Top 12 Reservoir Engineer Skills to Put on Your Resume
In an ever-shifting energy landscape, reservoir engineers sit at the crossroads of physics, geology, and pragmatism. A strong resume should punch through with calibrated technical depth, crisp analysis, and inventive problem-solving that shows you can tame messy subsurface systems and turn uncertainty into decisions.
Reservoir Engineer Skills
- Petrel
- Eclipse
- Prosper
- GAP
- MBAL
- Python
- MATLAB
- Reservoir Simulation
- PVTsim
- OFM
- Decline Curve Analysis
- CMG (Computer Modelling Group)
1. Petrel
Petrel (by SLB) is an integrated subsurface platform for seismic-to-simulation workflows. It blends geology, geophysics, and reservoir engineering in a shared 3D space so teams can build coherent models and drive development plans with context.
Why It's Important
Because decisions live and die on the static model. Petrel lets you interpret data consistently, propagate changes through the workflow, and deliver simulation-ready models without the usual version chaos. Faster iterations, fewer blind spots.
How to Improve Petrel Skills
Nail the foundation: Gridding, upscaling, and property modeling must be second nature. Practice end-to-end builds from raw data to simulation grids.
Own uncertainty: Use multi-realization modeling, variograms, and scenario envelopes. Make ranges, not guesses.
Tight integration: Connect Petrel models cleanly with your simulator (ECLIPSE/INTERSECT/CMG). Validate well paths, PVT regions, and rock regions early.
Workflow automation: Create repeatable templates and macros. Reduce manual clicks. Speed is leverage.
QA like a hawk: Run cross-checks—volumes, contacts, pay flags, and well-log consistency. Catch mismatches before they snowball downstream.
Build, stress-test, and iterate. The more loops you run, the sharper your judgment becomes.
How to Display Petrel Skills on Your Resume
2. Eclipse
ECLIPSE is a robust reservoir simulator (black-oil and compositional) widely used to forecast performance, test development strategies, and history match field behavior against reality.
Why It's Important
Simulation is the proving ground. With ECLIPSE, you can capture flow physics, evaluate infill and EOR choices, and quantify outcomes before committing real dollars and steel.
How to Improve Eclipse Skills
Build trustworthy models: Clean schedules, correct PVT tables, realistic rel-perm, and sensible aquifer representations. Garbage in, chaos out.
History match deliberately: Prioritize drivers—contacts, transmissibility, and key wells. Constrain the problem; don’t chase noise.
Speed matters: Use sensible grid refinement, timestep controls, and parallel runs. Optimize solver settings to keep runtimes sane.
Scenario discipline: Set baselines, tweak one lever at a time, and track impacts. Make comparisons fair and repeatable.
Bridge to field ops: Align forecasts with surface constraints and network models. Rates on paper must survive the choke.
How to Display Eclipse Skills on Your Resume
3. Prosper
PROSPER (by Petroleum Experts) is well modeling software for tubing, lift, and nodal analysis. It ties reservoir inflow to wellbore and surface conditions to optimize production.
Why It's Important
Because the well is the throttle. PROSPER helps you pick the right strings, set lift strategies, and tune operating envelopes so reservoir potential actually shows up at the separator.
How to Improve Prosper Skills
Calibrate relentlessly: Use good PVT, measured well tests, and pressure surveys. Calibrated VLP/IPR beats elegant guesswork.
Nodal analysis mastery: Test sensitivities—tubing size, skin, perforation strategy, GLR, ESP curves. Find the true bottleneck.
Artificial lift expertise: Gas lift design, ESP selection, PCP/rod lift windows—understand when each wins and why.
Integrate with network: Sync with GAP or similar tools so well models honor backpressure and facility limits.
Document assumptions: Friction correlations, lift performance maps, tolerances—write them down to avoid silent drift.
How to Display Prosper Skills on Your Resume
4. GAP
GAP (by Petroleum Experts) is an integrated production network model. It connects wells, pipelines, and facilities to simulate multiphase flow from reservoir to export.
Why It's Important
Field performance isn’t just subsurface. GAP shows where the choke truly lives—wellbore, line, separator—and helps coordinate settings across the whole system to lift barrels, not just rates at the wellhead.
