Oil Comp Engr
38 Years Experience
Houston, TX
Female, 60
I recently retired from a major integrated oil company after 38 years. I have degrees in Civil and Petroleum Engineering. I worked with safety, health and environmental management systems and operations in the upstream (finding and producing oil and gas) and downstream (refining, chemicals and distributions) areas. I travelled all over world, enduring good & bad business cycles and good and bad managers.
That's a somewhat subjective question, but if you want to measure it on a basis of the total carbon footprint, then clearly oil sands production creates the largest carbon footprint. To extract oil from oil sands requires a very large amount of energy to separate the petroleum from the reservoir rock. That energy is typically generated by burning fossil fuel (either oil or natural gas). The ratio of energy obtained for every unit of energy input is referred to as the Energy Returned on Investment (EROI). For conventional oil production, the ratio is about 25 to 1. For oil sands mining, it is about 5 to 1. This is why oil sands mining is only economical when the price of oil is relatively high. So, from the standpoint of carbon footprint, I would consider it the worst. In terms of net impact to the environment, with proper regulation and oversight, industry can and has been able to responsibly extract petroleum and return the environment to a suitable state in a relatively reasonable period of time. So, I can't really rate all other methods as to which is "best". It is highly dependent on local conditions, local regulations and the integrity and internal standards of the company doing the work.
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If you are asking me what software programs you need to purchase, it would depend greatly on what type of work you plan to do. Reservoir engineers use different programs than drilling engineers do. The best way to answer that question is to review the courses required by universities that offer a degree in petroleum engineering. Each of those courses will have it's own set of software that is required. Unfortunately, when I entered the industry, we didn't have many computer programs at all. Personal computers didn't even exist yet. In my current work as an environmental engineer, I don't use any computer programs other than WORD, EXCEL and POWERPOINT.
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When I started out, I spent about 25% of my time at the rig or out in the field. Currently, I'm gone about 10% of the time. I have had some jobs where I worked a regular 9 to 5 day in the office for months and months on end, so had a lot of time with my family. It really depends on the business cycle and what area of the business you specialize in. When I was a reservoir engineer, I almost never travelled. As a drilling engineer, expect to travel quite a bit more.
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I can't really make a prediction on that. Nobody knows what oil prices will be like.
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I certainly don't use ALL of the math I learned every day when I do Petroleum engineering work, however, I can say that all the math I learned serves as the foundation for many of the software programs and simulations in reservoir modeling and drilling engineering design work that I have done. In order to trust the software that you use, you do need to understand what goes on behind the scenes. I will have to say that one of my favorite classes in college was Systems Science and Mathematics. The course was composed entirely of real world problems and the various mathematical methods used to solve each kind of problem.
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Please check out earlier posts. I've already addressed that question.
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If you are still in school, the number one thing you could do would be to land an internship working for an oil and gas company. That will give you some practical experience. You could also take some courses in Petroleum engineering and geology. The basic problem solving skills you have learned as a chemical engineer will serve you well as a petroleum engineer. Based on the current market conditions, however, the competition is very intense for petroleum engineering jobs. You need to have great grades, good leadership experience (president of a technical society, a sorority or fraternity), good people skills and solid recommendations from professors.
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