Practical Optimization of Petroleum Production Systems

If you are involved in oil and gas production from reservoirs, through wells to gathering network, processing facility, and to the sales point, you will do yourself and your company a favor for getting this book and more importantly do what Burney suggested in this book. This is especially true in the most challenging time as it is now when the oil price has been depressed for so long. The approaches, workflows, methodologies, examples in the book will lead you and your company to either increase oil and gas production rates or reduce production deferrals from your reservoirs and wells. The most beautiful part is that you can accomplish these goals with small or no costs in some situations. I have worked in production system optimization for the last 30 years. We have done many things Burney described in this book. I can testify that everything Burney described will work with solid efforts. We did bean-up wellhead chokes, deepened lift gas injection depths, regularly rerouted wells to different headers (high pressure or low pressure headers) as well flowing characteristics or operating condition changed for the goal to increase production rates, reduce deferral, or improve operating efficiency, or all of them at the same time. We also built our organizational capabilities so that our asset teams can carry out the production system optimization on their own while we provided guidance, support, and coaching from the center of the organization. As we moved along on our optimization journey, we have created tools for sustaining production optimization process by automating some routine and tedious parts of the workflow as suggested by Burney. Once we got good in the routine optimization, we have moved towards what is called as model based operational support where optimization is supported by real-time data and fit-for-purpose asset models. This journey and progression helped us to march beyond the optimization paradox Burney described on page 246 in the book. We have moved to the stage when our engineers can answer (1) if production is optimized any time for an asset, and more importantly (2) what can be done to make the system optimized if it is not. I wished Burney’s book was available years ago so that we could use it as a manual when started with our optimization journey from the very beginning. If you and your company can rigorously follow the suggestions Burney described in the book, you will be at a competitive advantage. It is good to make this book accessible to reservoir engineers, petroleum engineers, production engineers, surveillance champions, facility engineers, and operations teams in the company. I quite enjoy Burney’s writing style. He added appropriate anecdotes throughout the book to make it entertaining to read. It sets an excellent example in handling highly technical topics that could easily become dry (and boring) quickly. In summary, this is a very good book as a practical guide for optimization of petroleum production systems.

In my endeavours to develop an integrated production management standard at my company, I was told to read this work. I finished it in 2 days, absolutely loved it and it didn’t feel like ‘work’ at all! I wish I had read this earlier in my career or others than I have tried to influence in the past had. However as Burney says, it’s up to you to explain the value of data, prepare the economics for your project and educate others. I particularly liked the balance of theory dispersed with real world examples from Burney’s extensive career along with some humour to maintain interest. I would highly recommend any facilities, production, reservoir or operations engineer, or those interested in the oil and gas industry, to read this book. Burney is also very receptive to feedback and helping you on your own PSO journey.

The most practical book on petroleum engineering I've read!. Extremely timely for these days of low oil price and even for when the oil price is high. The story telling approach is very effective to convey the message. I am a oil production optimizer myself and got lots of new stuff out of this book, together with a nice validation to some of my day to day struggles as an engineer.

A must have for oil & gas professionals of all disciplines An excellent reference source. Written in an easy to follow style.

Burney runs an excellent course on the subject and this book is the next best thing. Being a simulation nerd, it was refreshing to learn about some much simpler methods for finding potentially much bigger opportunities much faster than the time taken to build and optimise a Maximus network model, though it pains me to say it. Though Integrated Production System models have their place in Burney's methods, who knew what value there is in actually talking to Operators before getting too sunk into the input data? The key word is "Practical"; it's a very easy read and I would recommend it to any Upstream Process or Production Engineer.

To me, this is a roadmap on how oil & gas operators should setup and maintain permanent Production System Optimisation. Burney strikes a good balance of subject depth, readability, conciseness and humour. This was my first career book bought out of my own pocket and it was worth every penny. Also, I had a few questions about parts of the book and Burney replied within hours with a good clarification.

My team uses this book regularly for our own day-to-day purposes as well as for training other engineers around the world. We have already used several of the principles in the book to collaborate with some of our asset teams to create uplift. This book is holistic, and truly applicable to the field. It does a great job of introducing production optimization and provides simple guidance to the daily workflows and thought processes that production engineers and optimization specialists should be performing each day. If production optimization is in your realm of responsibilities and you haven't looked through this book, then you're probably missing something.

This book is a must have for all PE that would like to step up their game.

We build computer measurement and control systems to optimize pumpjack production, and to optimize gas well production. This volume is directed more at optimizing facilities and the related human side of the optimization process, which is a little different.

I read this book in a couple of weeks. It is easy to read. I would recommend it to any engineer that has already been exposed to production optimization within his company. It will help him to take a few steps back to analyze how production optimization is organized and how it should be done. I especially recommend it for management as key concepts like the propagation of errors in measurement that lead to a high level of uncertainties are well illustrated. Some of these concepts are often misunderstood by managers. A lot of good advice, presented methodically, to fight against production decline and reverse the trend.