How to prepare for a process control engineer in oil&gas field

[tri-xxx]

Hello everyone,

 

      I am a senior majored in Materials Chemistry, and will go to chemical engineering master program in United States. Up till now, I got the admission from UC Berkeley and Upenn. Since my undergraduate major is not chemical engineering, although I have taken several relative courses, such as Fluid Mechanics, Methods of  Mathematical  Physics.

 

       Currently, my research is about oil & gas area and I used to study some courses about petroleum engineering, including petrophysics and reservoir numerical simulation.

 

      Therefore I hope to know, in order to be a process engineer in oil & gas field after graduation, what should I do, especially during the following months. I hope someone with knowledge about this area could recommend some widely used simulation software or some classical books. Also I appreciate other precious suggestions.

 

     Thank you very much!

 

[spectastic]

if you want to work in oil&gas, you'll probably end up somewhere in Texas, near the Houston area most likely. They also have reservoirs up in the rockys and regions such as North Dakota, but it's freezing up there! F**k that. they also have locations on the east coast for NG. But California is not really the place for oil and gas, partly because there is little incentive for companies to stay there, due to the stringent environmental policies in California.

 

from what I know, there's a lot you can specialize in as a chemical engineer. process control is one of them. there's also production, projects and field. and you can always get hired, and have the school pay for an MBA if you want to go the management route. working at a chemical company, and not a refinery, my knowledge is limited. but if you want to work in process control, it's definitely important to understand the various types of controllers, logic diagrams and control loops. Even with a masters degree, most of these things come with experience on the job, not from a textbook.

[tri-xxx]

if you want to work in oil&gas, you'll probably end up somewhere in Texas, near the Houston area most likely. They also have reservoirs up in the rockys and regions such as North Dakota, but it's freezing up there! F**k that. they also have locations on the east coast for NG. But California is not really the place for oil and gas, partly because there is little incentive for companies to stay there, due to the stringent environmental policies in California.

 

from what I know, there's a lot you can specialize in as a chemical engineer. process control is one of them. there's also production, projects and field. and you can always get hired, and have the school pay for an MBA if you want to go the management route. working at a chemical company, and not a refinery, my knowledge is limited. but if you want to work in process control, it's definitely important to understand the various types of controllers, logic diagrams and control loops. Even with a masters degree, most of these things come with experience on the job, not from a textbook.

 

Thanks so much for your warm reply!

In fact, I hope to work in Texas since there are many opportunities for oil & gas jobs.  One of my senior suggested me to learn some useful chemical engineering simulation software, such as Aspen Plus. 

 

I still have a question about your reply that why you said " working at a chemical company, and not a refinery"  I know there are some jobs available for process control in the refinery process, such as Chevron.

 

In addition, do you think mathematical skills are very important in process control? So maybe I should learn something such as Computational Method!

[spectastic]

yea, simulation software is nice to have on your resume. Aspen Plus is a good one. At my school, we used Hysys. But really, these are all really user friendly software that are easy to learn. I'll be honest though. When I was looking for a job, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to get my feet wet first, before I decide what type of engineering suits me the best, and for many people, this changes throughout their career, so I woudln't get too hung up on it. 

 

I said chemical company because there's a sort of a production line within the oil/gas industry. The refineries get their crude from their suppliers and purify it. Chemical companies take these purified raw materials and turn them into chemical intermediates. And then a manufacturing company might take these intermediates and turn them into parachutes. And then you get all these consulting firms and vendors who provide specialty services to facilitate this 'production line'. If you want the short answer, refineries make the most money. Exxon start out their new engineers from college at 95k (yea...).

 

And I wouldn't say math skills are particularly important so much as computer or programming skills. Programming skill is more of a survival skill as more things are becoming digitized and automated. having even a basic understanding of computer programming will complement any work that you'll do with process control.

 

 

 

 

P.S. you will run into a lot of politics in engineering. if you ask me, engineering is more about people and politics than it is about engineering. that's one of my primary drivers to go to grad school, get my doctorate and do research. The bottomline is the main driver in industry, and all that interesting stuff you learn in school eventually ends up at the bottom of a box, along with your old textbooks.

Edited March 4, 2014 by spectastic