I am looking for adventure; however, owing to a local paucity of wizards, and a personal heritage as daring as a hobbit’s, I may have to arrange this myself. I want to know the magic words you used to get sent to another land to work, what was the work like, what were your qualifications? I want to hear anything/everything that there is to hear about the job(s); although, I’m more interested in what the Engineers do.
What are your oil patch stories?
I worked in the Alberta oil patch for couple years. First as a roughneck and then as a wireliner.
It was a crazy job but you make tons of money. It’s dangerous, demanding, the weather is horrible, tons of responsibility, the hours are nuts, and most of the people you work with are knuckle draggers.
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Only one person on the SDMB worked in the oil patch?!
Is Tapioca Dextrin still around? He works on offshore rigs.
I spent a couple of years in Saudi Arabia, followed by a couple more at Prudhoe Bay in arctic Alaska. I was doing civil engineering, construction management and logistics, so I wasn’t out on the rigs much.
If you’re under 30 you should just do it and don’t look back.
I’d agree, although I’d add that a person need to be prepared physically and mentally for the job. In my experience there were no shortcuts and one must be willing to sacrifice and work very hard and very smart. There’s nobody holding your hand.
I don’t think engineers are out there on the rig floor acting as a roughneck. Most work in an office of some kind, while some end up as rig supervisors. Sure quite a few did work as roughnecks, etc. before becoming an engineer. AFAIK, anyways.
I on the other hand, work as a computer geek with an oil company, and am employed out in the middle of the desert in Yemen on a rotational basis. Essentially, it means you get half the year off in 4-5 week bites. How do you get such a job? Network, network, network and check the international job ads. There are tons of jobs out there for qualified people. Not all of them rotational, but you can end up living in exciting places none the less. I’d pick Dubai for a start. Major boom town with all the fun that you’d expect from such a place like that.
Did you watch Armageddon? Well the oil patch is not anything like that
The oil field separates into two distinct areas, Upstream (exploration and Production) and downstream (refining).
Both offer opportunities for oversea work (I am assuming the flat bit is somewhere in the US)
Downstream is typically civil and chemical engineering skill sets, basically building large process plants. Essentially really really expensive plumbing.
There is shipping, crude oil trading and refined product trading and marketing, but I am guessing this is not the area of the oil patch you are interested in.
Downstream is the side from seismic and other exploration, through drilling exploration wells, drilling appraisal and development wells and installing the appropriate completion equipment, through to the production, which is really primary separation and a bit of pumping (watching expensive plumbing work, dull dull dull)
So as an engineer (physicists and geoscientist are also around) you can find a lot of places to slot in. Plenty of opportunities in the production and upstream sides, this is the regular steady long term civil/chemical engineer project work. An upstream engineer may pop in to tell me I am full of it, and they would no doubt be correct.
Downstream on the drilling side the industry has 3 main branches, (I am ignoring the Geological and Geophysics side here)
The Oil company (shell, Exxon, bp, Total etc etc
The Service Providers (Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Weatherford, Smith, Halliburton etc)
The Drilling Contractors (Transocean, Global, Pride, Precision et etc etc etc etc etc etc )
Joining the operators you Hill probably need a degree or masters in Drilling or Petroleum engineering. Head off to Colorado Scholl of Mines. This is just the way they recruit, although they do look at mech eng as well. The operator engineers are involved in well planning, completion design etc. They are the clients and call all the shots, although as an operator they are entirely dependent on the service and rig suppliers to actually do anything. This leads to a very uneasy relationship.
The service providers are probably the easiest and toughest way into the oil industry. This is to say, you could get a job easily, you just might quit it after 2 months of being treated somewhat worse than cattle. To make money the service providers need to be very efficient with people and equipment, which is to say you may find yourself in assendofnowhereistan with half the kit you need and two trainees as your crew. Service provides perform services such as fluid engineering, directional and measurement while drilling, Logging, data logging, cementing engineering. Good entry , make some money, have a party life (short periods of time off forget regular 4 on 4 off), learn , get the hell out. Do not expect to continue a relationship with your S.O. Most people I know (myself included) relationships did not last. Relationships started once within the industry seam to fare a lot better. YMMV terms and conditions apply
The drilling contractor is the people who met the drilling rig the oil co. They provide the rig, the driller, the roughnecks and roustabouts. This is essentially a construction crew, Rig engineering is mostly dealt with in the offices and rig manufacturing sites. Offshore rigs, particularly the deep water drillships and 54th and 5th generation semisubs do keep a rig engineer on board. Their task are mostly related to preventative maintenance and troubleshooting. These are very expensive pieces of kit with day rates touching 600k a day.
The 600k a day figure is one reason why people in the industry tend to have short fuses, people get very agitated when things go wrong.
Anyway that is some waffle on the industry.
But to answer your questions
What words? I Quit
What was the work like? I have had some very good time, I have had some very shitty times, I have had some excruciatingly tedious times, but on the whole it is entertaining.
Qualifications : Masters Physics
One thing you really need to put forward is why you want to go oversees.
