Drilling engineering

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Drilling engineering is a subset of petroleum engineering, involved in the drilling of production and injection wells.

The planning phases of drilling an oil well typically involve estimating the value of sought reserves, estimating the costs to access reserves, acquiring property by a mineral lease, a geologic survey, a wellbore plan, and a layout of the type of equipment that will be needed. Naturally, the type of equipment needed and the well plan will vary on both the surface and subsurface environment. A well plan includes the equipment needed, an estimation of the hydrostatic pressure exerted by both the formation fluids and the column of drilling mud and the orientation of the bedding planes and three dimensional stresses on the planned wellbore to the total depth of the well.

Drilling engineers are engineers in charge of the process of planning and drilling oil wells; it is their responsibility to ensure that the well is drilled in a safe, cost-effective, and effective manner. They are often degreed as petroleum engineers, although they may have experience as a field hand or as another disciplined engineer, geologist, or mudlogger (i.e., mechanical engineer or petroleum geologist) and subsequently trained by an oil and gas company.