Earn a Double Degree with our Joint International Master Program in Petroleum Engineering

Please choose a Double Degree:

Earn a Double Degree with our Joint International Master Program in Reservoir Management

The newly introduced Joint International Master Program in Petroleum Engineering at Montanuniversität Leoben and Colorado School of Mines is now available to you.

Receiving two degrees, one from Montanuniversität Leoben and another one from Colorado School of Mines, is a great opportunity to broaden your job prospects. It also provides you with the opportunity get to know different countries, cultures, people and places. The Joint International Master Program in Petroleum Engineering between Montanuniversität Leoben and Colorado School of Mines focuses on “Reservoir Management”.

Earn a Double Degree with our Joint International Master Program in Advanced Well Construction and Operation Technology

The newly introduced Joint International Master Program in Petroleum Engineering at Montanuniversität Leoben and Gubkin Russian State University Oil & Gas is now available for you.

Receiving two degrees, one from Montanuniversität Leoben and another one from Gubkin Russian State University Oil & Gas, is a great opportunity to broaden your job prospects. It also provides you with the opportunity get to know different countries, cultures, people and places. The Joint International Master Program in Petroleum Engineering between Montanuniversität Leoben and Gubkin Russian State University Oil & Gas focuses on “Advanced Well Construction and Operation Technology”.

4 semesters
Full-time program
Classes in English
Starts October, 2024

1st Semester

2nd Semester

3rd & 4th Semester

Master’s Thesis

1st Semester: Montanuniversität Leoben

During the first semester, both Montanuniversität and Colorado School of Mines students will attend lectures at Montanuniversität Leoben.

Health, Safety and Environment

Reducing risks to people, facilities and the environment is an extremely important focus for the oil and gas industry. Students need to develop a strong awareness of responsibility on these issues. In the course Health, Safety and Environment you will learn about Austrian, European and international regulations and technical standards as well as understand how carefully developed regulations are part of the “HSE culture”.

Management, Decision Making and Risk Assessment

During the first semester of your master program, you will learn vital project and crisis management skills as well as decision making and risk assessment. The lectures will give you the foundation you need to properly initiate, plan and manage projects, whilst being ready to quickly and effectively respond to unexpected occurrences.

Petroleum Economics

In the Advanced Petroleum Economics Seminar, you will obtain the essential skill of learning how to write scientific articles in the style of a SPE-paper. Under the guidance of a supervisor, you will dive into a selection of topical areas of the petroleum engineering business to ultimately produce a scientific article.

Reservoir Management

Optimizing economic recovery of petroleum assets is essential for efficient reservoir management. Reservoir Management takes an interdisciplinary synergetic approach with techniques such as data acquisition, reservoir monitoring and uncertainty assessment to predict future reservoir performance and economic evaluation throughout a petroleum asset’s lifecycle.

Geomodeling and Geomechanics

Now that you know how Earth was formed and what are the principles of fundamental geosciences is time to focus on our field of study, Petroleum Engineering. In Geomodeling, you will obtain a deeper understanding of 3D models, seismic interpretation, faults and horizons created in a specialized software to simulate and evaluate different plays. Geomechanics is an area where you will comprehend the pressure and stresses behavior around the well.

Storage, Sequestration and Geothermal Energy

In this course you will familiarize yourself with reservoir engineering beyond the area of oil and gas production. The objective is to understand storage and sequestration processes as well as energy recovery through CO2 injection and from geothermal systems.

2nd Semester: Montanuniversität Leoben

During the second semester, both Montanuniversität and Colorado School of Mines students will attend lectures at Montanuniversität Leoben.

Enhanced Oil Recovery

Enhanced Oil Recovery will provide you with a foundation of physical and chemical principles behind microscopic displacements and reservoir-scale sweep processes to understand enhanced oil recovery. You will then learn when to choose the best method for different cases by evaluating their cost and compatibility.

Water Flooding

The lecture series Water Flooding will introduce you to the fundamentals of conventional and non-conventional water flooding processes. Theoretical, experimental and mathematical methods will be used to analyze these processes. These skills will then be applied to identifying as well as understanding key reservoir and operational factors in water injection projects with regard to recovery performance.

