Reservoir Engineering & Simulation Basics
Every development decision — where to drill the next well, when to start waterflooding, how long a field will keep producing — ultimately traces back to how well the reservoir itself is understood. Reservoir engineering is the discipline that builds that understanding, and reservoir simulation is the tool that lets engineers test decisions before committing real capital to them. Burraq Consulting’s course gives participants a working grasp of both.
What Is Reservoir Engineering & Simulation?
Reservoir engineering studies the behavior of oil and gas reservoirs — rock and fluid properties, pressure behavior, and recovery mechanisms — to estimate reserves and guide development and recovery strategy. Reservoir simulation builds on that foundation using numerical models to predict how a reservoir will perform under different development scenarios, from primary depletion through secondary and tertiary recovery methods, giving engineers a way to compare options before drilling a single well.
Who Should Attend
- Reservoir engineers building or refreshing their core technical foundation
- Geoscientists who work alongside reservoir engineering teams and need working fluency in the discipline
- Production engineers who need to interpret reservoir engineering outputs that shape their well decisions
Prerequisites
Basic reservoir engineering or petroleum engineering knowledge is recommended, since the course moves efficiently into applied material balance and simulation concepts.
What the Course Covers
- Reservoir rock and fluid property fundamentals — porosity, permeability, saturation, and basic PVT behavior
- Material balance methods for estimating original oil and gas in place from production and pressure data
- Primary, secondary, and tertiary recovery mechanisms, and how each affects ultimate recovery
- Volumetric and decline curve reserves estimation methods, and when each is appropriate
- An introduction to reservoir simulation — grid construction basics, history matching concepts, and running prediction cases
- Interpreting simulation outputs to support real development planning decisions rather than treating results as a black box
- Common pitfalls in reservoir simulation, and how to sanity-check model results against basic engineering judgment
Course at a Glance
Why Train with Burraq Consulting
Burraq Consulting’s instructors have supported reservoir studies and simulation work for operators across the region, and this course reflects that experience by focusing on interpreting and using simulation outputs to make decisions — not just running software. Participants leave able to question a simulation result critically, which is often more valuable than knowing which buttons to click.
Certification and Next Steps
This course builds practical reservoir engineering and simulation literacy. It pairs naturally with Burraq Consulting’s Fundamentals of Petroleum Production Engineering course, since reservoir and production engineering decisions are made in constant dialogue with each other.
Frequently Asked Questions
No specific software experience is required. The course focuses on the underlying methodology and how to interpret outputs, which transfers regardless of which simulation package your organization uses.
Material balance is a simpler, tank-model approach to estimating reserves and reservoir behavior using production and pressure history. Simulation uses a detailed numerical grid to model reservoir behavior spatially and over time, offering more resolution at the cost of more complexity and data requirements.
Yes. The course builds core reservoir engineering concepts before moving into simulation, making it accessible to geoscientists who need working fluency with reservoir engineering teams rather than a deep specialist background.
Reservoir engineering determines what a reservoir can deliver over time; production engineering determines how to get that delivery efficiently to the surface. The two disciplines depend on each other constantly, and this course is a natural complement to Burraq Consulting’s production engineering course.
Turn reservoir data into development decisions you can defend.
or contact us to arrange an in-house program for your technical team.