Like beach sand and Trump memes, engineers can get everywhere. Drilling, civil, chemical, electrical, mechanical . . . engineers dominate the oil and gas industry and can be found both onshore and offshore.
If you’re thinking about an engineering career in oil and gas, there are even roles that pop up on s1jobs you may never have heard of.
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Metallurgists
Like modern-day alchemists, metallurgists can transform raw materials into magical marvels, such as manufacturing pipes and vessels for important operations on and off rigs.
They usually work in a lab, testing materials to find out their properties, whether that’s conductivity, density or durability.
It’s an extremely niche engineering role but a very important one. There’s a lot of research involved to develop new materials and the metallurgist often act as Sherlock Holmes when something goes wrong – playing detective and talking to fellow engineers to turn conundrums into full oil drums.
Many metallurgic engineers complete a standard engineering degree then follow this up with a postgraduate in metallurgical or material engineering (aka magic!).
Reservoir
This is a branch of petroleum engineering where both geology and mechanics come into play. Typically in the role, engineers use technology in order to locate oil and gas reserves that can potentially be drilled into and the good stuff extracted.
During the drilling, however, the properties and state of the reserve start to alter, which means the reservoir engineer constantly has to examine and delicately adjust operations throughout the entire process – a bit like dating a Kardashian.
They also deal with the analytics, looking at extraction costs and potential profits or losses – the data companies use to decide whether to go ahead with projects.
Usually, reservoir engineers have a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering and have undertaken courses related to reservoirs and drilling mechanics.
Process
Process engineers are involved in a lot of designing, whether for physical structures such as refineries or chemical processes for rigs and platforms.
This means it’s handy to have a chemical engineering degree.
They are constantly testing new ways to update existing equipment, while transforming raw materials into useful products.
Since a lot of dangerous chemicals and substances are used on rigs, process engineers also carry out safety assessments to prevent fires and explosions offshore. Because of this they find themselves doing a lot of travelling – in fact, this job can make you a worldwide jet-setter.
The world of engineering is vaster than most people think. Check out the latest range of Oil & Gas vacancies on s1jobs.