Venezuela has a long tradition of exploration and production of crude oil, successfully developing extra-heavy crude oil, which was believed to be at the far frontier of what was possible. Nevertheless, the country is fairly new to the exploitation of offshore gas resources. Because of our considerable experience and leadership in this area, offshore gas development was identified as an area for collaboration on technology and expertise transfer.
In December 2005, an agreement was entered into with the Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB) with the intention of designing and offering a university-level programme in natural gas engineering. To further this goal, we also brokered a memorandum of understanding between USB and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) to promote exchanges and the sharing of both teaching and research resources in the field of natural gas engineering.
As a result of this, a graduate-level specialisation programme in natural gas engineering was introduced at USB in 2006. The Specialisation in Natural Gas Engineering is a two-year programme intended to train specialists in the natural gas sector, enabling them to gain technical and comprehensive understanding of all components in the natural gas value chain. The programme, focused primarily on offshore gas development, includes courses on the production, transportation, conditioning, processing and liquefaction of natural gas.
The third intake of 25 students recently entered the programme (2008-2010).
Continued NTNU support for the 2008-2010 period was also ensured, and, in 2008, classes were given at USB by three NTNU professors (May-Britt Hägg, Edd Anders Blekke and Hallvard Svendsen) on natural gas conversion and GLT technology, advanced purification technology, and membrane technology and gas emission control. During their stay, the NTNU professors also gave special lectures to relevant oil and gas industry members in the country.
USB and NTNU are also currently working to ensure that USB specialisation credits from the course can be transferred to relevant NTNU master courses.
So far, the course has acquired a solid reputation and proven to be an important addition to the oil and gas training and education provided in Venezuela, as evidenced by the types of students that enrol in the programme. So far students have been drawn from key Venezuelan institutions involved in managing the oil and gas sector in the country, such as the Ministry of Oil and PDVSA, the Venezuelan National Oil Company, as well as private companies and local consultancy companies, among others.
