The Seventh Petroleum Geology Conference (PGC VII) was the latest in a prestigious series dating back to 1974. Over the years, this conference series and the associated proceedings volumes, commonly known as the ‘Barbicans’, have provided an important reference to NW Europe exploration and production, from its early life as an emerging world class petroleum province, through to its current mature stage.

This book is different from most books written about geostatistics. The focus here is not on providing an analytical and deductive understanding. It does not attempt to explain the inner workings of its algorithms or exactly how a variogram is calculated and modeled, nor does it provide an exhaustive list of geostatistical algorithms for seismic-data integration.

In this book the basics of reservoir simulation are presented through the modeling of single-phase fluid flow and multiphase flow in petroleum reservoirs using the engineering approach. This text is written for senior-level BSc students and first-yearMSc students studying petroleum engineering. The aim of this book is to restore engineering and physics sense to the subject. In this way the misleading impact of excess mathematical glitter, which has dominated reservoir simulation books in the past, is challenged. The engineering approach, used in this book, uses mathematics extensively, but it injects engineering meaning to differential equations and to boundary conditions used in reservoir simulation. It does not need to deal with differential equations as a means for modeling, and it interprets boundary conditions as fictitious wells that transfer fluids across reservoir boundaries. The contents of the book can be taught in two consecutive courses. The first undergraduate senior-level course includes the use of block-centered grid in rectangular coordinates in single-phase flow simulation. Thematerial ismainly included in Chapters 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9. The second graduate-level course deals with block-centered grid in radial-cylindrical coordinates, point-distributed grid in both rectangular and radial-cylindrical coordinates, and the simulation of multiphase flow in petroleum reservoirs. The material is covered in Chapters 5, 8, 10, and 11 in addition to specific sections in Chapters 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7 (Sections 2.7, 4.5, 5.5, 6.2.2, 7.3.2, and 7.3.3).

Engineering systems must be designed to withstand the actual and probable loads that may be imposed on them. Hence the wall of a dam must be of adequate strength to hold out mainly the reservoir water pressure but also to withstand other loads, such as seismic occasional shocks, thermal expansions/contractions, and many others. A tennis racket is designed to take dynamic and impact loads imposed by a fast-moving flying tennis ball. It must also be adequately designed to withstand impact loads when incidentally hitting a hard ground. An oil drilling equipment must be designed to suitably and adequately drill through different types of rock materials, but at the same time ensuring that its imposing loads would not cause rock formation integrity affecting the stability of the drilled well. <...>