Petroleum Engineer
What the work is
Plans, develops and directs the engineering work in drilling, production and formation evaluation to achieve optimal exploration, development and extraction of oil and gas resources.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Plans, researches, designs and provides advice on engineering operations for the exploration, location and extraction of oil and gas
- Conducts studies to determine potential locations for drillings
- Uses computer models to determine ideal recovery processes, and simulate and predict reserve performance
- Analyses reservoir rock and fluid data to design optimum methods of controlling the flow of oil or gas from wells
- Monitors the evaluation of wells, well testing and well surveys
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a mine site in outback Australia, with a planning office, a pit and a camp. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A plan you worked on for months is carried out on the ground exactly as designed
- A tricky area is mined safely because the whole team talked it through first
- You walk the pit at dawn and see what a few lines on a screen became
Hard days
- Rain closes the roads and the production plan has to be rebuilt overnight
- Long rosters away from family, and a lot of time in a small camp
- A plan that is cheaper conflicts with what the safety team will accept
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 243632, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.