About FlowTran

Built on 50 years of proven pipeline physics.

FlowTran Pty Ltd acquired the FlowTran/SIROGAS platform in 2016 — three experienced oil and gas professionals with one purpose: give pipeline engineers modern access to the calculation engine their industry already trusted.

History

The origin of the engine.

  1. 1974

    The NAIAD program is developed by the Australian Atomic Energy Commission to model flows in nuclear reactor cooling networks. Principal developer: William J Turner.

  2. 1982

    Transferred to the CSIRO Division of Mineral Physics and extended for natural gas flow modelling, with support from The Pipeline Authority. Renamed SIROGAS.

  3. 1982–1992

    Adopted by The Pipeline Authority, PASA, AGL and the State Energy Commission of WA, with clients in South Korea and New Zealand. The Visual Basic and Excel-output workflows that became FlowTran 2.0 take shape.

  4. 1992

    William J Turner retires from CSIRO and acquires all coding, clients and documentation. He registers the FlowTran trademark in Western Australia.

  5. 1992–2015

    Continued development of the FlowTran 2.0 front end and its Excel output, including animated graphics. Further use by operators across Australia, South Korea, China and Sri Lanka. University courses in Canada, the Netherlands, Italy and the UK are built around SIROGAS.

  6. 2016

    FlowTran Pty Ltd is acquired by three experienced oil and gas professionals — Cooper, Last and Weston — with one purpose: modernise access to the engine without changing the physics behind it.

  7. 2020

    FlowTran-X launches after extensive beta testing: browser-based, AWS-hosted single-phase pipeline simulation, backward compatible with all existing FlowTran 2.0 models.

  8. 2026

    Continued development — hydrogen blending, liquid CO₂, multi-fluid composition tracking, and real-time multi-user collaboration on the same trusted calculation engine.

The Team

Three directors. Deep industry experience.

Mark Cooper

Business Development Director

BE Electrical Engineering, University of Technology Sydney (1978). Twenty years in the NSW electricity industry.

Roles across the gas sector with CNG International and a national business development role at Epic Energy, then General Manager Commercial for the DBP group — the Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline.

Now runs Cooper Gas & Energy Consultants, advising on energy supply and gas pipeline development.

Nick Last

Director

BSc Physics, Imperial College London. Began his career with Schlumberger in the North Sea and South-East Asia, then worked as an independent consultant from the mid-1990s.

Co-founder of Well Test Knowledge International (WTKI) in 2012, specialising in dynamic well and reservoir data and fluid flow in wells and pipelines.

His development of the Commingled Well Model informed the FlowTran-X software redevelopment.

Stuart Weston

Director

BSc Physics, Curtin University (1992), followed by a PhD in Petroleum Engineering.

Senior Reservoir Engineer at RISC, Associate Director at Miro Advisors, and Lead Reservoir Engineer at Chevron Perth.

Founder of Weston Petroleum Consulting, with extensive experience across the Australian energy industry.