SPE 166342

A Project Based Production Engineering Training Course for Improved Job

Performance
James Phillips, SPE, David Wilkie, SPE and Tamir Aggour, SPE, Saudi Aramco

Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 30 September–2 October 2013.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
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Abstract
A key element of the training strategy of Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Professional Development Center is to utilize simulated
work environments and project-based learning that is customized to the actual job roles, workflows, tools and data that
trainees will encounter on the job. This paper presents details of the design, development and implementation of a project-
based training course that serves as the capstone learning event in a program designed to develop new university graduates
into independently contributing production engineers. The course provides participants with an opportunity to integrate and
practice job-critical skills learned during the four-year program, using real company data, workflows and tools to work
through a realistic well surveillance and testing project. The outcome of the course is a plan to optimize and manage a field
that includes free flowing wells, artificial lift wells and gas wells. The learned skills are reinforced by having the participants
repeat the exercise for an area of their assigned fields upon leaving the course, culminating in a presentation to their local
management on their findings and recommendations. Project-based training that reflects actual work environments results in
high learner engagement, higher retention levels and improved job performance. The opportunity to immediately practice the
learned skills upon returning to work ensures the adoption of learning and adds business value. This work provides a model
of training that can be utilized in any technical environment to design, develop and deliver training that improves individual
job performance and adds value to the business.

Introduction
Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Professional Development Center (UPDC) was established to ensure a competent workforce in a
rapidly changing business environment. A large influx of young professionals to address the ongoing “crew change” brings
with it the need to accelerate the development of a large population, capturing the knowledge and experience of seasoned
professionals and transferring the knowledge as effectively and efficiently as possible. The increasing complexity of technical
operations as the company strives to further increase recovery from existing resources, adopts new technologies, and pursues
opportunities in new frontiers, requires increased training in technical depth. The shift to increasingly collaborative
workflows, allowing asset teams to leverage the availability of large quantities of real-time data to improve and accelerate
decision-making and improve performance, brings with it a need for increased training in technical breadth across disciplines.
The UPDC provides structured professional development roadmaps that span the entire careers of geoscientists and
engineers. By incorporating instructional design concepts, advanced training technologies and formal competency assurance,
the UPDC provides engaging, effective and efficient training that accelerates the achievement of competency and improves
job performance. (Aggour, 2011)
By definition, effective training results in improved performance on the job; a participant in a properly designed,
developed and delivered training event should return to the workplace with new or improved skills that are relevant to their
job duties and add value to the business. A key element of the training strategy of Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Professional
Development Center is to utilize simulated work environments and project-based learning that is customized to the actual job
roles, workflows, tools and data that trainees will encounter on the job.
The UPDC uses a rigorous, data-driven approach to establish curricula that reflect the business needs of the company,
accelerate the development of new hires, and focus on transference of training to job performance. A focus on job outcomes,
rather than individual knowledge and skills, results in performance based training rather than traditional subject matter based
training manifested as a collection of topical courses.
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Eight job families, spanning all exploration and production disciplines, are served by UPDC. Each job family has a
curriculum that is divided into two main phases. The Independent Contributor Curriculum (ICC) is designed to efficiently
develop a university graduate with no work experience into a young professional who can perform the basic functions of a
given job role with minimal supervision. The Career Professional Curriculum (CPC) provides development that takes an
independent contributor through the rest of their career, developing the technical expertise and business acumen needed at the
various stages of their career.
This paper presents details of the design, development and implementation of a project-based training course that serves
as the capstone learning event in a program designed to develop new university graduates into independently contributing
production engineers.

Production Engineering Independent Contributor Overview

A Production Engineering Independent Contributor is defined as an engineer that with minimal supervision can competently
perform the jobs that satisfy a Saudi Aramco Production Engineer’s major job responsibility, to provide stewardship over the
Saudi Aramco wells. This stewardship is accomplished via three main tasks:

