2001 Alumni Newsletter - petroleum engineering colorado school of ...

14
Erdal Ozkan
Another year has
passed and it is the time
to say hello again. It was
a good year until early
summer when we lost
Robert Thompson. As
in the previous two
years, we had spent two
weeks in Massodona
with Robert and it was
another excellent PE 316
Field Session. I could Erdal Ozkan
not believe it when I
heard the shocking news. It will take me a long
time to get use to the fact that I cannot rely
on Robert’s experience, wisdom, and friendship
anymore.
So many other things have happened during
the last year. In general it was a busy year but
not out of the ordinary. I enjoyed teaching and
research. In addition to the ongoing Horizontal
Well Completion Project, I obtained funding for
another project on the Optimization of Plunger
Lift Performance in Stripper Gas Wells. These
projects and my other research should keep me
busy for some time.
My family and I spent most of the summer
in Turkey. It was a hot summer. (Global warming
must be for real!) Coming back was nice but I
am still trying to finish the work accumulated
in my absence. My goal is to clean my desk by
the time we meet in New Orleans for the SPE
Conference (looking at my desk, it looks like
an ambitious plan).
Two of my students, Jamir Gil and
Mohammed Al-khamis, will present papers at the
SPE conference this year. I am very proud of
them and I hope you can come to listen to their
presentations and support them.
Hoping to see you in New Orleans in October.
Turhan Yildiz
This is the very first newsletter I am writing
as I have just joined the faculty of petroleum
engineering. Prior to joining CSM, I have worked
at three other universities and spent several years
in the oil industry. I have taught courses on production
and reservoir engineering. I was involved
in projects ranging from the development of a
new formation testing tool for tight gas sands
to integrated surface facility/pipeline network/
reservoir simulation of gas fields with commingled
multiple reservoirs.
I received my BS degree from Istanbul
Technical University and MS and PhD degrees
from Louisiana State University, all in petroleum
engineering.
My main objective in teaching basic undergraduate
level courses is to convey critical
thinking and problem solving capabilities to the
students. Besides teaching algorithms and engineering
calculation procedures, I try to cover
how the algorithms and models can be tied with
the physical phenomena and blend the theory with
the open-ended projects based on incomplete,
partial, and contradictory real field data. I see
the graduate study as the making of a researcher
and an advanced technology practitioner. As a
research advisor, I make the effort to see that
the advisee grows to be a better researcher than
the advisor.
In my research
work, I search for practical
solutions to real
field problems, based on
fundamental physical
principles and the advanced
computing technology.
Currently, I am
one of the co-principal
investigators of the
Joint-Industry-Project
titled “Optimization of
Horizontal Well Comple-
Turhan Yildiz
tions." In conjunction with this project, we are
developing software for evaluating different completion
options for horizontal/multilateral wells.
Last year, I spent most of my time developing
and teaching a Capstone Design Course,
which is required by ABET. The goals set for
the design course are to integrate fundamentals
and design concepts of petroleum geology, formation
evaluation, reservoir, production, drilling
aspects of petroleum engineering, to work
with real field data in a multi-disciplinary team
environment, and to expose the students to openended
problems. The design problems are selected
to cover as many aspects of real oilfield operations
as possible. In the summer, I taught a graduate
class on Advanced/Intelligent/Multilateral Well
Performance. I also spent part of the summer
doing research for the JIP on horizontal wells.
At CSM, I started teaching a course on
well completion and stimulation. I plan to develop
new courses on natural gas field operations and
engineering and surface facility design.
I look forward to meeting the alumni during
the SPE Annual Meeting in New Orleans.