SURVEY OF MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF MATHEMATICS EDUCATION TO PETROLEUM ENGINEERING EDUCATION BETWEEN 1986 AND 2006

Although a vivid account of the successful support of mathematics education is available in the literature spanning over two centuries, this paper surveys some of these major contributions to Petroleum engineering education in the last 20 years. This period is chosen (I) because it portrays the trend in mathe-matic application in Petroleum engineering in this millennium, (2) to create a forum for future collaboration between the Petroleum engineer and the mathematician, and finally (3) to alert the Mathematicians of the emerging problem areas requiring mathematical further solutions in Petroleum engineering. The survey shows that (1) mathematics education will continue to be extremely relevant to Petroleum engineering, (2) during the period, horizontal well technology gained more prominence in mathematical representations and analyses, (3) assumptions, which merely simplify mathematical formulation in Petroleum engineering, constitute sources of errors in reservoir system performance prediction, (4) significant improvement is still required in the methods analyzing oil and gas exploration results to minimize incidences of drilling dry wells, and (5) reservoir simulation as is presently taught is still too advanced for young and inexperienced Petroleum engineers.