How to Improve GAP Skills
Reflect reality: Accurate pipeline roughness, elevation profiles, equipment curves, and operating envelopes. The small details bite.
Couple with wells: Link to PROSPER/MBAL so inflow, lift, and network constraints speak the same language.
Scenario runs: Test compressor trips, separator pressure changes, new tie-ins, and ramp-up plans. Pre-mortem the field.
Operational alignment: Calibrate with PI tests, pressures, and rates; reconcile frequently with real data.
Optimization: Use network optimization and constraints to find the best settings under real facility limits.
How to Display GAP Skills on Your Resume
5. MBAL
MBAL (by Petroleum Experts) implements material balance methods to estimate hydrocarbons in place and drive mechanism diagnosis. In general terms, material balance links pressure, production, and compressibility through conservation of mass.
Why It's Important
It gives you OOIP/OGIP estimates without a full simulator, clarifies drive mechanisms, and acts as a sanity check on models and forecasts. Quick, transparent, surprisingly powerful.
How to Improve MBAL Skills
Data hygiene: Clean pressures, corrected PVT, reliable GOR/WOR trends. Outliers wreck the balance.
Mechanism detection: Differentiate solution-gas, water drive, gas cap expansion, compaction. Choose the right form; avoid forcing fits.
Reservoir partitioning: Segment by flow unit or compartment when behavior diverges. One-size models hide reality.
Cross-validate: Compare with volumetrics, PTA/RTA, and simulation results. Convergence builds confidence.
Uncertainty ranges: Report credible intervals, not single bullets. Decision-makers need bounds.
How to Display MBAL Skills on Your Resume
6. Python
Python brings data wrangling, statistics, machine learning, and automation into one approachable toolkit. For reservoir engineering, it glues together logs, models, production data, and optimization in repeatable workflows.
Why It's Important
Repeat tasks vanish. Insights scale. From decluttering time series to surrogate modeling and quick simulators, Python turns ideas into tools you can share and reuse.
How to Improve Python Skills
Core fluency: Solidify syntax, data structures, and packaging. Write clean, testable functions.
Numerics stack: Get comfortable with NumPy, Pandas, and vectorized operations. Performance rides on them.
Visualization: Use Matplotlib/Seaborn/Plotly to tell the story—rate diagnostics, water cut arcs, pressure trends.
ML pragmatism: Start simple—linear models, tree ensembles, cross-validation, leakage checks. Then push to advanced methods as needed.
Domain libraries: Explore geostatistics (kriging), PTA/RTA helpers, and reservoir-specific utilities. Or build your own.
Automation: Script data pipelines, run batches of cases, parse simulator outputs, and generate dashboards.
How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume
7. MATLAB
MATLAB is a numerical workhorse—great for prototyping algorithms, solving optimization problems, and building deterministic models with crisp visualization.
Why It's Important
When you need robust linear algebra, signal processing on pressure data, or constrained optimization for field settings, MATLAB stays steady and fast.
How to Improve MATLAB Skills
Vectorization mindset: Replace loops with matrix operations. Speed follows.
Toolbox savvy: Lean on Optimization, Statistics, and Curve Fitting toolboxes for practical workflows.
Data pipelines: Build scripts to import, cleanse, and harmonize logs, tests, and production in consistent formats.
Model validation: Fit, residual-check, and stress-test models with synthetic and field data.
Interoperability: Exchange data with simulators, spreadsheets, and Python when needed. Use the right tool for each step.
How to Display MATLAB Skills on Your Resume
8. Reservoir Simulation
Reservoir simulation predicts multiphase flow through porous media under changing wells and facilities. It’s how we test development choices without drilling them first.
Why It's Important
Because subsurface systems are nonlinear and noisy. Simulation gives structure to the chaos, so you can design wells, plan EOR, and set expectations with numbers, not hunches.
How to Improve Reservoir Simulation Skills
Geology first: Credible facies, rock types, and connectivity. If the static model is wrong, the forecast is theater.
Numerical discipline: Choose grid resolution wisely, control timesteps, and pick solvers that match your physics.
