For the last two weeks of September I spent my time becoming a fully fledged member of the company's graduate programme. Rather than the usual university style initiations this was much more demanding! This was a two week induction that all graduates in the upstream part of the company have to attend. For those who don't know, or can't remember, I am employed by one of the oil majors.
The premise of the two week induction is rather multilateral. The prime driver is to allow all upstream graduates, irrespective of discipline, to get a much broader cross-business awareness. In addition to that there are the important benefits of networking and, as the attendees come from business units all over the world, it provides an excellent opportunity to expand knowledge of different cultures inside the business and promote diversity.
The two weeks are very intense with relatively early starts and late finishes, followed by the obligatory late nights whilst away on business! The days themselves are split up into workshops, lectures and field-trips: much like university, really! The whole program is slightly concentrated toward the subsurface side but as a chemical engineer, the more I can learn about how we find and exploit oil the better.
So without sounding like I’m in danger of moonlighting as a geologist I now understand the basic constituents that make up a petroleum system – i.e. source, reservoir and cap rocks – and am able to identify such features on outputs from seismic and downhole surveys (downhole surveys are where instruments are put down the drilled wellbore). Apart from general awareness I hope these new found skills will help me in my later career and, as a process engineer in an oil company we can work closely with subsurface engineers, so I’m sure they shall!
Next time I’ll spend time talking about the new job role I have just assumed: the changes and challenges that lie ahead.