Reservoir Characterization and Modeling

It is essential to not only understand how reservoir modelling software work, but also their assumptions and limitations. Reservoir Characterization and Modeling will assess different seismic attributes, statistical methods and geological modelling algorithms to create and parameterize stimulation models using sub-surface information.

Field Development and Literature Review Projects

The two projects, Introduction to Field Development Project and Literature Review Project, will provide you with a mock practical experience and develop your academic writing. In Introduction to Field Development Project, you will experience the preparation and presentation of a development plan for a real reservoir by being in an artificial asset team. Whilst the Literature Review Project aims to further your understanding of scientific publications so that you are able to write literature reviews in this format.

Artificial Lift Systems

This course will cover an overview of the design and working principles of different artificial lift systems. It will examine case studies as well as the advantages, disadvantages and usage criteria for said systems. To aid the understanding, industry-standard software and the Pump Testing Facility will be used.

Well Construction

Advanced Well Construction will give you insight on technical well construction as well as planning for special and standard well design requirements. The course is split into three sections, Geo-Mechanics, Advanced Drilling and Well Planning. Geo-Mechanics will look at basic rock mechanics and apply it to wellbore stability and lost circulation. Advanced Drilling instead will discuss different problems, tools and techniques associated with vertical as well as directional/horizontal drilling. In Well Planning you will learn to use different “Landmark” modules to plan wells.

3rd & 4th Semesters: Colorado School of Mines

During the third and fourth semesters, both Montanuniversität and Colorado School of Mines students will attend lectures at Colorado School of Mines, Golden.

The lectures at Colorado School of Mines will cover subjects related to data analysis, reservoir engineering principles, reservoir simulation and management, unconventional resource development as well as integrated reservoir characterization.

For detailed information, please visit the Colorado School of Mines website.

Master’s Thesis

During the fourth and last semester, you will work on a thesis to confirm your petroleum engineering skills by applying and linking all the knowledge that you have gathered throughout the course. You will defend your master’s thesis before a joint committee between Montanuniversität and Colorado School of Mines. Hence, obtaining a Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering degree from both universities, and the opportunity to work in the international oil industry.

4 semesters
Full-time program
Classes in English
Starts October, 2024

1st Semester

2nd Semester

3rd Semester

4rd Semester

1st Semester: Montanuniversität Leoben and Gubkin Russian State University Oil & Gas

During the first semester, students from Montanuniversität and Gubkin University will attend lectures in their respective home university. The overview of the first semester in this section contains only the information for students starting the MSc program at Montanuniversität Leoben.

Mathematical Foundations

The first and one of the most important steps towards obtaining accurate and reliable results in every study is data acquisition and analysis. Thus, the lecture Mathematical Foundations for Data Measurement will address solid mathematical basis for the evaluation of measurement and experimental data.

Petroleum Economics

During the first semester of your master program, you will get the opportunity to dip into selected chapters and current topics of the petroleum business. The lecture Advanced Petroleum Economics will enable you to see and analyze economic problems and find creative solutions.

Borehole Geophysics

Borehole geophysics is the science of recording and analyzing measurements of physical properties made in wellbores. In the lecture Advanced Borehole Geophysics, you will obtain a deeper understanding of the capabilities and limitations of wireline logs.

Solid & Fluid Mechanics Applied to Oil & Gas Industry

Mechanics subjects focused on Oil & Gas Industry solutions; this is what you will expect during the lectures Flow of Fluid in Well and Pipes, Material Engineering in the O&G Industry, The O&G Industry Machine and Equipment Design & Simulation and Computational Continuum Mechanics. You will acquire essential concepts and knowledge required to understand further subjects in your studies. 

Well Placement

You will apply your knowledge in projects that are done individually and in groups to train not only your technical skills but also your team skills which are essential once you enter the professional world. A good example of integrated thinking is our lecture Well Placement that combines training in directional drilling, reservoir engineering, production engineering and surface logistics. 