Data assimilation: Update models with production, pressures, and tracer/tests. Systematic history matching beats ad hoc tweaking.
Uncertainty management: Use ensembles, design of experiments, and sensitivities. Report ranges with rationale.
Scalability: Run in parallel or on HPC/cloud when cases balloon. Faster loops mean better decisions.
Operational coupling: Align with surface constraints, lift limits, and downtime patterns. Reservoirs don’t flow in a vacuum.
How to Display Reservoir Simulation Skills on Your Resume
9. PVTsim
PVTsim (by Calsep) models fluid phase behavior—EOS characterization, flash calculations, viscosity trends—so your models honor real thermodynamics.
Why It's Important
PVT sets the rules of the game. With reliable PVT, inflow makes sense, GOR/WOR evolutions behave, and compositional projects don’t drift into fantasy.
How to Improve PVTsim Skills
Respect the lab: Use quality PVT lab data, check consistency, and screen for sampling bias.
Characterization craft: Lump sensibly, tune EOS with discipline, and validate against multiple tests (CVD, DL, swelling).
Operational realism: Model separator trains, surface shrinkage, and GOR constraints to match field handling.
Closed-loop updates: Revisit fluid models as new samples and operating conditions emerge.
Seamless export: Provide clean PVT decks to simulators and well models. Version control everything.
How to Display PVTsim Skills on Your Resume
10. OFM
OFM (Well and Reservoir Analysis) is a production data management and visualization tool used to monitor wells, diagnose issues, and guide field optimization.
Why It's Important
Good decisions need clean, timely data. OFM turns raw volumes and pressures into maps, trends, and insights the entire team can act on.
How to Improve OFM Skills
Data model discipline: Standardize tags, units, and naming. Automate validations. Consistency unlocks analysis.
Diagnostic dashboards: Build rate-pressure plots, decline diagnostics, water cut maps, and ML-assisted anomaly flags.
Surveillance routines: Set triggers for production drop, GOR spikes, interference signs. Respond fast, save barrels.
Integration: Tie OFM to well models and simulators. Close the loop from monitoring to action.
Field storytelling: Summaries that move decisions—concise visuals, clear takeaways, and prioritized actions.
How to Display OFM Skills on Your Resume
11. Decline Curve Analysis
Decline Curve Analysis (DCA) fits empirical models to historical production to forecast rates and estimate ultimate recovery. Classic, fast, and still very useful.
Why It's Important
When you need quick, data-driven forecasts or type curves—especially in unconventional plays—DCA provides a grounded first pass and a transparent benchmark.
How to Improve Decline Curve Analysis Skills
Clean inputs: Rate smoothing, downtime normalization, and outlier control. Start with trustworthy curves.
Model choice: Exponential, harmonic, hyperbolic—select based on physics and behavior, not habit.
Boundary awareness: Understand flow regime shifts and constraints. Don’t force a single b into every era.
Hybridize: Cross-check DCA with material balance, RTA, and simulation-driven forecasts. Triangulation wins.
Uncertainty and risk: Show P10/P50/P90 and economic cutoffs. Forecasts should breathe.
How to Display Decline Curve Analysis Skills on Your Resume
12. CMG (Computer Modelling Group)
CMG provides advanced simulators—IMEX (black-oil), GEM (compositional), STARS (thermal/chemical), and CMOST (optimization)—for complex reservoir problems.
Why It's Important
When physics gets gnarly—miscible gas floods, thermal EOR, chemical processes—CMG’s engines keep pace and let you quantify outcomes with confidence.
How to Improve CMG (Computer Modelling Group) Skills
Pick the right engine: Match simulator to mechanism. Wrong physics means right answers to the wrong question.
Build stable cases: Sensible timesteps, capillary and dispersion controls, and tuned solvers. Stability saves days.
History match strategy: Prioritize levers, use gradients or ensemble methods, and guard against overfitting.
Optimization: Use CMOST or external tools for well placement, control schedules, and EOR screening.
Performance: Parallel runs, case management, and automation to explore design space without bottlenecks.
How to Display CMG (Computer Modelling Group) Skills on Your Resume