1. Maintain production / injection capability

2. Maintain well integrity
3. Data gathering for Reservoir Management

The Production Engineering job family includes offshore and onshore production engineers involved with oil and gas
production, water injection, post rig-move well completion activity supervision, hydraulic fracturing and matrix stimulation,
well intervention, artificial lift, intelligent field well integrity and data gathering activities. Production Engineering
Independent Contributor Curriculum (PE-ICC) training began in 2010 with recent Petroleum Engineering graduates from
programs in the US, UK, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The first group will complete the PE-ICC program at the end of 2013.
The PE-ICC was developed by interviewing experienced Subject Matter Expert (SME) Production Engineers across the
company to define PE job activities and outcomes, leading to the identification of the training requirements. The
subsequently designed curriculum was reviewed by the SME group and approved by their line management. The course
development is supported by professional instructional designers, technical writers and graphic artists. SMEs from inside and
outside of the company were utilized to build the training elements in the ICC. The training elements and courses in the
curriculum are performance based with courses required to have a minimum of 60% - 40% activity to lecture ratio. As
nothing replaces experience in an individual’s learning curve, the courses provide for extensive practice of the skills and
knowledge taught. This practice is a combination of realistic classroom activities (simulated work) and, where applicable,
field-based post-course tasks that reinforce the activities in the courses.
The primary goal of stewards of Saudi Aramco wells is heavily addressed in the curriculum. The role of maintaining
production and injection capability was the basis of the capstone course titled Applied Well Surveillance and Testing. The
design, development and implementation of this course are discussed below.

Applied Well Surveillance & Testing Training Course

The Applied Well Surveillance & Testing training course serves as the capstone for the participants in the Production
Engineering Independent Contributor Curriculum. The participants will have around 3 years of work experience. The
training course utilizes a workshop format where the participants will be given the opportunity to practice the skills and to
apply the knowledge from earlier training courses covering Completion & Workover, Formation Damage & Acidizing,
Nodal Analysis, Surface Facilities and Artificial Lift & ESP Design.

Course Design
The design of the training course is based around the concept of a simulated Saudi Aramco field, using real data, tools and
workflows to perform a project. The simulated field consists of 14 onshore naturally flowing oil wells and 14 offshore
artificially lifted oil wells (using ESPs). Using the same commercial software used on the job, the participants will construct
models to validate the well test data, calculate the well potentials, and forecast the total field production. Participants will
analyze all of the wells performance and make recommendations for optimizing and managing the whole field.

Training Objectives
The specific training objectives of the course were identified. Upon completion of this training course, the participant will be
able to:
1. Use surveillance data to perform analysis of well behavior
2. Monitor well performance on a daily basis
a. To identify anomalies and trends in well test data that indicate problems
b. To spot erroneous well test data caused by either procedural or metering/measurement errors
3. Make recommendations to improve well performance for either a single well or a group of wells
SPE 166342 3

4. Use commercial software packages (a well performance application and a complementary surface gathering network
modeling application) to:
a. Validate the well test data
b. Calculate the well potentials
c. Forecast the total field production for a set of constraints
5. Present findings and recommendations to their supervisor so that implementation decisions can be made in a timely
manner
6. Return to work and complete the post course work assignment

Detailed Design
The classroom presentations and activities were identified to meet the training objectives. The classroom presentations and
activities were placed on a five day schedule to create an outline. The UPDC target of maximizing activities (> 60% of
course time) to keep the participants actively engaged and retain the learning experience was factored into the daily
breakdown. Figure 1 shows the daily breakdown of classroom activities, highlighting the balance of lecture and project
work. Due to the nature of this training course two instructors are required. The primary instructor will only make two
presentations. The rest of the time he is leading the participants through the activities and coaching the participants. The
secondary instructor will assist with the coaching of the participants. Thus, the experts in the classroom are serving more as
mentors and learning facilitators rather than the traditional instructor/lecturer role.
Successful completion of the training course will be achieved by the participant submitting a spreadsheet populated with
the relevant data and charts including the participant’s findings and recommendations, plus a pass in the post-test (score of >
85%).

