Types of Jobs Inside an Energy Company

Reservoir engineering is a branch of petroleum engineering that evaluates a hydrocarbon field performance by performing reservoir modeling studies and exploring opportunities to maximize the value of both exploration and production properties to enhance hydrocarbon production. The working tools of the reservoir engineer are subsurface geology, applied mathematics, and the basic laws of physics and chemistry governing the behavior of liquid and vapor phases of crude oil, natural gas, and water in reservoir rock.

Of particular interest to reservoir engineers is generating accurate reserve estimates for use in financial reporting to the SEC and other regulatory bodies. Other job responsibilities include numerical reservoir modeling, production forecasting, well testing, well drilling and workover planning, economic modeling, and PVT analysis of reservoir fluids.

Reservoir engineers also play a central role in field development planning, recommending appropriate and cost effective reservoir depletion schemes such as waterflooding or gas injection to maximize hydrocarbon recovery. Due to legislative changes in many hydrocarbon producing countries, they are also involved in the design and implementation of carbon sequestration projects in order to minimize the emission of greenhouse gases.

Typical responsibilities include:

• Estimating reserves and forecasting for property evaluations and development planning.
• Carrying out reservoir simulation studies to optimize recoveries.
• Predicting reserves and performance for well proposals.
• Predicting and evaluating waterflood and enhanced recovery performance.
• Developing and applying reservoir optimization techniques.
• Developing cost-effective reservoir monitoring and surveillance programs.
• Performing reservoir characterization studies.
• Analyzing pressure transients.
• Designing and coordinating petrophysical studies.
• Analyzing the economics and risk assessments of major development programs.
• Estimating reserves for producing properties.

 

Drilling engineers design and implement procedures to drill wells as safely and economically as possible. They work closely with the drilling contractor, service contractors, and compliance personnel, as well as with geologists and other technical specialists. The drilling engineer has the responsibility for ensuring that costs are minimized while getting information to evaluate the formations penetrated, protecting the health and safety of workers and other personnel, and protecting the environment.

Typical responsibilities include:

• Well design in support of a field development.
• Estimating costs and risk.
• Reporting and optimization.
• Application of technology and innovation in directional drilling, mud systems, casing and drill string design and completions.
• Supervising drilling, completion and workover operations.
• Managing the logistics and reporting of operations.

Completion engineers design and implement optimizing completion techniques to help maximize oil and gas production.

Typical responsibilities include:

• Modeling completion performance.
• Performing stimulation technologies (for example, acidizing, fracturing, water shutoff) based on well and reservoir diagnostics.
• Designing and installing sand control applications (for example, gravel packing, frac packing, consolidation).
• Optimizing completion and workover designs and operations.
• Designing horizontal and multilateral wells.
• Determining primary and remedial cementing procedures along with the design and installation of tubulars, packers, subsurface control and surveillance equipment.
• Evaluating and selecting appropriate equipment to achieve completion objectives.
• Designing through tubing/concentric workovers and intelligent completions.
• Preparing cost estimates and risk in terms of probability and potential remedies.