What is petroleum engineering about?
Petroleum engineering has become a technical profession that involves extracting oil in increasingly difficult situations as the “low hanging fruit” of the world’s oil fields are found and depleted. Improvements in computer modeling, materials and the application of statistics, probability analysis, and new technologies like horizontal drilling and enhanced oil recovery, have drastically improved the toolbox of the petroleum engineer in recent decades. As mistakes may be measured in millions of dollars, petroleum engineers are held to a high standard. Deepwater operations can arguably be compared to space travel in terms of technical challenges. Arctic conditions and conditions of extreme heat have to be contended with. High Temperature and High Pressure (HTHP) environments that have become increasingly commonplace in today’s operations require the petroleum engineer to be savvy in topics as wide ranging as thermohydraulics, geomechanics, and intelligent systems.
