Petroleum Jobs
There are many petroleum jobs in the oil industry. Since oil is located all over the world, the jobs are also scattered across the globe. If you want to live and work in exotic places, you can do that easily.
Bayport Facility
Photo courtesy of Port of Houston Authority
Petroleum Jobs Divided
The petroleum industry is segmented into four large categories: exploration, production, refining and distribution. Exploration is the speculative, front end segment that finds the crude oil. Jobs include surveyors, prospecting engineers, geologists, and drillers. Oilfield services is a specialty business that covers drilling mud, supplies and well logging. Exploration work can be grueling, with long and irregular hours.
Petroleum jobs in production include well servicing and maintenance, oil collection, inspection and monitoring. Anything that facilitates getting the crude out of the ground and delivered to a refiner is considered production. This work is more scheduled and predictable than the front end.
Refining jobs are like most shift jobs. Refineries convert crude oil into finished products that can be sold to other processing businesses or directly to consumers. The work tends to be routine with a very regular schedule. Plants operate round the clock, so three shifts are generally used.
Distribution is the business of getting the finished products to the customers. Deliveries are made by pipeline, truck, rail and ship. Work includes installing and maintaining pipelines, vehicle deliveries and a variety of support activities common to most businesses.
One of the hottest sectors is fracking, which is actually a production technique. Fracking is used mainly to produce natural gas and sometimes oil. Most new natural gas wells being drilled in the US are using horizontal hydraulic fracturing, the official name for fracking. Jobs associated with gas fracking include drillers and roustabouts. There are also specialized jobs required for the fracking operation as well as many truckers to bring in the water and fracking chemicals.
While many environmentalists object to typical hydro-fracking methods, a new process is actually clean and green. Instead of using water, the new process uses LPG. Water-based gas fracking uses up large quantities of clean water which is taken from a local river or trucked in from a more distant source. Up to half the water used remains underground, impeding the extraction of gas and oil. The water pumped out is poisonous and must be treated on-site. Clean green LPG gas fracking is a much better alternative.
Where There's Oil, There's Petroleum Jobs
Oil is found on every continent. There are many regions with active exploration and production. These include North and South America, North Africa, the Middle East, the North Sea, Russia, China, Southeast Asia and Australia.