Eric van Oort, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s petroleum engineering department, is at the forefront of the changing technology in the oil field. His classroom includes a room that feels something like an Imax theater. Three large chairs with joysticks face a huge video screen displaying the virtual oil rig. Students can simulate everything about drilling an actual oil well. Van Oort said the skills he’s teaching his students are applicable beyond the oil patch.
We still teach kind of the traditional petroleum engineering curriculum but we augment that now with data management, data analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence,” van Oort explained.
For the industry, that multidisciplinary skill set could end up being a problem.
“One of my better students, for instance, working data analytics, who would be a tremendous resource to the oil and gas industry, is now being headhunted by Tesla,” van Oort said.
The fear that robots and automation will take over from humans in the oil industry might be well founded. The Labor Department says some 50,000 fewer people now work in oil and gas extraction than at the height of the last boom three years ago.
“The role of humans will change,” van Oort said. “You’ll see more humans focusing on maintenance of the equipment or the logistics associated with it. And then a lot of it, indeed, in analyzing the data.”
Van Oort says he’s incorporating data engineering into his curriculum. And his students leave school knowing much more than just how to drill an oil well.
In the near future, instead of simply calling them roughnecks in the oil patch, he said, more oil and gas jobs will carry titles like data analyst and systems manager.
Link to the 2018 NPR Interview is here
