SRU receives $2.4 million petroleum engineering software donation
Slippery Rock University’s petroleum and natural gas engineering program recently received a $2.4 million software donation from Petroleum Experts, an international company known as Petex that develops engineering software for the petroleum industry.
April 16, 2019
SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. — Slippery Rock University's petroleum and natural gas engineering program recently received a boost forward. The three-year old program received a software donation valued at $2.4 million from Petroleum Experts, an international company known as Petex that develops engineering software for the petroleum industry.
"This is a significant advancement for the program to have access to this software," said Mohammad Kazemi, assistant professor of physics and engineering, who contacted Petex to secure the 10 educational licenses that will provide SRU students access to Petex's software for the next 10 years. "We are building the foundation for the program and this software will help better prepare our students for careers in petroleum and natural gas engineering."
Petex is providing SRU with the company's Integrated Production Modeling software, which is a suite of programs used by companies to model their complete oil and gas production systems, including reservoir, wells and the surface network.
Founded in 1990, Petex has more than 400 clients worldwide and has been recognized as the market leader in technical evaluations for nearly a decade. Kazemi said that Petex evaluated SRU's program to determine how much of an impact the donation would have on the community and the industry before donating the software.
With access to these systems, SRU students will be able to develop predictive models that will prepare them for what they will encounter as professionals working in the petroleum industry.
"This software is pretty expensive, but it has many modules and it covers areas that most companies are using," Kazemi said. "One of the primary goals we have in our program is to more fully prepare students for the workforce so their on-the-job training can be greatly reduced. If our students are better prepared by being able to learn how to use this software as undergraduates, then they have better chances of finding jobs with better companies and with better compensation more quickly."
There are more than 40 students enrolled in SRU's petroleum and natural gas engineering program. Several junior- and senior-level courses will be using the Petex software that will be available in a computer lab in Vincent Science Center. Classes using the software include, Reservoir Engineering, Production Engineering, Properties of Petroleum Fluids and Petroleum Engineering Capstone Design Course, which is a senior field project class where students will get data from companies and model fluids inside the reservoir or wellbore.
"By using this software, students will see a big picture and how all these courses they are learning come together in one software package," Kazemi said.
For more information about the petroleum and natural gas engineering program at SRU, click here.
MEDIA CONTACT: Justin Zackal | 724.738.4854 | justin.zackal@sru.edu