in the UK and overseas. Founded in 1807, we are the oldest geological society in the world.

Submit Petroleum Geoscience publishes a balanced mix of articles that drives the science to enhance sustainable development covering all aspects of the petroleum system. The journal content reflects the international nature of the research. It welcomes a range of papers on themes that include:

• Exploration, exploitation, appraisal, development and monitoring of sub-surface hydrocarbon resources.
• Enhancing exploration efficiency, lowering technological and environmental risk, and improving hydrocarbon recovery.
• Transferable knowledge and integration of disciplines in an applied context.

This comprehensive textbook presents an overview of petroleum geoscience for geologists active in the petroleum industry, while also offering a useful guide for students interested in environmental geology, engineering geology and other aspects of sedimentary geology. In this second edition, new chapters have been added and others expanded, covering geophysical methods in general and electromagnetic exploration methods in particular, as well as reservoir modeling and production, unconventional resources and practical petroleum exploration.

The Applied Petroleum Geoscience MSc is a unique degree in subsurface geoscience and exploration at Heriot-Watt University. The degree mainly focuses on exploration petroleum geoscience, but it is closely linked with other MSc degrees and research groups in petroleum engineering and reservoir geology at the GeoEnergy Engineering, Heriot-Watt University. The degree is also applicable to non-petroleum subsurface geoscience subjects, such as CO2 storage and groundwater flow.

The Applied Petroleum Geoscience degree provides participants with a thorough training in aspects of subsurface geology, geophysics and geo-engineering, relating to the exploration, appraisal and development of subsurface resources. Although the degree mainly concentrates on exploration for hydrocarbon resources, and delineation of hydrocarbon reservoirs in the subsurface, the skills gained in this subject are applicable to all subsurface geoscience areas, including groundwater exploration, waste disposal or CO2 sequestration.

The degree is deliberately intensive, typically consisting of working a full 5 days per week of lectures and practical work, including labs or tutorial exercises designed to teach practical skills in addition to learning theory. Project work, both as groups and individually, forms part of the assessment for the degree.

Two fieldtrips are a permanent part of the course, the second as part of the Wessex Basin Team Project which aims to integrate basin scale and reservoir scale exploration tasks, similar to those that students will encounter working in Oil and Gas employment. Other fieldtrips and visits to local core viewing facilities (hosted in the neighbouring British Geological Survey facilities) will be arranged on a more ad hoc basis.

Students on the Applied Petroleum Geoscience degree come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Our online students come to us from all parts of the world, in the last few years the students in all three MSc degrees within the GeoEnergy Engineering have come from over 30 different nations. To read about what our students think about studying online visit the Meet our students pages.

Students on the Applied Petroleum Geoscience MSc will benefit from the excellent links with industry and research activities by the staff at the Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering. The Institute has an industry based Strategic Advisory Board who monitors activities in the wider context of the needs of the industry, and in addition some classes and also extra tutorial sessions are conducted by both retired and active staff from a variety of petroleum companies.

The course consists of a variety of geosciences and engineering courses addressing the concepts of petroleum exploration and appraisal. There are 8 taught courses, a team project and an individual project. The taught courses are worth 150 hours of work each, the projects are each worth 300 hours.

The students are expected to read more deeply into the subjects by independent reading around subjects and by referencing materials provided in classes, tutorials, field work reports and laboratory exercises. This is important in developing study plans, developing research plans and deciding research methods. Students are given multiple opportunities to develop research skills, including internal assessment in taught courses as well as an independent research project.

Course notes are provided for some courses, however for other courses students are expected to take notes and are provided with PowerPoint slide packs. All lecture sessions are reinforced by tutorials or classroom exercises. Coursework is then further used to extend the concepts learned in lectures and notes and to demonstrate the use of problem solving skills by the students. Course notes come with model exams and answers, as well as recommended reading lists or suggestions for further reading. All courses have a VLE page, on which notes, PowerPoints, reading lists, past exams, model answers, exercises and assessment are routinely posted for all courses.

Assessment is based on a combination of examination, project, and coursework. The project work is assessed on written and oral presentations. In the Group Project, part of the assessment is by peer review.

This degree consists of 8 courses (modules) and the option to complete 2 research projects (MSc only) to receive an accreditation from the accrediting body. For the MSc in Applied Petroleum Geoscience, the Exploration Project will include a 2 week full time residential field course, which will be charged for separately.

We aim to encourage well-qualified, ambitious students to study with us and we offer a wide variety of scholarships and bursaries to achieve this. Each year, hundreds of students enhance their educational experience through a variety of Heriot-Watt and externally funded scholarships, including opportunities funded by the University's generous alumni community, based all over the world.

Many of our past students have gained funding from industry sources, both those companies involved in oil exploration and production in their home countries or larger international companies that offer scholarship programs. For example:

There are also a number of Industrial sponsorships available every year to UK and EU students. All eligible applicants (generally EU/UK students) automatically have their CVs or applications sent to participating petroleum companies, who offer a limited number of sponsorships each year to our students. The number of sponsorships offered will vary depending on the companies' needs and situations, and the quality of the student applicants. Scholarship awards are given out after an interview event that takes place during the summer before the course starts.

A good honours or BSc degree in a relevant Geoscience discipline such as Geology or Geophysics from a UK or Overseas University. We look specifically for proven ability in basic geology or petroleum geology courses, as well as credits in maths courses. Parts of the courses listed above require higher or university level mathematics backgrounds.

We are committed to providing study opportunities to applicants who have a wide range of prior experiences through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). For more information on RPL, please contact the Online Admissions Team (egis-i...@hw.ac.uk) ahead of application. We can only consider requests for RPL at the time of application to a course of study.

If your first language is not English, or your first degree was not taught in English, we'll need to see evidence of your English language ability. The minimum requirement for English language is IELTS 6.5 or equivalent. We offer a range of English language courses to help you meet the English language requirement prior to starting your masters course:

Past students on the Applied Petroleum Geoscience MSc have gone into further research (PhD degrees in the UK and overseas). Others have gone on to work in geoscience departments of major Oil and Gas companies as well as industry service organisations, contractors and small local companies. Companies who have employed our past students include Shell and Petroceltic here in the UK, and a number of other companies worldwide including Tullow, GNPC, and Total.

At Heriot-Watt University we develop degrees that are relevant for the world of work. We work with Professional bodies and Institutes to gain appropriate Accreditations and Professional Memberships for your industry. Find out below how this degree aligns to industry.

Geoscience has always been the centre of all modern natural resource industries, starting from exploration phase, through to their development and production phase. This programme has been designed to provide students with a strong understanding of geology and geophysics that relate to exploration, petroleum discovery, development and production.

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