There may be better ways to archive those goals than the O&G industry
Petroleum Engineering eh? I’ve been looking at that, my school offers it as an addition to my Chemical Engineering degree, but the advice I’ve gotten about it ranges from “Don’t waste your money; your company will train you to do everything” to “It’s vitally necessary”.
The reason I want to go overseas is somewhat long. Up until recently I’ve spent my entire life within 200 km of home; then I spent a couple of summers in the arctic. I’ve never been able to convince anyone that it was a good job. “You like working with Giant Mosquitoes and Grizzly Bears?” yes/no/ 
, “Oh then the alcoholics and other drug users make exceptional company”, yes/no/ . Once I realized how different things could be, I wanted to go as far away as possible. Not just on a vacation where you spend a week in another country, go to the beach, look at a building, go home, but spend enough time there to get a feel for what the area is really like. X on Y off outside of Europe, Africa, China sounds like the perfect schedule. Uzi has the perfect type of job.
The reason for O&G is that I can get a job with BP/Shell locally, pay my dues, then (hopefully) say “I’ve worked here for X years, and you have a job at <location>, I want to work for you at <location>”, and move around the world in that fashion.
Ignore people.
I went to the arctic with the intention of working a single 6 week shift, score some fast money and get out before summer was over. But it was so fantastic - the endless tundra, incredible herds of caribou by the thousands, the sun whirling around the horizon and never going down, etc. I realized that there were so many things I would be missing if I didn’t stay through the winter - the northern lights, polar bears, the foxes turning white, etc. Not to mention the sheer intensity of round-the-clock darkness and mind bending cold. Sure, there are some hardships too but it really is the experience of a lifetime.
Same goes for the middle east, South America, Malaysia, Africa or any of the other oil patches that are hungry for skilled, willing workers. Living in Saudi Arabia as a young man was for me a tremendous lesson in cultural appreciation that turned my college education on its head. Plus, the schedule allowed me plenty of opportunity to travel throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia.
If you haven’t lived elsewhere in the world you can’t really understand where you come from. Do it.
I’m in upstream oil and gas, but as an economist they don’t let me near the fun stuff. I’m not sure what school you are at, but there is a HUGE demand for American petroleum engineers. I can only think of a few schools that offer the discipline, (Mines, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Stanford (which has a reputation for producing guys that “can’t turn a wrench”) and maybe some schools in Lousiana. These schools combines turn out a couple of hundred P.E.s a year, with a third or half non-US citizens who are difficult to employ. Meanwhile the Chinese and Russian (Gubkin) Oil schools are tuning out thousands of engineers a year.
If you want to look into the industry, Mines (Colorado School of, that is) offers a summer program about six weeks in length called the petroleum field school or something like that. It costs about 6 large, but you might be able to get some credits that will transfer to your own school. Other schools might have something similar that will focus on offshore, I’m not sure.
I work for one of the service companies NaturalBlondChap named
I did Chemical Engineering and started out as an offshore cementer in Norway (I am a Brit) to treating cement jobs in Wyoming in the bitter cold to running the logistics of the group and now I manage an entire district in California all in 5 1/2 short years.
The service company life is hard but holy cow it can be fun and they do tend to be training ground for the operators - we lose a lot of poeple that way
PE’s right now are in huge demand due to the ageing population of the oilfield - most of the knowledge is ready to retire however a lot counts for experience as well as get up and go. Most companies service or operator will give you all the training you need but a PE may start out at a higher salary and it may take you in a different route if you really want to be a “field” person as opossed to an office person.
Personally I LOVE my job and the lifestyle but it is not for everyone.
Well it sounds good on paper, but imagine, if you will sitting, in you backyard on a summer night after being off for 4 weeks, or lying on the beach in Thailand, or eating at a nice restaurant in Rome and then a horrible thought comes upon you - You only have 1 week left before you have to go back to work! You can’t imagine the stress knowing that it will take six whole weeks until you can do this again for another 5 week period… … .
I think I will kill myself before I go back to working Monday to Friday
Uzi makes a very good point. After a few years of overseas employment which generally means intense periods of work alternating with long, luxuriant vacations, it is extremely difficult to come back and fit into a lifestyle of only 2 or 3 weeks off each year.
I’ve been back in the grind for 25 years now and it’s still profoundly depressing. Now that my kids are about to graduate from high school I’m thinking it may be time to hit the road again.
I’m in downstream but in an office. However, my s/o worked in the oil industry in Alberta for 6 or 7 years. The comment about relationships and the O&G industry is absolutely true. It’s luck and his change of career that we’re still together after 5 years (and going strong).
He worked for a service company on the frac crew. His shifts were 15 days out, 6 days in, which is VERY lucky, although he often worked through his days off and I wouldn’t see him for a couple of months at a time.
If you work in central and southern Alberta, you stay in hotels for the most part. It’s a LOT of driving and very long days, up to 18 hours a day. But excellent pay, and yes, they do train most people, but the more experience and credentials you have the better.