Figure 1. Breakdown of course activities versus lecture

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Course Development
Once the design was completed the content development started. The main task was to build the simulated Saudi Aramco
field, which required several months. All of the relevant (real) well data was assembled. The well data was used to build the
well performance software models. Five years of historical well test data was uploaded into the models. All of the historical
well tests were validated and either accepted, or adjusted by making a small change to the reservoir pressure, or rejected.
A template was created for the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet contains the following information:
1. The latest validated well test data
2. The productivity index
3. The measured or calculated drawdown
4. The well potential for the existing completion
5. The percentage for the current production of the well potential
6. The rank order sorted by the current oil production of the wells
7. The cumulative current oil production of the wells (sorted by the rank order)
The flow line and trunk line data and the well performance models were used to build the surface gathering network
model, which was tested to ensure that it ran successfully. The first run calculated the well potentials. The second run
forecast the total field production for a set of constraints (the choke settings for the naturally flowing oil wells and the
operating frequency of the VSD for the artificially lifted wells). The results were transferred to the spreadsheet.
Three workflows were written to guide the participants. The “Quality Check Procedure FLOW Wells” workflow covers
the step by step process to upload and to validate the well test data for a naturally flowing oil well. The “Quality Check
Procedure ESP Wells” workflow covers the step by step process to upload and to validate the well test data for an artificially
lifted oil well. The third workflow “Procedure to Build a Surface Gathering Network Model” covers the step by step process
to build a model to calculate the well potentials and to forecast the total field production for a set of constraints. Once the
main task was completed the instructor completed the two presentations, the six exercises and the test questions.

Course Implementation
The first delivery was in December, 2012 with eleven participants enrolled who were approaching the completion of the PE-
ICC. The workflows conducted by the participants are shown in Figure 2. A description of the daily activities is presented
below.

Figure 2. Technical workflow for course participants

SPE 166342 5

Day 1
The training course started with a Pre-Test. The participants answered thirty multiple choice questions. The purpose of
the Pre-Test was to evaluate the participants’ prior knowledge of the subject matter (Applied Well Surveillance & Testing).
All but one of the participants achieved a low score on the Pre-Test (average of 35%).
The first presentation covered the concept of the training course and the activities scheduled for the next five days. By
highlighting the business relevance and the hands-on nature of the course up front, the participants were immediately
engaged and enthusiastic about the training.
The first two exercises were to extract the relevant PVT data from the original PVT reports for the two (onshore &
offshore) oil fields and to correct the PVT data (for the separator conditions) into the well performance software’s format.
For the next four exercises the participants were given the relevant well data to build the software models for the first two
naturally flowing oil wells and the first two artificially lifted oil wells. The participants completed all six exercises in a timely
manner confirming their competency in nodal analysis.

Day 2
Four participants gave a short presentation on their findings and recommendations based their work completed so far.
This helps to check that the participants are all progressing together through the project.
The course now moved on into the uncharted territory for the participants. The participants followed the two workflows
“Quality Check Procedure FLOW Wells” and “Quality Check Procedure ESP Wells”. Five years of historical well tests were
uploaded into the four well performance software models. The historical well tests were validated and either accepted,
adjusted by making a small change to the reservoir pressure, or rejected. The participants had many questions and required
intensive coaching on use of the two workflows by the two facilitators. As the participants repeated the workflows their
understanding improved, their execution was faster and they made fewer errors.
The second presentation covered surveillance and testing best practices. This presentation gave the participants the
background knowledge to be able to write a section for a Production Surveillance Plan for their business unit covering the
wells under their stewardship.
The participants were given the 24 well performance models previously prepared by the instructor. These models
contained four years of historical well test data previously validated by the facilitator.

Day 3
Four participants gave a short presentation on their findings and recommendations based on their work completed so far.
The participants were all keeping up with the pace, still climbing the learning curve, and perhaps a bit overwhelmed with the
large volume of data.
The participants were given a template previously prepared by the instructor. This was to save time and to ensure
everyone could compare their results more easily. The participants extracted the relevant data from the well performance
models and completed the spreadsheet. Once the relevant data is in the spreadsheet it can be easily reviewed and sorted.
The participants were given the fifth year of well test data for eight wells only (1st round). The participants reviewed the
well test data, validated the well tests, and updated the well performance models and the spreadsheet.

Day 4
Four participants gave a short presentation on their findings and recommendations based on their work completed so far.
While validating the well tests, participants were now starting to identify anomalies and trends and to spot erroneous well test
data. Their confidence had grown and they were starting to make findings and recommendations.
The participants were given the fifth year of well test data for an additional eight wells (2nd round). They reviewed the
well test data, validated the well tests, and updated the well performance models and the spreadsheet. After confirming that
everyone was progressing well, the participants were given the fifth year of well test data for the final eight wells (3rd round).
Again they reviewed the well test data, validated the well tests, and updated the well performance models and the
spreadsheet.

