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This regular column addresses the social side of engineering. We are pleased to include an article written by two of the more prominent names in decision-theory research. Dale Griffin and Thomas Gilovich describe interesting and important insights from the study of heuristics and biases.

Bridging the gap between facilities and reservoir engineers is critical in designing systems that are flexible enough to allow a spectrum of reservoir feed conditions to be accommodated over the life cycle of the field. While subsurface uncertainties can't be eliminated, they can be managed.

I extend a warm welcome to 2013, which henceforth will be known as the year of the facilities engineer. We are playing a more important role today than we ever have in the delivery of hydrocarbon assets to meet the world’s energy needs.

Recent activities around career planning for facilities engineers led me to a list of "must read" books. The recent ATCE generated two revelations. As an industry, we do a poor job of managing major capital projects, and we do not know how to design separators.

Ted Frankiewicz' Distinguished Lecture presentation on “Diagnosing and Resolving Chemical and Mechanical Problems in Produced Water Treating Systems” was the subject of a recent webinar.

At the end of the day, when you are working with heavy oil, the question is how to design your system, including both the layout and the functional aspects of various equipment.

Operators’ demands for structural designs are changing along with the need to produce from harsher environments, deeper waters, remote areas, and marginal fields. New-builds and modifications require different approaches in assessment of cost, design, and construction.

There is little doubt that the industry is committed to improving its safety performance—and most agree that improving the collective culture around safety is an effective approach to achieving this goal. But the specifics of how to achieve lasting change are more difficult.

This paper shows that viscosity has a significant influence on gas transient flow in pipe- and tank-leakage evaluation. This led to the development of a methodology for more reliable evaluation of gas transient flow.

A realistic computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of a field three-phase separator has been developed. Further, a useful approach to estimating the particle size distribution in oilfield separators was developed. The predicted separation efficiencies are consistent with oilfield experience.

SPE has formed a new technical section focusing on human factors engineering, which seeks to bring in knowledge from other industries, thereby ensuring safe operations and fostering a coordinated safety culture from top-level executives to workers on the ground.

A recent webinar discussed current technologies to enable reuse of produced water in gas and oil shale developments.