Curtin petroleum engineering students learn about Shell Wells Asia Pacific Learning Hub

Miri – 22 November 2017 – A visit to the Shell Wells Asia Pacific (Integrated Gas) Learning Hub located at the headquarters of Sarawak Shell Berhad here proved to be highly educational for 50 petroleum engineering undergraduates of Curtin University, Malaysia (Curtin Malaysia).

The visit was organised by the chair of the Petroleum Engineering Industrial Advisory Panel of Curtin Malaysia, Robert Adams Strout, and Head of the university’s Department of Petroleum Engineering, Dr. Hisham Khaled Ben Mahmud.

The Shell Wells Asia Pacific Learning Hub is the first oil and gas specialised training centre of its kind in the Asia Pacific region with simulators for oil wells training. It is Shell’s third such hub after its Houston Centre in the United States and Rijswijk Centre in the Netherlands.

The students were welcomed by Shell Wells Training Centre Manager Reinaldo Hutabarat and administrative and technical staff of the hub.

During their tour of the facility, the students learned about various aspects of tools used for well completion before production and intervention operations and got to experience first-hand the work environment of professional engineers. They also learned how to drill a vertical well using a well drilling simulator with a very sophisticated simulation and control system.

Dr. Hisham remarked that such visits are a very important component of the undergraduate petroleum engineering course at Curtin Malaysia, giving students valuable exposure to industrial practice so they can better connect theory learned in the classroom to real-life applications.

Curtin Malaysia offers Curtin University’s four-year Bachelor of Engineering (Petroleum Engineering) (Hons.). Offering a multidisciplinary education covering a wide variety of subjects that are core to the petroleum engineering field, it has been one of the fastest-growing courses since its introduction at Curtin Malaysia in 2011. For more information on the course, visit courses.curtin.edu.my.

For more information on Curtin Malaysia, visit its website (www.curtin.edu.my), its Facebook page (CurtinMalaysia), Twitter profile (curtinmalaysia), Google+ page (Curtin Malaysia), Instagram (curtinmalaysia) or YouTube channel (Curtin Malaysia).

Group photo of the students and Shell staff at the learning hub.

Shell senior engineer briefing students on intervention operations.

Senior engineer demonstrating well drilling simulator. 

Dr. Hisham presenting certificate of appreciation to Hutabarat.