As the oil and gas industry becomes increasingly complex, the requirements for petroleum engineers—and petroleum engineering education—are changing.

“Petroleum engineering jobs in the future are likely to be smaller in number and radically different from those of today,” wrote Nathan Meehan, president of Gaffney, Cline and Associates and 2016 SPE President, in paper SPE 194746, The End of Petroleum Engineering As We Know It. “The next generation of petroleum engineers will have to address demands for sustainability, lower carbon intensity, and needs for radical productivity improvements, which only artificial intelligence (AI) and digital can drive. This suggests that we will need to revisit university education for petroleum engineers and all aspects of career development and training.”

Petroleum engineering education reflects the E&P industry it serves. Training of competent graduates with both the domain and digital knowledge to immediately contribute when they join the industry has become more complicated as expectations change. What are petroleum engineering schools doing to adapt to these changes, and how are they helping their students navigate a future career in the oil and gas industry?