Petroleum engineering, the branch of engineering that focuses on processes that allow the development and exploitation of crude oil and natural gas fields as well as the technical analysis, computer modelling, and forecasting of their future production performance. Petroleum engineering evolved from mining engineering and geology, and it remains closely linked to geo-sciences, which helps engineers understand the geological structures and conditions favorable for petroleum deposits. The petroleum engineer, whose aim is to extract gaseous and liquid hydrocarbon products from the earth, is concerned with drilling, producing, processing, and transporting these products and handling all the related economic and regulatory considerations.

The undergraduate programme of The Technical University Ibadan is designed in such a way as to produce graduates that can be more readily absorbed into the various areas of the rapidly developing field of Petroleum Engineering.  Students are exposed to both basic and applied courses as well as laboratory and industrial training to enable them satisfy the manpower needs of the public and industrial sectors of the Nigerian economy.  Our graduates are expected to be able to design and supervise Engineering projects and constructions, develop new products and techniques as well as maintain Engineering Units. This programme also offers sufficient depth to enable the promising graduates to undertake postgraduate work in Petroleum Engineering or related disciplines in Science Engineering and also be a successful entrepreneur. Also, the curriculum exposes students to the breadth of petroleum engineering and allows them to pursue electives in several areas including identification, extraction, storage, and transportation of crude oil and natural gas.

The programme is organized such that two years of basic training in Petroleum Engineering Science is followed by more detailed professional training in the field of Petroleum Engineering lasting for three years.  In the final year, students are given the options to specialize in any of the following areas:

• Reservoir Engineering
• Petroleum Production Engineering
• Drilling Engineering
• Economics and Petroleum Property Evaluation
• Natural Gas Engineering

The programme is developed in order:

• to put in place a curriculum of Petroleum Engineering programmes that covers broad and dynamic engineering principles, working knowledge of entrepreneurial, marketing, and management principles;
• to make adequate provision for extensive and appropriate laboratory experiments in Petroleum Engineering programmes in order to facilitate acquisition of practical work experience;
• to adequately train the students in design, implementation, and maintenance of Petroleum Engineering systems; and
• to adequately prepare them to pursue advanced studies at postgraduate level in Petroleum Engineering or other relevant engineering and management disciplines.

Graduate of the programme should be able to be involved professionally in Petroleum equipment manufacturing, installations and maintenance of tools either as self-employed engineer or as an employee in private or public sector of the economy.

In addition to the above, the graduate in Petroleum Engineering should be able to:

• Design Petroleum engineering projects and supervise their implementation.
• Design and implement petroleum engineering components, machines, equipment and engineering systems.
• Design new petroleum engineering products and develop new techniques in drilling, processing, storage and transportation of crude oil and natural gas in Petroleum industries.
• Install and maintain complex Petroleum engineering systems for optimal performance in our environment.
• Adapt and adopt exogenous technology in order to solve local Petroleum engineering problems.
• Exercise original thought, have good professional judgment and be able to take responsibility for the execution Petroleum engineering tasks.
• Be able to manage people, fund, materials and Petroleum engineering equipment.
• Improve on indigenous technology for deployment of the solution of local Petroleum engineering problems.