CAREERS: Petroleum engineering Fuelling career

CAREERS: Petroleum engineering Fuelling career

By Sahar Majid

According to Wikipedia, “The subsurface engineering activities related to the production of hydrocarbons, which can be either crude oil or gas are referred to as petroleum engineering”. A petroleum engineer is assigned for managing oil and gas fields.

There are three main categories for a petroleum engineer: reservoir engineer who works to optimise the production of oil and gas via proper well placement and enhanced oil recovery techniques; drilling engineer who manages the technical aspects of drilling of both production and injection wells; and production engineer who is responsible for managing the interface between the reservoir and the well.

In recent years, petroleum engineering has gained substantial importance due to the vital role of oil in every segment of life. Petroleum engineering offers a bright career scope in Pakistan and abroad. Many of our petroleum engineers have been working in the Middle East, Europe and the US, and are earning handsome salaries.

In Pakistan, petroleum engineering discipline was first introduced by University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore in 1969. Then, in 1983 Mehran University of Engineering and Technology established a separate department of fuel engineering, which later on was changed to the ‘department of petroleum and gas engineering’. And recently in January 2005, NED University of Engineering and Technology has also added petroleum engineering as a degree programme in the list of their various engineering disciplines.

“Candidates with an HSC (Pre-engineering) certificate are eligible to apply for a degree programme in petroleum engineering. After completing a four-year Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree, fresh graduates are appointed as ‘trainee engineers’ by national as well as multinational firms,” explains Ahmed Saeed Khan, chairman, department of petroleum and manufacturing engineering, UET, Lahore. Khan adds that the initial salaries given to the trainee engineers are about Rs25,000 per month and after six-months of training, they are paid around Rs35,000 per month.

As the engineers gain more and more experience, they are given attractive increments. Ahmed also reveals the lucrative earnings in the field of petroleum engineering in foreign countries. “Our petroleum engineers who have been working abroad for many years are now minting money,” he says.

Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd. (PPL), British Petroleum (BP) — Pakistan, OMV Group and ENI Pakistan Ltd. are some of the many oil and gas exploration and production companies that hire petroleum engineers. There are several other companies that offer different services related to oil and gas exploration such as drilling and integrated well services. Petroleum engineers are in great demand by these firms as well.

While discussing career choices for a petroleum engineer, Sahibzada Haider Rizwan, Chief Geologist, New Horizon Exploration and Production Ltd (NHEPL) says, “Petroleum industry is divided into two main categories: upstream and downstream. Upstream sector deals with the exploration and then production phase, while downstream is all about refining, transportation and marketing of the finished products. Petroleum engineers who want to pursue a career in downstream sector can opt to work in companies like Pakistan State Oil (PSO).”

If you want to pursue a career in petroleum engineering, you should keep in mind that the job of a petroleum engineer is not restricted to air-conditioned offices. Most petroleum engineers have to work in the fields except those who are responsible for analysing the reports and recommending the field engineers and advising corporate decision-makers on whether to proceed or not. Therefore, the field engineers should have to be mentally as well as physically strong enough to endure long-distance travel, long stays and to bear uncertain weather conditions. Besides, petroleum engineers have to work with a team of geologists and contractors, which is why they should also possess strong and effective communication skills.

Petroleum engineering has a wide scope, and it opens various other doors of opportunities after one has gained extensive experience about oil industry. So, if you stop enjoying getting your hands dirty by digging oil wells, you may opt to become industry analyst. You may also enter in environmental companies or become consultants to professional oil organisations.

Publish in Sci-Tech World section of Dawn Newspaper on April 19, 2008.

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/science/archive/080419/science10.htm

Become a Career Activist

Following are the four key principles discussed by Barbara Moses in her book Career Intelligence, to become a career activist.

In a chapter Become a Career Activist she highlighted that in order to become a career intelligent you need to be a career activist. She define career activist as one who define him or herself independently from their organization, and taking charge of their own career choices. Any individual can make these choices if he or she knows who they are and what their strengths, interests and values are.

Four key principles of career management for becoming a career smart.

1. Be a career activist

“To be a career activist means to design your own future”. She give an example that we give enough attention to our health, finances and children but we give the least amount of attention to the area of our life which affect us most- our career. Therefore we need to bring a focus to this important area by becoming a career activist and defining our career in terms of who we are independent of our organization, job title, or what other people think of us.

Remember that the key for future career success is YOU, it is you who is responsible for your career success.

