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Petroleum Engineering
and Refining
Randy Reichardt
INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE OF THE CHAPTER
The petroleum industry includes both upstream and downstream activities. Petroleum engineers
work upstream, responsible for the exploration and development of oil and gas elds and wells.
Petroleum engineers’ work focuses on three areas: drilling, reservoir, and production engineering,
in the search for unprocessed crude oil, also known as petroleum.
Petroleum rening, processing, and distribution are considered downstream activities and gener-
ally fall within the subject scope of the chemical engineer. Crude oil, transported from the ground to
the rener ...