What Types of Careers Can I Have in the Oil and Gas Industry? [2023 Edition]

TOP Energy focuses on “upstream” job functions and careers. The oil and gas industry is divided into three major sectors: upstream, midstream and downstream. The upstream sector includes the part of the industry described as “exploration and production” or “E & P”. Activities include searching for potential oil and natural gas fields, drilling wells, and operating the wells to recover and bring the oil or natural gas to the surface. Job seekers with a variety of career goals related to the upstream sector would benefit from capabilities that TOP curriculum can help develop. Even those working within midstream and downstream sectors may wish to better understand the ‘bigger picture’ of the industry, and thus they are also candidates for our courses.

The growing and exciting oil and gas sector needs professionals with a wide variety of backgrounds, skills, and interests. The industry offers opportunities both for people who like the predictability of a nine-to-five and for those who prefer hands-on, outdoors work. The sector welcomes a diversity of people — people who like to move and shake as well as introverts who work best in a room by themselves. Workers with advanced degrees can find careers here, and so can talented, trade-oriented people with less formal education. What exactly do those jobs look like?

Reservoir engineer: Use fluid science and geology to analyze oil and gas reservoirs. Reservoir engineers help forecast the financial potential of a given reservoir by analyzing the amounts and behavior of crude oil, natural gas, and water in rock formations.

Drilling engineer: Ensure safe and economic drilling. Drilling engineers design well-drilling procedures in such a way as to minimize cost and maximize output without compromising worker safety or environmental integrity.

Exploration geologist: Search for oil or gas in rock formations. Exploration geologists may live and work outdoors, traveling, hiking, exploring nature, and handling specialized equipment. They may work in an office studying photographs or images created by satellites or other remote-sensing instruments to determine likely hydrocarbon deposits. They use their expert understanding of geology and environmental science to improve affordable access to energy.

Oil and gas attorney: Lawyers who work in the oil and gas sector deal with property and mineral rights. Who owns the land below existing oil and gas resources? Who owns the right to mine (drill) for it? What conditions are required for extraction? Attorneys in this field help sort out permitting, leasing, property boundaries, and split estates (when property owners sell the oil and gas rights to their land but keep the land itself).

Oil and gas regulatory inspector: Government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, and countless state, provincial, and regional agencies employ inspectors to ensure compliance with legislation regarding land usage. They monitor the environmental impact of drilling operations. They work to keep drilling sites safe for workers, community members, and the environment.

Mudlogger: Mudloggers—an apt name for a hands-on-the-earth job—collect samples of rock to describe and record it. By examining samples with binocular microscopes and via thin-section analysis, they interpret the geology of a site. Their work helps drilling engineers make decisions about how fast and how deep to drill.

Oil and gas governmental affairs: Oil and gas regulations change quickly, and oil and gas extraction companies have an interest in monitoring, as well as attempting to influence, those changes. Professionals in governmental affairs understand the legislative environment. They advise legislators on the impact of proposed rule changes, and they advise oil and gas executives on regulations.

Oil and gas accountant: As with accountants in other industries, those in oil and gas keep financial records and prepare financial statements. They may create and track budgets, handle tax calculations, or maintain a company balance sheet. 

Carbon and sustainability manager: Sustainability is so critical to the world that much of the industry has adopted the sustainability goals from the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Aligning with these goals leads to greater efficiencies, cost savings and competitiveness, and enhanced social license to operate. For example, the oil and gas industry can be a key part of the solution to address climate change through the management of mitigation technologies such as carbon capture, utilization, and storage.