Business_Case

Professional Knowledge and Abilities In the 21st century, the oil and gas industry has become a highly technical and extremely competitive career choice. Most of the time, the industry is considered to be nothing more than an oilfield “rodeo” with a bunch of cowboys (roughnecks) running around punching holes in the ground and destroying the environment. This could not be further from the truth. Today’s oilfield is one of the most technologically advanced industries in the world. Consequently, a tremendous need is required for the employees of this industry to seek and gain highly technical training. The best organization in the world that delivers this training is a company named Petroskills. Petroskills provides training across the whole array of the oil and gas industry. From the moment an oil, gas or steam well is conceived, through the planning, the drilling and the producing and refining, Petroskills has a training course that can benefit anyone. According to the Petroskills website, 121 different courses are available as well as master’s programs in Petroleum Engineering. Petroskills has also developed strategic alliances with a number of large oil and gas companies as well as several large service companies to gather information from a broad spectrum of perspectives. This enables Petroskills to get the most current and “best practices” information from across the oilfield. Some of theses companies that Petroskills are aligned with include Shell, British Petroleum, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, Oxy and Chevron. I have had the good fortune to be involved with the Petroskills alliance for the last three years and I have benefited from in immensely. Two of my instructors teach a course called Drilling Fluids Technology and for the last year, significant improvements have been made. This has enabled me to meet several people within the Petroskills organization who have taught me a tremendous amount of interesting ways to construct a training class. I have also networked with many people from around the globe at conferences that have helped me facilitate my knowledge of the industry as well as my knowledge of the design of training courses. Because I have been so deeply involved with the well design and construction discipline, the company I work for has asked me to audit and update several courses that do not fall within the product service line I am responsible for training. This had led to several job offers that I am considering. I must confess that when I was introduced to the Petroskills discipline, I was very skeptical, as I did not think a consulting company could do the training job any better than Halliburton could. I will not say that I was wrong but I will admit that learning something from a different source, other than the original, is a significant way to increase the level of knowledge. In addition, the networking and interaction with others has enabled my career to advance in ways I would have never though possible. Consequently, the Petroskills organization, and my relationship with it, has become one of the most satisfying opportunities of my career.