Petroleum Engineer CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is a North Sea engineer who moved from drilling into completions and production. Names and operators are invented. Reservoir engineers and engineers from onshore or international operations should keep the structure and change the technical detail; there are personal statements for both below.

• Discipline. Drilling, completions, production, reservoir, facilities or a combination. Adverts are written for one of these and hiring managers rarely cross-hire, so the first line of your personal statement has to say which you are.
• Basin and well type. Central or Northern North Sea, West of Shetland, Southern North Sea gas, platform or subsea, UK onshore, or international such as Norway, the Middle East or US shale. Rock, service market and operating practice all differ, and a North Sea operator wants North Sea time.
• Operator, service company or consultancy. All three are respected but they are different jobs. Say which, and if you came from a service company say what you supported.
• Numbers and ownership. Wells per year, cost per well, days per section, non-productive time, run life, deferred production, AFE variance, reserves booked. Petroleum engineering runs on unit economics and a CV with no numbers reads as inexperienced.
• Software and chartership. Petrel, Kingdom, PIPESIM, Prosper, CMG, Eclipse, Aries, PHDWin, Enverus. Then CEng status or progress towards it, plus well control certification if you go to the rig.

“First line: which discipline and which basin. Second: how many wells and what they cost. If those two are there, everything else is a conversation. Without them I cannot tell whether you designed a programme or watched one.”

Three or four lines: discipline, basin, well count, one cost or performance number, software and chartership. People search for an oil and gas career objective, but a personal statement is stronger at every level including graduates.

One caution: do not publish confidential well results or anything covered by your employment contract. Percentages, relative improvements and programme-level figures are safe; specific undisclosed well performance on a named licence block is not.

Group by discipline so a manager can find the part that matches their opening, and mark daily use versus familiarity.

• Drilling: well design, casing and cement programmes, directional planning, mud and hydraulics, torque and drag, bit selection, non-productive time analysis, rig scheduling, well control
• Completions: lower and upper completion design, sand control, inflow control devices, perforating, matrix acidising and fracture stimulation, flowback design, intelligent wells, subsea completions
• Production: artificial lift selection and optimisation, nodal analysis, gauge and well test interpretation, chemical treatment, flow assurance, surveillance and downtime coding, workover and intervention planning
• Reservoir: decline curve analysis, type curves, EUR estimation, material balance, rate and pressure transient analysis, reservoir simulation, well spacing and infill studies, reserves and resources under SPE-PRMS
• Economics: AFE preparation, cost tracking, operating cost per barrel of oil equivalent, net present value and rate of return screening, price deck sensitivity
• Software: Petrel, Kingdom, Techlog, Eclipse or INTERSECT, CMG, PIPESIM, OLGA, Prosper and the Petex suite, Aries, PHDWin, WellView, Enverus, Spotfire, Power BI, Excel at a serious level, Python and SQL
• Field and safety: OPITO BOSIET with CA-EBS (renewed through FOET), offshore medical, H2S awareness, IWCF or IADC WellSharp well control, permit to work and confined space where relevant, and comfort offshore at 5 a.m. in a North Sea winter
• Regulatory: North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) consents and production reporting, flaring and venting consents, HSE well notifications and the well examination scheme, and the equivalents in other countries

Hiring in this industry moves with the oil price, so graduate CVs need to be flexible and honest about mobility. Managers reading them did the same degree and know exactly what a final-year design project is worth.

1. 1Education first: degree, accreditation, graduation date, classification if it is a 2:1 or above, and a short modules line covering drilling engineering, well completion, reservoir engineering, production operations and petroleum economics.
2. 2Placements written as jobs: the operator or service company, the basin, the well count, what you analysed or designed, and a number. A single well-described placement beats a page of societies.
3. 3Final-year or MSc design project with scale: "field development study for a 12-well subsea tie-back: type curves, well count scenarios, facility sizing and an economic model showing a 24% rate of return at US$70 oil".
4. 4Software with honest levels. Petrel, PIPESIM, Aries and Excel are the ones most likely to be tested in an interview.
5. 5SPE student chapter roles, PetroBowl teams, field trips and drilling competitions all count. So does any field or yard work, including summers on a rig floor, in a pipe yard or as a roustabout.
6. 6Say you are willing to work offshore. A first job in this industry is often offshore or on a rotation, and graduates who say yes to that get hired first.
7. 7If the market in your speciality is slow, look at service companies, midstream, geothermal, carbon capture and storage and energy consultancy. The engineering transfers and several of those hire steadily.

• Two pages is standard in the UK; graduates can use one or two. Consultants and expert witnesses can add a separate project list rather than a third page.
• Order: header, personal statement, experience, technical skills and software, certifications and chartership, education. Graduates put education and projects first.
• Put the operator type, the asset and the well count in the employer line: "independent operator, 3 platforms and 60 operated wells, central North Sea" places you instantly.
• Name the basins you have worked in a single line near the top. Recruiters search on basin names constantly.
• There is no licence to practise as a petroleum engineer in the UK. Chartered Engineer (CEng) status is optional in most operator roles and carries more weight in consultancy and expert work. Name the licensed institution you registered through, such as the Energy Institute.
• No photo, no date of birth. Operators use standard applicant tracking systems and many roles go through contract recruiters.
• Mirror the advert's words when true: completions, sand control, artificial lift, gas lift, nodal analysis, decline curve, AFE, well intervention, well control, reserves, surveillance, plus the basin name.
• People search for a petroleum engineer resume as well as a CV, especially for US and Canadian jobs. The content is the same; a US resume is usually shorter, and like a UK CV it leaves out the photo, date of birth and marital status. Keep to two pages. If you need sponsorship to work in the UK, say so in one line, because visa status affects shortlisting in this industry.