r/petroleumengineers

Hi everyone,
I am looking for career outlook advice regarding two specific professional paths in the energy sector.
As a fresh graduate aiming to enter the Oil & Gas industry, I am trying to understand the long-term industry value of specializing early versus staying on a broader technical path.
Assuming no prior plant experience, how do hiring managers view these two backgrounds for entry-level roles:

1. Advanced Chemical Engineering (Core/Operations/Design focus)
2. Process Safety Management / Process Safety Engineering
   The Dilemma: Does a specialized safety degree offer a genuine competitive edge to get a foot in the door at energy companies, or is it heavily preferred to have field/operations experience first before focusing on safety?
   Would appreciate insights from anyone currently working in O&G or involved in recruitment. Thanks

Posting anonymously for a family member in Kuwait oil & gas.

He is a petroleum engineering graduate working in artificial lift/field operations: ESP, SRP, gas lift, troubleshooting, well monitoring, and wellsite supervision.

After years there, he feels stuck as a field specialist rather than growing into engineering. Promotions keep getting delayed, vacations are hard to get, and there is no clear path toward production engineering, optimization, ALS applications, or technical support.

He recently had knee surgery for a bucket-handle meniscus tear and still has pain with long walking/standing. His medical report restricts heavy field work, stairs, climbing, squatting/twisting, and risky wellsite activity. When he asked about office/light duty, he felt dismissed as “only a field specialist.”

He is burned out, financially stressed from medical-leave/pay issues, and afraid HR involvement could make things worse.

For people in oil & gas:

1. Is this common in service companies?
2. What roles should he target to move away from constant field/desert work?
3. Should he push HR/OH for light duty, or quietly focus on leaving?
4. How should he document all this without sounding emotional?

Not asking for legal advice. Just trying to help him protect his health and career.

The US SPR which is kept in salt caverns , and a lot of commentators (non-engineers) are saying the 'operational limit' = 70mbbls. "else the caverns get damaged" - (freshwater impacts the walls).

My question is there a way to get it to near 0. As a mediocre (ex) mining engineer i can think of several (costly) solutions {brine, chemical pump etc}, but am wondering if there is a simple, cheap solution.

It seems bizarre to me that an industry that can send a drill ship to deep offshore, send a drill to seabed several km from the water surface and then drill another few km into the earth, cannot figure this out if given the right incentives.

Hi , I have recently got green card (LPR) status after marriage to US citizen. I am currently living and working in India as FEA Engineer in Oil and Gas domain. I want to now switch my job to US , I have updated my CV and applying to US jobs but not getting any calls. Infact I am getting good offers in India but there is no point in those. I am also trying within my company to shift me to US but that would expose me trying to move out which won’t be too good for me. Need Advise and referrals .
PS : I am 8 years experienced in my field and a Technical Expert at my current Organisation.

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.

(sorry idk what flair to use lol)

Hello everyone,

My name is Ayyan Shaikh, . I have a strong interest in working in the oil and gas industry, especially on offshore oil rigs.

A little about my background:

Completed 10th Standard

Completed 12th Standard with 70% marks
Always performed well in English and communication

Graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) in 2026

Although my educational background is not technical, I am highly motivated to enter the oil and gas industry. I am willing to start in an entry-level position, work hard, learn new skills, complete any required certifications, and gain experience.

I would appreciate advice from experienced rig workers and industry professionals on:

What entry-level positions should I apply for?

Which certifications or training courses would help me get started?

Is it possible for a B.Com graduate to build a career in the oil and gas industry?

What are the best companies or countries to apply to as a beginner?

I am serious about pursuing this career path and would be grateful for any guidance or recommendations.

