Excellence in Petroleum Engineering

Abstract

The failed merger attempt between SPE and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) in 2020-21 brought about nonsensical calls for rebranding the petroleum engineering (PE) discipline into something like "energy engineering" and by extension SPE into "Society of Professionals in Energy." This led to the writing of "Petroleum Engineers Need a Strong Professional Society" (SPE-210365). I felt a need to combat heavy-consequence-bearing misconceptions promulgated in the PE community, including a field of great importance: education. Someone had to set the record straight. PE academic programs interested in facilitating a smooth transition of their graduates into the industry should work in conjunction with the exploration and production (E&P) sector of the oil and gas (O&G) industry to provide the correct balance between theory and practice in their coursework, ensuring that relevant-E&P-job openings are filled with their graduates. The low PE-student enrollment levels frequently reported may be a manifestation of long-standing issues within the PE higher education. Decisions on things like curricula/syllabi design, along with faculty hiring should be governed by a desire to equip PE graduates with a competitive advantage over non-PE graduates vis-à-vis related-E&P domains.Integrating the many PE subdisciplines (drilling, reservoir, production, and other) in a manner efficient for learning is essential for producing competitive-and-market-attractive young professionals. PE graduates must be cognizant of the basics and fundamentals of their "trade," comfortable in assessing E&P problems efficiently through all their facets. While talks on the transferability of skills that PEs typically feature into peripheral disciplines mainstreams, strengthening the competitive advantage that PE graduates must hold over non-PE graduates is where the focus needs to be. Excellence in PE requires intra-disciplinarism – completeness on all fronts.This paper presents ten "truisms" (cold, hard realities of the modern-day world), providing explanations behind several status quos impacting the PE discipline, directly or indirectly.