Drilling engineering education in universities has historically been closely tied to the oil and gas industries and based on a one-industry discipline.The professors have taught courses and specialized skills that would satisfy the demand from drilling experts. However, drilling engineers of the future must be educated to have skills to solve problems and to develop new technologies with a good knowledge of mathematics, computer programming, geoscience, management, etc.
Drilling engineers must learn the following abilities in ten years after being hired by oil companies: (1) Fundamental knowledge and technical skills related to drilling operation; (2) Problem solving skills by experiments and data analysis; (3) Techniques of numericel modeling and analysis; (4) Risk analysis, petroleum economics, and basic knowledge of related areas like geology, exploration geophysics, logging, reservoir engineering, production engineering; (5) Data management and business skills; and (6) Teamwork and cultural awareness. To educate these abilities, university and company education have their own responsibility.
This paper describes the state of the art and the problems of petroleum engineering education in five Japanese universities: University of Tokyo, Waseda University, Kyushu University, Tohoku University and Akita University. The academic program and system in these universities are gradually changing to cope with the recent structural changes in Japanese industry. The percentage of students continuing graduate education is steadily rising, while very few students find employment in petroleum industry. To improve the quality and value of petroleum engineering education, the universities need technical and financial support by private companies and government organization.