Working on a rig in Northern Alberta is a bit different. The oil sands are a nasty business, but the money is good. You stay in a camp and eat well, but you are dirty all the time, there are a lot of alcoholics and druggies, and I shouldn’t forget to mention the dirty hookers that frequent these places. Workers typically go out for the entire winter, usually not even returning for Christmas depending on the company, and work 12 hour shifts. It can get very cold (-40 C-ish), but it’s hard enough work that you stay warm. Everyone is an asshole and usually only cares about themselves. Don’t expect anyone to have your back, when it comes down to it, they’re grumpy, cold, miserable and miss home. But they stay because of the money.
I’m not sure how you would go about getting an overseas job, but my s/o’s company did have a transfer program where they’d send you overseas on an exchange program for a few years. But you’d have to be pretty experienced.
Sunacres:
The Caribou herd is something else isn’t it? I caught the leading and tailing edges of the herd, but to see more animals than the largest farm all walking together, and to be told that I’m seeing just a few animals is amazing. Did you see any wolves while you were up there? I saw a wolf with tortoise-shell coat. When you think wolf, you think big dog, but they are more like canine tigers. It is amazing how they can run so gracefully over the mossy tundra, as if it were asphalt. And in the fall when the moss starts changing to red and yellow. When you look out across the tundra, it is as if you are standing on the side of a derelict ship, and the moss is the rust on the hull.
Pardon me for asking, but does California get the Northern Lights?
When you were in Saudi Arabia did you experience any racism for being what I assume to be a Caucasian American? If you went to neighbouring countries, did you feel safe travelling?
T_SQUARE:
Why are the non-US citizens hard to employ, would it be a visa issue? Are Canadian engineers as well regarded as American engineers? Does the oil industry primarily use American units? When we were discussing mines, we were told that the mining industry uses a mis-mash of American and SI units, say the office would be SI, but the mine itself would be imperial, or it might even vary by floor.
ems:
Are the PE’s generally confined to one office? What I mean to say is, if you wanted to work back in the UK (or anywhere else), would you be able to do that without setting your career back? If you can move around, would your PE would restrict you to offices in populated areas?
How did working in a different country affect your ability to become a PE? Was it enough for which ever test you wrote that you worked for four years under any country’s PEs? Or to become eligible to write, did you have to spend four years working under a PE from one country?
EmAnJ:
I’ve heard stories about the hookers. That there is no subterfuge about what they do, or how many people they do it with. As in assembly line sex, the next guy goes in as soon as the first guy pulls out, and a bunch of guys hanging around waiting their turn.
I never saw any wolves – I think they were pretty uncommon along the north coast, but became more plentiful as you approached the Brooks Range heading south along the haul road to Fairbanks.
I’ve lived in California for most of my life and have never been aware of being able to see the northern lights. It’s probable that under some circumstances one could catch a glimpse, but I never did. Up there we were frequently directly below them, and when they were in their gently waving “curtain” aspect the experience of being close to something so unimaginably huge, in motion, was beyond breathtaking.
I’m sure things have changed a lot in Saudi Arabia since I was there 25 years ago, but believe it or not it was the safest place I’ve ever been, by far, and the explanation for that was a profound thing to learn. We hear about the barbaric punishments meted out for crime: hands off for theft and heads off for murder. It’s true. But they very rarely have to do it. It’s done publicly and it is every citizen’s duty to witness it. And believe me, it makes an impression. As a result, nobody even thinks about stealing. The gold and jewelry markets had tables in the open air with cascades of precious metals and gems laying unprotected – it just wouldn’t enter anyone’s mind to take something that didn’t belong to them. Same with assault. Anywhere you went, day or night, the only threats were from scorpions, not people.
Contrast that with our “free” society. Our jails are overflowing and yet no one benefits in the slightest from all of that suffering.
Traveling in the region provided a wide variety of experiences as far as being welcome, accepted, or resented, but in general the world is a much friendlier place than the news headlines would lead you to believe. Even today, I do volunteer work in El Salvador during the summers and sometimes have to work hard to convince inexperienced companions that the warnings on the State Department web site could as easily apply to any large US city.
And there is just so much to see and do within a few hours flight from the gulf. Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Pakistan, and on and on. Not to mention Europe and the far East. Live a little!
Yeah, mostly visa issues, or the fact that some students are sponsored by their home countries, so they have to go back and work for the national oil company for a spell. Now Canada might be a different story, there are quite a few Canadians working in the US, so it might be easier. Venezuelans seem to be able to stick around too, as I have a couple friends who “defected” from PDVSA after graduation. I’m not sure of the mechanics, I just meant to get across that just because “X” P.E.s are graduating, only something like .6X are available for hire, and X alone is already a low number.
English units are pretty much oil field standard, as far as I know, even with the French at TOTAL. I’ve had to explain things like PSI to French engineers (in school) before; boy did they find that silly.
Most of the neighbouring countries are somewhat more civilized than Saudi Arabia. I think Saudi would be the least safe of the countries in south Arabia. I’ve never felt unsafe in Dubai or Yemen. That does not mean that there aren’t people who would like to chop your head off just to see which way it would fall, but they are a small proportion of each population and you are more likely to get run down crossing the street in any city in NA than running across someone who would do you harm here.
Now working in Sudan may be a whole other kettle of fish.
Probably more so. The have similar training without the baggage of US foreign policy getting in the way.
Go to Dubai for hookers. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one in almost any bar.