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.
sure. The better the school and the better your grades, the better your chances, regardless of the degree
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I honestly don't remember studying vector calculus - it was over 35 years ago, but likely it is used in some the equations used to describe reservoir engineering phenomena.
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What is your question?
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Wish I could help you more. Hopefully you can find a mentor through your SPE section. Another suggestion is to contact SPE directly to see if they have a mentor program if the section doesn't work out for you.
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It would be better to know more about your background to give some good advice. For example, what was your GPA in college? What have you been doing for the past 8 years since you graduated? Have you been working? Are you willing to work in the field? You might try looking for a position at one of the service companies (Halliburton, Schlumberger, etc) to work out in the field as a mudlogger or a wireline technician and then try to work your way up. Having skills in AutoCad won't hurt but I'm not aware of many people in my field that are using that on a daily basis. If you can afford it, you might want to consider pursuing a graduate engineering degree in Mechanical or Chemical. That might get you some opportunities for a summer internship. Depending on where you live, another avenue is to contact your local Society of Petroleum Engineers chapter. Get involved in some of their activities - volunteer to help at meetings and workshops and perhaps you will make some connections there. Write me back if you want to provide more details about your GPA and what you've been doing since you graduated.
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I suggest you contact: The Society of Petroleum Engineers, Los Angeles chapter, the Society of Women Engineers, Los Angeles chapter and universities in and around LA that have engineering schools (UCLA, Cal Tech, USC, Cal Polly Pomona, Harvey Mudd College) and see if there are any engineering alumni willing to do this. I think you will increase your chance of success if you try to find an engineer who works in the petroleum industry (vs. trying to meet with someone that has a petroleum engineering degree). You could also try calling oil companies who have offices in LA. Here's one resource I found: http://www.icc.org/gas-oil-companies/california/los-angeles.htm
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Energy companies hire a lot of chemical and mechanical engineers, so your Chem E background is vary valuable. The best thing you can do to be more competitive is to get an internship at an energy company. If you college offers a Petroleum Engineering program, see if they have an intro course that you could take. If not, I would take a course in geology and in groundwater hydrology. The Civil Engineering department may offer the second one. I took a course like that at night while working full time. We studied many of the same principles that reservoir engineers need such as porosity, permeability, reservoir properties, etc. I had course in soil mechanics, which also came in handy. It all really depends in what aspect of petroleum engineering you are interested in. If it is reservoir engineering then geology / hydrology are useful. If drilling, a lot of the civil courses are useful - steel design, concrete design, project management. If you are interested in processing oil and gas once it has been produced, then your Chem E courses are super applicable. I would hope that your Chem E program requires you to take some basic economics course. If not, then you will need that. Hope this is helpful.
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