American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.
It is my distinct pleasure to be here with you today to talk on a subject that has great interest for me—petroleum engineering. Having worked as a petroleum engineer for a good part of my oil career and being directly associated as a manager for the remainder of it, I feel a strong sense of allegiance and concern for the future of petroleum engineering. As a discipline, it has had spectacular growth and contributed immensely to the technological capability of our industry. It will influence in large measure where we as an industry will be tomorrow.
Petroleum engineering began to emerge shortly after Drake drilled his first well at Titusville, Pa. Men without formal engineering training began to grapple with problem aspects of drilling, production, and oil reservoirs, which in our day have come to be known as petroleum engineering. A formally taught and petroleum engineering. A formally taught and practiced discipline was not on the oil scene practiced discipline was not on the oil scene really until about 1915. From that time on, it grew rapidly and fostered a breed of men from which much of the leadership for the industry has come. They were and still are a group with great breadth of understanding in relating human problems and skills, economics, risks, technical problems and skills, economics, risks, technical and practical know-how, all of which interplayed to help mold a great and bold industry. It is an industry capable of yielding results against difficult odds generated from complexity and from the physical environment. The understanding of risk and probabilities (generated from natural factors) is a game we must play to be in this business. Over the past 50 yews, we have overcome some risks through new technology, and other risks have cropped up. The net result is that the business is still risky.
A point that consistently emerges is that the best leadership for the production part of the business was and continues to be found in those who have a thorough understanding of all the factors involved in locating, drilling, producing, and employing economic and technical producing, and employing economic and technical analysis of reservoirs. This is the widely accepted broad definition of petroleum engineering.
Since the upstream side of the oil business will continue to drill wells and produce reservoirs for some time to come, there will be a need for experienced oil men to provide leadership, operational know-how and technical and economic assessment.
When we view what is occurring in the oil industry in the United States, we get concerned as to what the future holds.
