SPE Journal

Scope

The new expanded SPE Journal covers the fundamental research and practical aspects of subsurface energy resources for sustainable oil and gas exploration and production, while broadening its focus on circular carbon economy, energy transition, and alternative/renewable energy sources.

It involves novel theories, emerging concepts, fundamental/applied research and development, invited review papers, case histories, and field application studies spanning across all domains of petroleum science and engineering.

General topics include but are not limited to drilling and completion, production and operations, reservoir engineering, formation evaluation, petrophysics, rock physics, geology, geophysics, geochemistry, geomechanics, numerical simulation and modeling, injection/producing facilities, oilfield chemistry, water management and treatment, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), hydrogen transport and storage, geothermal energy, digitalization, artificial intelligence, data analytics, economics, health, safety, environment, sustainability, and other special topics of current interest.
 

Section Descriptions

Data Science & Engineering Analytics
Covers data science and engineering analytics (DSEA) topics from all SPE technical disciplines that involve understanding and making effective use of data and digital solutions in petroleum engineering. DSEA, including data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, natural language understanding, and big data, focuses on applications, case studies, computational and other tools such as data acquisition, storage, retrieval, sharing, analysis, optimization, and visualization for better decision making, collaboration, safety, sustainability, return on investment, and value creation.

Drilling & Completion
Covers fundamental research and practical applications relevant to drilling and completion disciplines through the life cycle of wells from planning to abandonment. Drilling topics included in this section consists of drilling equipment, drilling fluids and materials, drilling measurement, data acquisition and automation, casing and cementing, wellbore, wellhead and drillstring design, drill bits, drilling operations, pressure management and wellbore positioning. Completion topics included in this section cover completion selection and design, completion installation and operations, sand control, well stimulation techniques such as hydraulic fracturing, acidizing, formation damage and completion evaluations. As part of the well life cycle management, well integrity and abandonment related topics are also part of this section.

Formation Evaluation
Covers the fields of formation evaluation and petrophysics including both fundamental research on characterization of porous media from molecular- to reservoir-scale domains as well as practical applications. The publications under this section comprise a wide range of topics including but not limited to petrophysics, rock physics, multiphase and compositional fluid transport in porous media, mechanical/elastic properties of rocks, conventional, advanced, and innovative core laboratory analysis, borehole geophysical measurements, well logging, well navigation and geosteering, formation testing, well testing, borehole fluid monitoring and production assessment systems, subsurface measurement methods, intelligent borehole and formation time-lapse monitoring systems, outcrop measurements, integration and interpretation of in-situ rock measurements, resource and reserve evaluation, geology, geophysics, carbon dioxide and hydrogen storage, and evaluation of geothermal systems.

Production & Operations
Covers fundamental research into and field applications of production operations, artificial lift, downhole equipment, formation damage control, multiphase flow, workovers, flow assurance, scale, foam and emulsion, hydraulic fracturing, acidizing, stimulation, flowback, well performance and productivity, production data analysis, injection data analysis, well and reservoir surveillance and monitoring, water treatment, project management, construction methods and equipment. In addition, subsurface renewable energy transport and CO₂ and hydrogen injection are included.

Reservoir Engineering
Covers the broad field of reservoir engineering from both fundamental research and practical application perspectives. The wide range of reservoir topics include: waterflooding, reservoir management, reservoir monitoring & surveillance, reservoir performance analysis, improved/enhanced recovery, SCAL studies, unconventional resources, flow through porous media, performance prediction, reservoir simulation & modeling, heavy oil, phase behavior, reservoir aspects of CO₂ and hydrogen storage, geothermal energy, reserves evaluation, and uncertainty/risk assessment.

Special Topics in Petroleum Engineering
Covers solutions that are unique to the oil and gas industry but do not fit in typical petroleum engineering categories. The topics include but are not limited to innovative research and application of technologies adopted from other industries, multidisciplinary topics, management, and decision analysis.

Sustainability & Energy Transition
Covers fundamental research and applications related to environmental sustainability and emerging energy resources. Examples include environmental aspects of produced water disposal, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, and topics related to health, safety, and sustainability.