Recent advances in production engineering

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most important advances in pet roleum production engineering in the past decade. Of course. a review paper in the allotted space simply cannot do justice to all new technologies, es pecially tho that are gradual advances to established techniques. We then e xpound upon two technologies that we feel already have made or have the cap acity to make quantum impacts on the petroleum industry. These are high-per meability fracturing (often referred to in the vernacular as frac-pack and variants) and complex well architecture (which deals with wells with a main or "mother" bore from which branches are drilled). At the end of this pape r we have added a Bibliography section that includes several recent papers which, while not individually referenced in the text, add important contrib utions to the body of knowledge and experience in the two areas that we wri te about.