Petroleum Engineering

Petroleum engineering is an engineering discipline related to the activities under the surface in connection with the production of hydrocarbons, which can be crude oil or natural gas. These activities are considered within the upstream sector of oil and gas, that are include exploration for hydrocarbons. Petroleum engineeringrequires a good knowledge of many other related disciplines, such as geophysics, petroleum geology, formation evaluation (well logging), drilling, economics, reservoir simulation, well engineering, artificial lift systems and oil and gas facilities engineering. In other words, the scope of petroleum engineering includes exploration of hydrocarbons, reservoir studies, drilling and well completion, operations and production of oil and gas (onshore and / or offshore) and their transportation. One should be very clear that petroleum refining is not petroleum engineering. Most of active students in UK, USA and India said they took up the petroleum engineering because they loves the physical as well as the technical challenges of the job. No other industry fulfils this criteria and they didn't want to become a couch potato, sitting in front of a computer in some offices, the whole day. Petroleum engineering is about looking at the entire hydrocarbon (which can be either crude oil or natural gas) value chain. It, however, focuses more on upstream operations of the oil and gas industry, i.e. drilling, production, transportation and reservoir engineering.

Petroleum Engineers search the world for reservoirs containingoil and natural gas. On discovery of these resources they word with geologists and other specialists to understand the geologic formation and properties of the rock containing the reservoir, determine the drilling methods to be uses, and monitor drilling and production operations. Petroleum Engineers design equipment and processes to achieve maximum and profitable recovery of oil and gas. They rely heavily on computer models to simulate reservoir performance using different recovery techniques.

Petroleum engineering broadly consists of different areas called drilling, reservoir and production stream. Drilling deals with "placing a well to tap the pay zone and depending on its purpose, it may be used for analysing the hydrocarbon pool, its development for producing oil / gas,". Reservoir engineering deals with study of the pool and work out ways to exploit it. Production engineering comes into play after the reservoir has been understood and wells have been driled and the hydrocarbon begins to flow. "It deals with the study of optimising well performance through a suitable completion and production strategy. Production engineers are responsible for flow of well fluid through surface facilities, its subsequent separation into phases like oil, gas and water and bringing it to a quality acceptable by the refineries.

Jobs and Skills in Petroleum Engineering

The importance of petroleum in our day-to-day life and the increasing demand supply gap in the energy sector it can be said that there is a big demand of petroleum engineers, which is likely to grow. Jobs related to data processing and interpretations are done with the help of state-of-the-art software running on sophisticated hardware. Drilling involves dealing with subsurface conditions of pressures and temperatures and rquires high skill with machinery and related judgements. Production operations in petroleum engineering require people who love action and have a knack for keeping the operations smooth and running in the face of several challenges. The scope for petroleum engineers is very expansive. There is a constant challenge to ring up the recovery factor from the producing fields and even more pressure on discovering new reserves. All this is a translating into a high demand for professionals in the petroleum engineering sector.

At the entry level jobs of petroleum engineers, one may get anything between Rs. 3 lakh to Rs. 8 lakh a year. A petroleum engineer normally works in harsh conditions in remote areas such as offshore drilling sites, hence is compensated well. Petroleum Engineer salary is at least 1.5 times more that that of his conterparts in other core sectors. Engineers with added skills ear two-three times as much and career advancement is very fast.

Petroleum Engineering Universities & Institutes

If you want a degree in petroleum engineering and become a petroleum engineer than you must need a goodpetroluem engineering university to do that. We are mentioned below some good universities and institutes who provide the petroleum engineering degree.

• Indian School of Mines (ISM)Dhandabad
• Oandit Deendayal Petroleum Unversity (PDPU) Gandhinagar
• MIT Pune
• University of Petroleum and Energy Studies - Dehradun
• Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology - Rai Barei