Thank you for your time and advice.
– Ayyan Shaikh

Hey everyone, looking for some honest advice here.
I recently graduated with a B.Tech in Petroleum Engineering and completed about a year of field engineering experience in Abu Dhabi on an oil & gas project. So I do have some real industry exposure, but here’s the problem — the O&G job market is basically dead right now. As an early career engineer with no inside connections, it’s nearly impossible to land anything. So I started looking at alternatives.
I applied for a Master’s in Applied Geosciences at RWTH Aachen (Germany) and got admitted for Winter Semester 2026/27. On paper it sounds great — RWTH is a top technical university and geosciences felt like a natural pivot from petroleum engineering since there’s some overlap in subsurface work.
But now I’m hearing a lot of conflicting opinions and I’m genuinely second-guessing myself:
• Some people say Applied Geosciences from RWTH won’t get you a job either, especially as a foreigner
• Others say the geoscience job market in Germany is also tight
• And some say my petroleum background makes me a poor fit for geoscience roles
Here are my actual questions:
1. Is RWTH Applied Geosciences worth pursuing given my background, or should I reconsider?
2. Which specialization within Applied Geosciences has the best job prospects in Germany? I’ve heard hydrogeology has demand but it’s quite far from what I’ve studied. What about engineering geology, geothermal, near-surface geophysics, or GIS/remote sensing?
3. How realistic is it to find a job in Germany after graduating? Are companies actually hiring or is it very competitive even for locals?
4. How much German do I need? I have roughly 3 months before my program starts. I know it’s not enough to be fluent, but what’s the minimum realistic level to not hurt my job prospects?
I’m not trying to stay in O&G — I genuinely want to transition into something broader with real demand. I just don’t want to spend 2 years and move countries only to end up stuck again.
Any advice from people who’ve studied or worked in geosciences in Germany would be hugely appreciated. Even brutal honesty is welcome.

I’m 18 and trying to make one of the biggest decisions of my life right now. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what actually interests me. For years I’ve been fascinated by Earth’s resources, geology, natural systems, natural phenomena, and understanding how our planet works. At different points I’ve considered paleontology, geology, environmental science, mining engineering, Nuclear Engineering, Planetary Science and for the final finally lol petroleum engineering.
The thing is, I don’t think my interest stops at exploration alone. As much as I find discovery fascinating, I’ve realized I also want strong compensation, a career with demand, and a path where I can specialize deeply rather than staying broad. That’s one of the reasons petroleum engineering keeps pulling me back. Oil and gas genuinely interests me, but not simply because it’s oil. What attracts me is that it seems to sit at the intersection of understanding the Earth and actually doing something with that knowledge through resource extraction, production, drilling, reservoirs, subsurface systems, and large-scale engineering.
I also like the lifestyle aspects I’ve seen in parts of the industry. Rotational schedules, Travel opportunities, Field work, High earning potential. Working around real-world operations instead of being behind a desk 100% of the time My biggest concern is the trade-off. I constantly hear that Petroleum Engineering comes with More specialization, More exposure to industry booms and busts, Less flexibility than Mechanical, Chemical, or Civil Engineering. At the same time, I worry that if I choose a broader degree solely for flexibility, I might miss out on the exact parts of the industry that originally interested me.

For those already working in petroleum, drilling, production, reservoirs, completions, geology, mining, or energy:
Was Petroleum Engineering worth the trade-offs?
If you could go back, would you choose it again?
Did it satisfy your interest in Earth’s resources and subsurface systems?
How much do market cycles actually affect your career?
Do you ever wish you had chosen Mechanical or Chemical Engineering instead?
For someone whose interests are Earth’s resources first and oil & gas second, does Petroleum Engineering still make sense?
I’d appreciate honest answers from people who have actually worked in the industry for a few years and people whose just as curious or interested please engage. The knowledge took here would be very valuable.

if i major in this what are like the chances of getting a job as i heard that the jobs are very volatile

I am wondering if this is just me but it feels like at least half my week lately has been exporting things out of Petrel, reformatting them, figuring out why a file that worked fine last month is suddenly not reading correctly, tracking down which version is actually current. Like actual housekeeping stuff, not engineering.

The tools are fine when they work but nothing talks to anything else and at some point you end up just manually babysitting data between applications indefinitely. I do not know when that became a normal part of the job.

What I keep coming back to is whether petroleum engineering is actually getting harder or if the geology is roughly the same and we are just quietly drowning in more software that does not integrate. It feels like the second one but I might just be having a bad week.

Is this something people are solving internally or is everyone just dealing with it?