Day 5
The participants were given the surface gathering network model previously prepared by the instructor. The surface
network diagrams were completed and the flow line and trunk line data was input into the model. The participants linked
their well performance models to the surface gathering network model, generated the well IPRs, generated the well VLPs,
calculated the well potentials and forecasted the total field production for a set of constraints (the choke settings for the
naturally flowing oil wells and the operating frequency of the VSD for the artificially lifted oil wells). The results were
transferred to the spreadsheet. Over a one hour time period all of the participants submitted the successfully completed
spreadsheets.
The training course finished with a test consisting of the same thirty multiple choice questions as the pre-test. The purpose
of the post-test was to evaluate the improvement in the participants’ knowledge of the subject matter. All the participants
achieved a high score on the post-test, with an average score of 98% and an average improvement of 63% between the tests.
6 SPE 166342

The participants completed a course evaluation survey. Their satisfaction rating with the training course, the instructors and
the facilities was 96%.

Post-Course Work Assignment

The concept of the Post-Course Work Assignment is for the participants to practice the skills and to apply the knowledge
from the Applied Well Surveillance & Testing training course immediately after returning to work. This will increase the
adoption of training, cementing the knowledge and skills learned during the course. For the assignment, the course attendees
work with their line supervisors to define an area or portion of their assigned fields for evaluation. They utilize the skills
practiced in the class and conduct an evaluation of the agreed upon wells. The students then have to make a presentation to
their supervisor justifying recommendations for each of the wells included in their study. The UPDC Production Engineering
representatives (the Professional Development Advisor and the lead SME) will evaluate the success of the post course field
work assignment in collaboration with the line organization supervisors.

Future Development
The natural evolution of the course will be to incorporate Saudi Aramco’s gas field development as a key component or
separate module of the course. As we move to more intelligent field oriented field capabilities, the course will incorporate
real time well data utilizing integrated field management software to stream in real time data into the simulated fields utilized
in the course. Participants will get the simulated experience of making real time decisions in the classroom.
As with all courses, any enhancements or improvements to the course and post course activities will be implemented by
the UPDC Production Engineering representatives based on feedback from the participants and their respective supervisors.

Summary and Conclusions

Project-based training that reflects actual work environments results in high learner engagement, higher retention levels and
improved job performance. Feedback from the participants confirmed that the ability to work on real data and produce
tangible results in a learning environment resulted in improved performance on the job. The opportunity to immediately
practice the learned skills upon returning to work ensures the adoption of learning and adds business value. The design,
development and implementation of a production engineering course that follows these principles have been described. This
work provides a model of training that can be utilized in any technical environment to design, develop and deliver training
that2 improves individual job performance and adds value to the business.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Saudi Aramco for permission to publish this paper. We also express our appreciation to all
the UPDC staff whose hard work has made it a success, and to management for supporting our efforts.

Nomenclature
VLP Vertical Lift Profile
IPR Inflow Performance Relationship
PVT Pressure Volume Temperature
ESP Electric Submersible Pump
VSD Variable Speed Drive

References
1. Aggour, T. et al. 2011. The Upstream Professional Development Center (UPDC): The Continuing Evolution of Upstream Professional
Development at Saudi Aramco. SPE 145235 presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Denver, Colorado, USA,
30 October–2 November.

Author Biographies
James Phillips is the production engineering Professional Development Advisor at Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Professional
Development Center, where he is responsible for developing and maintaining the petroleum engineering curriculum. He
holds a BSc in Petroleum Engineering from Mississippi State University. David Wilkie is the production engineering Lead
Subject Matter Expert at Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Professional Development Center, where he is responsible for overseeing
the development of all production engineering courses and training events. He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering and an
MSc in Petroleum Engineering, both from Heriot-Watt University. Tamir Aggour is the head of the Strategic Planning and
Special Projects group at Saudi Aramco’s Upstream Professional Development Center, where he is responsible for strategic
oversight of all of the center’s activities. He holds BSc and PhD degrees in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M
University.