r/oilandgasworkers

I’m from electrical and electronics engineering background with some data processing experience, but have a reservoir engineer role’s interview coming up.

The problem is I’m stumped on the topics to prepare for the upcoming interview.

I’m a new graduate, with no work experience.

I did look at the basic theory on petroleum reserve for start. But it’s super difficult to pin point what else do I need, and what will they asked me.

If anyone could give a suggestion on what or how to prepare, will be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

23M in Texas. Currently working at a sand plant on a 7/7 schedule making about $75k. I have industrial experience, MSHA, welding, and A&P schooling. My long-term goal is to get into offshore production on a 14/14 schedule and eventually become a technical specialist (automation, hydraulics, I&E, reliability, etc.).
If you were starting over today, what path would you take? Is it better to start as a floorhand/roustabout and move up, or get technical training first and try to skip the labor? Start on a land rig or go straight to fighting for an offshore spot? What companies should I be watching? Are there any true entry level spots in offshore that pay good(drilling or production but preferably production platform)?
I have pretty much zero oil rig experience but I’m mechanically minded and good at troubleshooting/problem solving. Plenty experience in sand/quarry mining and processing.

My parents are in Houston for 4th of July; they spent a whole day just touring oil complexes (I think it was a guided tour), and I thought it’d be cool if anyone owned just a few small ones unlike a giant corporation to just give some history/story as a private owner, show some equipment or usage up close, even a brief background of themselves and how they got into it.

For background, my dad studied rock mechanics, and almost went to work for Exxon two decades ago when he first immigrated to the US from China. My parents do completely different engineering now, but I called em last night and it sounded like they really enjoyed their oil tour lol.

edit; parents worked on hydroelectric dams, solar photovoltaics, cars, etc.

I saw some videos online of old people owning 1 or 2 wells and actually pouring some oil out while telling their American backstory. My pop loves the U.S. and its history, so it’d be cool if anyone in the area could show him a well up close and let him touch it (maybe not operate it 😅😅)

Edit; I think they went to Ocean Star Museum in Galveston yesterday.

Edit 2: Today they went to Bay Town (?) Exxon’s facility!

I’m about to start as a Field Engineer Trainee in Completions at SLB
I’d really appreciate any advice or experiences from people who have been in this role or a similar one.

A few questions:
What should I focus on during my first months?
What are the biggest challenges for new trainees?
What’s the typical career progression after completing the trainee program?

Any tips or insights are welcome. Thanks!

I’m currently an operator at one of the major companies, making 22 an hour doing plug and perf, no ticket or stage bonus. Health insurance is good and 401k is decent, but the hours are long, I’m averaging about 110 a week on hitch. 14/7

I got an offer to move over to the day work side making 27 an hour, with a 3% ticket bonus on all jobs, 68 dollar a day per diem, but it’s more like 50-60 hour weeks. 14/7 also.

The day work job sounds like it could potentially be better, or at least close to what I’m making doing plug and perf now depending on how many jobs they do. Was just hoping to get some insight from some day work operators on how much they can typically make. Thanks!

im a mechanical engineering student, completed my first year. rn in summer I'm working on my cad (fusion and solidworks) skills.

i want to get into the oil and gas industry, and I'm targeting SLB.

i have some questions for people working in SLB (india preferably)

1. what skills/subjects/ projects should i work on to have a strong and relevant resume, and how tough is it to get an internship or a job at SLB (for women)

2. how was your interview experience, like what questions did they ask

3. how's your work experience and pay at SLB, and what pay and growth trajectory can i expect (as a freshie)

4. if you had some piece of advice to give, to someone who's gonna start their second year in mechE, what would you give?

Does anyone have any advice and know any questions they seem to ask in their interviews? I have no luck with interviews because I struggle to answer technical questions when under pressure. I work completely fine when under pressure but when it comes to interviews, I struggle.

Anyone have any advice, I’d appreciate it.

Edit: The role is for an E&I Technician

Hey all. Just introducing myself and looking for networking opportunities. Been in the Bakken since 2022. Worked as a Chief Inspector doing well connects for Crestwood/Energy Transfer, moved over to Kinder Morgan for a bit, but they got really slow. Now, I’m a QC manager for a Construction Company doing flow lines, but don’t see longevity here. I’m wanting to stay in the area. The wife and I have fallen in love with this little town. I’m wanting to possibly transition over to the production side, but don’t have any contacts. 25+ years in pipeline and plant construction. Excel Guru, AutoCad, GIS, Welding inspection, NACE CIP 2 coating inspection, Microsoft Project, etc. Hope you’re all doing well. The rain around here can stop any time. 😊

I won’t give too much info away because I don’t wanna dox myself but some salary guys are preparing to go upstate to Martinez Ca to fill in as scabs for a strike... Marathon already fucked over the boys in Detroit, So cal had an extremely rough time getting local agreements during the contract. Some would even say The national bargaining committee for USW rolled over for marathon who headed negotiations… with the evolution of society & AI incorporation, it seems inevitable that some of us on shift in ops/maint/ROW will be pushed out. Praying for those of you in Northern California and a brutal reminder to everyone who still laces boots and punches in everday to make yourself valuable in more ways than one. Learn as much as you can and always have a plan and money put aside.

Hi, I have a physical/drug screening in Oklahoma City next Monday. Has anyone done a physical for H&P anytime recently and if so what all did they make you do and what all did it entail? Thanks in advance!

Been working at a big red firm for 8 years. The last few years have been as a Field Engineer. I've been wanting out since day one lol. Due to the economy I've been pretty much stuck.

