Guide to Petroleum Engineering Career

By: Engr. Azunna I. B. Ekejiuba (Ph.D.)

Historically, human beings have used petroleum in one form or another since ancient times (more than 8000 years ago). However, the birth of the modern petroleum industry was on August 27, 1859, when Colonel Edwin L. Drake used the then popular cable tool (also called churn or percussion) drilling method to drill the actual historically first oil well, on a stream called Oil Greek, near Titusville, Pennsylvania, at a depth of 69 feet, six inches (21 metres).

In recent years, the advent of the transcontinental transmission lines and petrochemical industries has increased the value of natural gas (methane) to a fuel in great demand and a chemical feedstock (raw material) for many modern commercial and industrial products, particularly the synthesis of plastics, rubber, fertilizers, solvents, adhesives, pesticides, gas-to-methanol (GTM), liquefied natural gas (LNG), et cetera.

Guide to Petroleum Engineering Career is an ideal career guide, lecture note, practical manual, petrochemical production guide, information source (to all categories of practicing petroleum industry workers and enthusiasts who are interested to know more about the current key mankind energy resources), as well as a reference on the emerging renewable fuel economy which reflects the challenges faced by the millennium petroleum engineers.