About Us | LSU Petroleum Engineering

About Us

Since its inception, the Craft & Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering has set a standard for outstanding undergraduate education, with a reputation for practical, hands-on training and history of developing engineers who are innovative and ready for practice.

LSU Baton Rouge is the main campus of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College, which had its origins in land grants made by the United States government in 1806, 1811, and 1827. In 1853, the Louisiana General Assembly established the Seminary of Learning of the State of Louisiana near Pineville, Louisiana. After closures in the early 1860’s associated with the Civil War, it resumed exercises in Baton Rouge on November 1, 1869.  In 1925, LSU moved to its present location, recognized as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country. 

Petroleum engineering at LSU began as an option within geology in 1922-23, and evolved into an accredited department by 1939.  In 1998, the department was named the Craft & Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering in recognition of the Benjamin C. Craft and Murray F. Hawkins, two pioneering faculty that built the program and served as the first two department chairmen.

Industry standard textbooks authored by departmental faculty include Applied Petroleum Reservoir Engineering by Craft and Hawkins, Well Design-Drilling and Production by Craft, Holden, and Graves, Applied Drilling Engineering by Adam T. Bourgoyne, et al., and Theory, Measurement and Interpretation of Well Logs by Zaki Bassiouni.

Since its inception, the Craft & Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering has set a standard for outstanding undergraduate education, with a reputation for practical, hands-on training and history of developing engineers who are innovative and ready for practice. Today, undergraduate students are exposed to a traditional core curriculum that includes five hands-on laboratory courses, training in advanced computer simulation, along with electives on modern topics such as natural gas engineering, geothermal energy, and deepwater production.

The Department has twelve faculty members and is growing toward 15 in the coming years. Areas of research specialization include geomechanics, fracture modeling, reservoir engineering, reservoir characterization, carbon storage, cement chemistry and durability, EOR, foam and surfactant processes, wettability and interfacial processes, reservoir geology, geostatistics, drilling, well control and blowout prevention, wellbore stability, borehole mechanics, well design, wellbore CFD, environmental technologies, pore-scale flow modeling, and computational methods. Research funding comes mainly from industry and federal grants.

The Department is home to the Petroleum Engineering Research & Technology Transfer Laboratory (PERTT Lab). The lab houses six wells and associated surface facilities. A new on-site classroom is slated to open in mid 2012. This unique facility is used year-round for education, training, testing, and research.