I now have the chance to move to an EPC company as a junior engineer. I've actually interned with them for 4 months before joining my current company. I loved the work and it was very much related to my education.

Problem is the pay cut. Pretty damn high at around 44%. Im 35 years old and feel like this is my chance to pivot. Anyone else here transitioned to an EPC? What's your advise? This is in the Persian Gulf by the way.

I’ve never worked in the oil field before. I’ve worked in the concrete industry, welded for a few years, and now I’m a dock operator. I got an offer from Halliburton starting at $18/hr. I heard they work a shit ton of hours. I’m walking in blind. What should I expect with the hours, pay, benefits and the actual work?

I had an interview with ExxonMobil on Friday. I think it went well, but there were far more people than I anticipated it to be. They said that they’re only taking 48 people for the Process Technician position that will start in October. Has anyone else interviewed with Exxon mobile before? If so, what was your experience? What do you think my chances are? I think I did pretty well but from what I was told there were hundreds of people being interview all week for 48 positions.

Over the summer I had free time and was just getting in technology in the oilfield. I found out this web called RRC and learned basic information about wells and drilling. Then I looked at the data available. I found 1.1 million Texas wells, cleaned up it up, loaded into Postgres, reconciled against licensed data. County accuracy came out at 97.4%, well status at 98.5%. For most practical purposes, the free public data and the $50K/year subscription are describing the same physical wells.

That's where the interesting problem starts. The RRC reports oil production by lease, not by well. One lease can have anywhere from 1 to over a thousand wells on it. Every data platform in this industry — Enverus, anyone else — shows you a "well-level production" column, and for the majority of Texas wells that number is modeled, not measured. They just don't say that. There's no asterisk, no confidence flag, no footnote. A $5M acquisition decision and a rough equal-split estimate sit in identical-looking cells.

So me and another professional in this field that I met through reddit built the allocation engine, and we're putting it out there for free. Six methods in a cascade ranked by trust — single well leases get a direct read, pending lease data gets pinned per-well, well test data runs through decline curve weighting, and when there's genuinely nothing to work with, you get an equal split and a LOW confidence label that makes it impossible to miss. We validated the whole thing against licensed production data: 62K lease-months, aggregate difference of 0.55%. The math is open, the methodology is documented, and the whole pipeline is meant to be something the community can build on, poke holes in, and improve.

The whole thing sits inside Claude as an MCP server no new app, no separate interface, just connect it to your existing Claude account and ask about wells the way you'd ask a colleague. That's what CrudeCode is becoming: not a data product you pay for, but an open intelligent layer for oil and gas that happens to include data. We're building a community around it, and if you're in upstream, A&D, or just someone who's messed with public well data before, we'd want you involved. This is not a advertisement, but rather just sharing some of my experiences and some tools we made for free. I feel like a community working towards a problem is always better so that's why I made this post.

Edit: A fair clarification: this is not meant to replace Enverus, DI, WellDatabase, or any standard tool people already trust. Texas RRC is just the first public-data connector.

The part I’m interested in is transparency around public data workflows especially where Texas production is lease-level and any well-level allocation is modeled. The goal is to expose the method, confidence tier, source lineage, and weak spots clearly so people can inspect or improve it.

If you already have Enverus/DI and like your workflow, this is not meant to replace it. The more relevant audience is students/builders/technical folks who want open oil-and-gas Claude workflows they can learn from and contribute to.

Hi everyone, I have found myself in quite a pickle. I don't have many connections in the industry and I feel like I could really benefit from advice from more experienced professionals from outside my bubble.

For context, I have a BS in petroleum geology and a MS in earth and environmental engineering and I've been working as an MWD field engineer for the past 2 years. I'm Russian and I work in Russia. I got my bachelor's at home and I went to the US for my master's. I'm 23 and female.

If you've been following the news you might've seen that the Russian oil industry has been successfully targeted by the Ukrainian military. My own place of work was attacked whilst I was working onsite and that was an extremely stressful experience for me. I've since noticed my health has significantly worsened and I'm currently going through a bunch of check-ups whilst I'm home on my days off.

All in all I have become very disappointed in the industry. Before the attack I quite enjoyed my job but since then I've become disillusioned. First it was the reaction from my company - it felt like no one took what happened seriously and nobody really cared. I started casually looking for office jobs in the city because my decline in health has been very worrying to me and there's barely anything, despite the importance of the industry to my country's economy. Nepotism is a huge issue here and I'm guessing most positions are just given away to friends, acquaintances and relatives anyway. Almost none of my college friends actually stayed in the industry after graduating, unless they had connections.

I feel like I've lost hope in the industry. But I've invested so much into this career path so it makes me feel guilty to quit and try something else. Is the industry different abroad? I've always wanted to work internationally but it seems impossible at the moment - the job market is just horrible. Hundreds of applicants for a single entry-level position.

I would be very grateful for any words of advice or guidance here, because I just feel lost at this point.

Hey everyone,

Hope this is okay to post.

I've been working on a small drilling/well control tool in my spare time because I wanted something that would've helped me when I first started in drilling.

It currently includes well control practice questions, trip sheets, kill sheets, BHA/drill pipe/casing/tubing tally sheets, drilling formulas, make-up torque references, ring gasket references, offline access, and the ability to save or export sheets as PDFs.

It's still a work in progress, so I'm looking for honest feedback from people who actually work in drilling. If there are thread types, tool sizes, torque references, gasket types, pressure ratings, or anything else you think should be included, I'd really appreciate the input.

The goal isn't to replace training or company procedures—just to build something that's genuinely useful for people in the field.

If anyone wants to try it, let me know and I'll drop the link in the comments.