Petroleum Engineers Need a Strong Professional Society

Abstract

Abstract The thrust of this paper is to objectively challenge the recently-emergent talking point for a "Society of Professionals in Energy," which manifests a mentality which heralds trouble for the future of the petroleum engineering (PE) discipline and profession. Such approach dilutes any domain expertise and competitive advantage that PE graduates should have over non-PE graduates, with the next step inadvertently being the gradual phasing of PE into something along the lines of "energy engineering," all this while oil and gas (O&G) production keeps growing year-after-year. Petroleum reservoirs are the result of subsurface processes that took place through an extensive geological history. Conceptualizing how petroleum reservoirs are configured underground, at great depths and sometimes also below thousands-of-feet of water, is an extremely challenging task. This unique-to-PE visional barrier is an inherent challenge to every subsurface O&G project, making technical expertise (not essentially experience) invaluable, as it requires more than basic critical thinking to understand what goes on in the opaque underground. One may disregard the 2021-22 merger fiasco between SPE and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) as an aberration. It certainly can serve as a teaching moment for its architects. There are many within and outside PE who would question even the need for the existence of PE academic programs. The reason students enroll in PE programs is supposed to be for developing expertise in solving upstream O&G problems. Rebranding or generalizing to "energy engineering" will make more harm than good, diluting any competitive advantage for PE graduates within what should be their domain of expertise.