Petroleum Engineering Manpower Demand

Abstract Over the years, the Society of Petroleum Engineers through the society-wide Manpower Committee has attempted to obtain a better understanding of manpower for the upstream side of the petroleum industry. One of the critical areas of this understanding is engineering manpower demand. In former years data has sometimes been sparse, negating any meaningful understanding of manpower drilling and production engineering needs and trends for the U.S. petroleum industry. The basic questionnaire sent to companies is in need of revision to expand its scope to international engineering manpower for the exploration and production industry at large. Questions and data should be focused to obtain more interpretable information which would be beneficial to the overall industry and which could be easily correlated year to year. This year the responses to the manpower survey were up significantly from 11 responses in 1988 to 23 responses in 1989. Responses were received from majors, large service companies, and independents. 5 respondents had 15-50 engineers employed in the subject sector, 5 with 51-100 engineers, 4 with 100-500 engineers, and 6 with more than 500 engineers. The remaining responses were not usuable.