CRAFT & HAWKINS DEPARTMENT OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERING
Geologist, geophysicist, and petroleum engineers analyze data to locate drilling sites where oil and gas may have accumulated in commercial quantities. However, the job of finding the oil and gas is the responsibility of the drilling engineer. Many wells are shallow, drilled to a depth of one or two thousand feet, nonetheless, many wells are deep, drilled to depths of 20 thousand feet or more. The deepest well in the world is over 30 thousand feet. Temperatures in deep wells can reach 600 degrees Fahrenheit with pressures of 15 thousand pounds per square inch. Needless to say, these wells can be very expensive to drill and require state of the art engineering technology.
The job of the drilling engineer is to design and implement a procedure to drill the well as economically as possible. He does however, have limitations. The safety of the drilling crew must be a prime concern of the drilling engineer. All states, as well as the federal government of the United States and governments of other countries have rules and regulations that must be followed. It is also important that the well be drilled so that the formations of interest can be evaluated as to its’ commercial value to the oil-company. If commercial accumulation is discovered, there must be a means of getting the oil and or gas to the surface; if there is no commercial accumulation of oil and or gas, the well must be abandoned, and the drilling site must be returned to a natural environmental setting.
Drilling technology is changing daily, as we drill deeper wells and wells in deep offshore waters. A drilling engineer is a manager of operations, a manager of people, a technologist/engineer, and a scientist. He or she must understand and be able to synthesis the principles of geology, physics, mathematics, chemistry, and engineering science.
The future looks bright and salaries should remain high for drilling engineers.
3516 Patrick F. Taylor Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Tel:
225.578.5215 / Fax: 225.578.6039
Copyright © 2004 LSU Craft & Hawkins Dept. of Petroleum Engineering