PTTC Highlight: Student Interns—Learning Industry, Helping Sponsoring Companies
PTTC's West Coast Region has supported the COMET student internship program for several years. This program provides one-week on-campus training about oil and gas exploration and production at the University of Southern California, followed by internships at sponsoring organizations where they learn hands-on and help sponsors solve real problems. A similar program, Futures in Energy, begun this year by the Rocky Mountain Region has its first group of interns at work with industry.

Industry Highlight: Joint Industry Project Exploring Deep Gas Well Dewatering 
APA Petroleum Engineering, Inc. is leading a Joint Industry Project (Completion Engineering Association 132) about dewatering in deep gas wells, deep wells being defined as deeper than 10,000 ft. Goals are to capture industry experience, define limitations of current technologies, provide selection criteria, develop application-specific design tools, and evaluate emerging technologies. Although already underway, participants can still join ($16,000 US) until August 15, 2003.

DOE Highlight: Science-Based Model for Protecting Tundra
DOE will assist the state of Alaska in the first science-based study to determine when oil companies can transport equipment over Arctic tundra without damaging it. Current standards now limit exploration and ice road activity to time periods when there is a minimum of 12 inches of frozen ground and six inches of snow cover. Researchers plan to develop a model that accounts for factors such as snow depth, snow density, ground hardness, the type of vegetation and soil and how they interact. Extension of the activity period for even short periods could translate into millions of value for oil companies.