Saturday, September 7, 2013

Why the world needs more petroleum engineers




Many workers today are disillusioned with their jobs, thinking they exist as spectators and not movers or changers. Petroleum engineers might be exempt from this feeling—they impact people’s lives in a big way. They extract and refine hydrocarbons to turn them into energy, which fuels industrial, commercial, and domestic activity. Petroleum engineers are easily classified as “movers.”



Image Source: jamiiforums.com


Energy is a big part of people’s lives, and with more sophisticated technology, it even forms an insatiable need. Workers in the energy sector are so indispensable in the industry that a shortage of them would be catastrophic. Petroleum engineers are highly skilled and difficult to replace without attendant reforms in tertiary educational systems. The high level of specialization in their line of work --- manifested in both their formation and on-the-job training --- makes their position unique and difficult to fill. At the core of the responsibility of a petroleum engineer is ensuring abundant energy production with little environmental impact. This is what makes petroleum engineering a career for the highly skilled.



Image Source: stateimpact.npr.org


Becoming a petroleum engineer is easier said than done. A petroleum engineer should have ample knowledge from a wide range of disciplines ranging from mathematics, geology, physics, and chemistry to create better and more efficient systems of harnessing hydrocarbon energy to bring about a balance between cheap abundant energy and a clean and safe environment.



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More about petroleum engineers and how they make things work can be found in Ali Ghalambor’s book, Petroleum Production Engineering, A Computer-Assisted Approach. More information about the author can be found at this Twitter page.

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