The Department of Petroleum Engineering at Heriot-Watt has grown over the last 25 years to become an internationally recognised provider of quality upstream research, residential masters courses and short courses and recently, DL courses. The Department is committed to the development of training and research programmes which are relevant to the needs of the international petroleum industry. The diverse academic disciplines of the staff of the Department enable both research and training to be pursued in a multi-skill environment which is essential to the modern oil and gas industry. In February 1995 Heriot-Watt University received one of the inaugural Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education in recognition of the outstanding achievements and excellence of the Department of Petroleum Engineering. 1996 saw the department being awarded the top rating of Five Stars in the Research Assessment Exercise.
Computers play an important role both in research and teaching.
Workstations, with ever increasing performance, are ideal for geostatistical modelling, reservoir simulation and other complex problems, while personal computers are widely available for the running of standard technical, mathematical and presentational software. The Department has extensive computer facilities. The Department was established in 1975, the year in which first oil was produced from the North Sea, to satisfy the Industry's growing requirement for professional Petroleum Engineers. The MEng programme annually attracts applications from more than 400 students throughout the world, from which a class of about 30 is selected. A total of more than 400 MEng graduates are now serving the international oil industry.