Entry-Level Oil & Gas/Petroleum Engineering

nshah9617
Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:09:50 +0000

Petroleum Engineering is a mixture of business, mechanical/chemical engineering and geology.

As a Mechanical UG, I took a few graduate petroleum engineering classes just to get a feel for the field. You’ll find that most of the “engineering” within Petroleum Engineering is just slightly watered down Mechanical/Chemical engineering concepts with a specific scope to hydrocarbons–which is completely understandable due to specialization of the field.

For example, Production Engineering is pretty much a fluids/thermodynamics and transport phenomena class and Drilling is more of dynamics/selection class. The oil industry itself is pretty conservative when it comes to change and therefore you’ll find plenty of tables, charts that delegate the “engineering” to matching parameters.

However, the geology portions of Petroleum Eng are probably the hardest (IMO) and most important. While you will learn many new theories and concepts within your PetroE classes, typically your oil company will have a standard method of drilling anyway.

I think it is important to get a firm grasp on the geology since you can position yourself in a higher position, especially within the upsteam business since that is where the real money/fun is. While drilling is drilling, is it the geologists and reservoir engineers who help find the potential fields and make the major capital decisions.

As far as geology classes go, make sure you get the basics with sedimentary rock, porous rocks, formations and a geophysics class. If you get a masters in PetroE, you’ll learn the basics but I suggest taking a few advanced classes (depending on your interest) and especially if you go into reservoir engineering.