2. Know yourself

“To make informed choices it’s crucial to know yourself”. The key is to know your strengths, weakness, interest and values”. The process of knowing begins when we ask our self ordinary questions that could produce extra ordinary results such as who we are, what we want, where we want to go, what we want to do, what we are good at, what we value most and what we care about. Beside that you also need to define your personal ‘work ID’ based on your skills, attributes, interests, values and personal preferences. Remember self-knowledge bring focus to our career and enrich opportunities.

3. Know what you love

“To know what is important to you, you have to know what you love. Knowing what you love doesn’t mean you are guaranteed to find work that matches your passion, but it is a good first step”. Knowledge about yourself, your priorities and values is crucial to your career satisfaction. If you lost track of time in your work, it mean you love what you do “Work is one of the best ways people can express themselves”, writes Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. “But it won’t happen without your participation. You have to ask yourself what you want out of life and find a job that is at least in part expressive of your own best abilities”.

4. Be who you are

“Don’t try to be something you are not”. Be who you are – your authentic self. “The market always determined what is desired, fashionable, valued and profitable”. We make a mistake by submitting to those market perceptions. “People turn themselves inside out to fit into positions that are fundamentally awful match with their skills, interests and values because they are terrified of being without a job”. Therefore we need to step back, reflect this and refuse to worship these market gods. “We each bring to the table a unique set of skills and attributes, which meaningfully describe who we are and how we can add value. We need to play through our strengths”.

Remember, you have a future and you have to create it. In short become a career activist means know yourself, develop a personal identity, do what you love and be who you are – a competent and effective human being. “Becoming an activist is not a luxury, it’s the key to your future career success.”

Career Decision Making Process

Career Decision Making Process

Career decision making process is very simple but requires lot of hard work and commitment. Its a three step process:

step 1 is know yourself

step 2 is know your work/career options and

step 3 is setting goal and taking action

In short the more you know about your skills, interests and what type of career options available, the more quickly you get into action and master the game of life. once you start moving into right direction then its up to you to decide how fast you want to move toward your destination.

Every long term goal require a game plan, you cannot become an engineer just by thinking, you need a game plan of how many hour your need to study, what courses you need to take and how much numbers you need to get an admission in engineering university or college. similarly we also need a game plan for our career success.

A simple formula for career success is

Interest + Career Goal + Action = Career Success

Follow the following three steps to navigate toward career success.

Know Yourself

The most common way to know yourself is to ask why, what, who, when and where questions to yourself, and sometime its difficult to answer these questions. But there are more structured assessment tools available in market which helps to answer some of these questions. Assessment tools help you learn about your interest, skills, personality and goals. After taking the interest assessment you can supplement your self knowledge by taking value survey, personal style survey and skill survey to create your career blueprint.

Know your work

To know your career goal, you need to explore your career options. there are different ways with which you can explore your career options, one is collecting information about career fields and occupations, which include labor market information about job description, career prospects, earnings, educational qualification and career paths. other options include networking, information interviewing, job shadowing and volunteering.

It is recommended to create a portfolio of all this occupational research. Sometime it takes few months and sometime it take years to collect this information and to make an informed career selection. A portfolio helps keep your information in one place and can be either electronic or in hard copy.

Taking Action

Once you finished with your occupational exploration, select those occupations that you find most interesting. List your top five. From this list you should be able to select a career goal. Goals are simple ideas about what you'd like to accomplish. Your long term career goal is to be a creative copy writer for an advertising company. What short term goals do you need to achieve your long-term goal? List the skills, education, and experience required for your career goal.

Think about what is most important in your life and the career choices that fit to your values.

Once you set your career goal, than its time to put them into action. Remember career exploration is a learning process. you might make mistake or change your mind. that is the part of the process. If one goal or strategy doesn't work out for you, restart and try another strategy or goal. Often there are different career paths to achieve the same goal.

Career Guidance and Counseling in Pakistan

The need for career guidance and counseling in Pakistan has grown significantly during last few years especially for school and colleges students. This is because of the following factors:

first, rapid changes in technology, and lack of skills and resources in our students to cope with these changes

second, lack of informed, relevant and clear guidance

third, lack of trained teachers and counselors in career guidance in our schools and colleges

Career guidance and counseling services need could only be filled if school educate and train their teachers in the use of career guidance and counseling tools and techniques. And adopt a comprehensive career guidance model.

We will discuss and suggest a career guidance and counseling model on our next post.

Imran Pardasi

3 C's of Personal Career Branding

For establishing strong personal career brand you need to follow 3 C's rule - Clarity, Consistency and Constantly.

It means give clear message of your brand with consistent theme and content of similar messages that constantly present themselves to the outside world.

"You can't spell the word Brand without the letter 'C' - Clarity, Consistency, Constancy" William Arruda