Well Integrity

Well integrity and Plug and Abandonment (P&A) requirements became more rigorous during the last decades. Thus, more economical solutions and knowledge is needed by the industry. However, academic education rarely covers this new demands in depth. The lecture Well Integrity accounts exactly for these shortcomings and addresses well integrity from a holistic view.

2nd Semester: Gubkin Russian State University Oil & Gas

During the second semester both Montanuniversität and Gubkin University students will attend lectures at Gubkin Russian State University Oil & Gas in Moscow, Russia.

Offshore Field Development

New offshore oil and gas deposits are an important resource of the world energy growth. The challenging task of exploring and developing offshore zones can be fulfilled only by people with multi-disciplinary skills. Our program will prepare students on these challenges by introducing the lecture Offshore Field Development with a strong  emphasis of geo-science, reservoir and production engineering.

Ecological Protection & Global Perspective

Environmental protection has become a critical concern when developing and exploiting natural resources. Thus, the lectures Ecological Protection in the Oil and Gas Complex, Philosophy and Methodology of Sciences and Global Perspective in the Fuel and Energy Industry will provide the intellectual tools to encounter any challenge that you will be likely to face during your professional life regarding these matters.

Well Control, Drilling and Completion

Advanced lectures in the drilling master program will cover everything you will need in your toolbox as a future drilling engineer. Advanced Drilling Technology, Well Construction Problems and Solutions, Well Control and Well Completion will provide the skills to drill complex wells and control the wellbore in critical situations. Additionally, you will also get a detailed insight into equipment, materials, and procedures on a drilling rig.

Data Mining & General Theory of Dynamic Systems

During this semester, the lecture Data Mining will give you a thorough understanding of a tasks scope associated with large-scale databases application and the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and statistical methods. While the purpose of General Theory of Dynamic Systems is the acquisition of knowledge and skills to develop and research mathematical models applied to dynamic systems.

3rd Semester: Montanuniversität Leoben

During the third semester both Montanuniversität and Gubkin University students will attend lectures at Montanuniversität in Leoben, Austria.

Health, Safety & Environment

HSE, focusing on reducing risks to people, facilities and the environment, is extremely important in the oil and gas industry. Students need to develop a strong awareness for responsibility on these issues. In the lecture Health, Safety and Environment you will learn about Austrian, European and International regulations and technical standards  and understand how careful developed regulations are part of the “HSE culture”.

Advanced Well Construction & Drilling Optimization

The lecture Drilling Process Evaluation and Planning should provide fundamental knowledge on how to evaluate and optimize the drilling process. In the lectures Measurement Control, Monitoring and Analysis and Advanced Well Monitoring and Analysis you will learn different aspects of data acquisition, management and analysis. Well directional control based on downhole geological logging measurements rather than three-dimensional targets in space will be covered in the lecture Advanced Directional Drilling and Geo-steering.

Fluids & Mechanical Labs

An important part of your master studies includes the know-how training in laboratories. During the lecture Well Construction Fluids Lab you will execute a series of experiments to determine the principal fluid properties for different fluid systems, and their effects while drilling through different formations. In the lecture Well Construction Mechanical Lab, you will work on different drilling engineering related mechanical tasks using a Mini-Drill-Rig, a flow loop or a material properties evaluation setup.

Geomechanics

Wellbore stability is among the most important topics during the well construction process because drilling engineers are very interested to prevent the open hole from collapsing or sloughing while it is not cased. How to determine and evaluate geo-pressures and geo-stresses around the wellbore is part of the Geomechanics lecture.

Well Reconstruction, Restoration, P&A

When wells loose integrity over their life-cycle, they may not be able to produce. Different techniques exist to repair such wells depending on the severity of the problem. In the lecture Well Reconstruction, Restoration, Plug and Abandonment you will learn about these technologies and extend your understanding that you gained in the Well Integrity course.

4th Semester: Master’s Thesis

During your last semester you will work on a thesis to confirm your petroleum engineering skills by applying and linking all the knowledge that you have gathered during all these years. You will defend your master’s thesis before both committees, Montanuniversität and Gubkin University, and finally obtain a Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering degree from both Montanuniversität and Gubkin University, and the opportunity to work in the international oil industry.