Every now and then, someone comes along with a job that, unless you work in that field, you’d never realize existed. And then, when you find out it exists, it’s still hard to imagine exactly what that job entails. Jack Winslow is a Petroleum Engineer, working twelve-hour shifts on an Alaskan oilfield to make sure the drilling stations keep running smoothly and safely. Remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year? Jack’s team is responsible for avoiding those kinds of disasters on the North Slope. Sound stressful? Wait until you hear the rest of it.
Growing up in rural Alaska, Jack wanted to be a writer, but only in a vague sort of way. He attended the University of Alaska, Anchorage right after high school, only to drop out immediately. He worked odd jobs for a while, then re-enrolled at Anchorage for a year before transferring to the English department at Boise State University. Jack studied English with a concentration in Technical Communication, “Because the first advisor I came across when I first got there was the head of the Technical Communication section of the English department…His take on my SAT scores (which were high in both math and verbal) was that I'd be really jazzed about his pet major, and I pretty much was - although there's not really inherently any math in it.”
Jack graduated with plans to become a technical writer, but after graduation, he and his then-wife moved back to Alaska to be near her mother, who was ill. Jack wasn’t able to find work as a tech writer – Alaska didn’t exactly have a wealth of job opportunities for English majors – he “decided to pursue basically anything else than what I went to school for.”
Jack’s experience trying to find a job in rural Alaska is similar to what many recent graduates are facing all over the nation in today’s artic economic climate. “I did all the things they always tell you to do. I applied for everything, and I also dropped off resumes to anybody I thought employed tech writers, whether they were hiring or not. I applied for graphic design jobs, any kind of document production/generation work, basically anything that had even the most tenuous connection to anything I'd studied in school. The closest I got was a job creating some kind of monthly real estate newsletter for a professional association (I was first runner up).”
After months of temporary odd jobs and anxiety, Jack got the tip that would shape his career. “My brother-in-law got a job working on the North Slope, as he had returned to Alaska at the same time we had. He told me that it paid well, although it was long hours and grueling work. It seemed to be paying about how much they told me I'd be making when I left school, so I applied.” He was accepted, unsurprisingly: “The initial job is so unpleasant that there's enough turnover that they can hire pretty much anyone who applies…For some reason, I stuck it out in that first horrible job for two and a half years.”
Jack eventually got promoted out of the difficult and dirty first-line work on the oilfield, and after about six years he was working as “what's loosely termed a Petroleum Engineer in the group that includes the supervisors of that first position I had taken - which is one of the brass rings for most of the people who stick around up there.” The hours are still long, and his life is complicated by the fact that after his first marriage ended in divorce, he met and married his current wife, who lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
Jack lives on the oil field half the time, working twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, for two weeks at a time. Then he has two weeks off to go back home to Portland. “I end up missing things because they happen to fall during the time I am at work, and it's just unrealistic to try to adjust my schedule for everything I might want to do. I can get really special occasions scheduled (I went home for my wife's college graduation) but in general, if I'm home when something happens I can go, and otherwise too bad.” Jack doesn’t have children, but he recognizes that the members of his team who do often miss important milestones. Still, the pay is good, and he gets half the year off, albeit in two-week blocks.
So what exactly does a Petroleum Engineer do for twelve hours at a stretch? In Jack’s words,“a typical work day starts at 4:30 (am or pm depending on if I am working days or nights). The guy who does my job for the other 12 hours fills me in on what happened during his shift. We then attend the first meeting of my day, with one of the other work-groups, as they often require the services of my team. That runs for about half an hour. If I'm working days, I then go to the morning meeting of our larger team. If I'm working nights, that meeting marks the end of my day. During that meeting, we start by discussing safety issues, then we quickly go over the work that was completed over the prior 24 hours and how it might impact others in the group.”
“Then breakfast, and after that I catch up with the dispatcher of my work group. I supervise pumping services, which is a collection of two-person teams who run pumps the size of tractor-trailers, which can move fluids at rates of 5 barrels per minute at pressures of 5000 psi. The rest of the day consists of coordinating the pump crews to work on our priority jobs, as given to us from our other work groups, the Operations team, and town. Our other work groups give us work that is basically in support of their jobs. Operations gives us work that supports the day-to-day operations of the wells. Town gives us work that generates more production or is used to evaluate the wells for the safety of the operation or for compliance with State and Federal regulations.”
And there are plenty of regulations. “There's a certain amount of required yearly training. Most of it is OSHA compliance stuff -- first aid/CPR, etc. I'm required to be trained in how to manifest waste that is injected in disposal wells - that's an EPA requirement. I'm required to take what's called Well Control school. It's a biannual week-long course which teaches (or reminds) the engineer how to deal with blowouts. It also covers various pressure-control equipment. There's a lot of math.”
If you’re interested in becoming a Petroleum Engineer, Jack recommends either being prepared to put in your time as a contractor and come up through the ranks or getting an engineering degree or some kind. And to really succeed, you’ll need to hone your creative problem-solving skills. “We're constantly being asked to figure out how to find and eliminate the risks before they cause an incident - which can be difficult when so many eyes have been looking at a task already, or when the tasks have been done so many times that they've become routine.”
Jack also has advice for recent grads just starting out. “If you can manage to do what you love, that's great - but the world needs a lot more fry cooks than it has people who love to do that. I'd advise working for a little while before going to school, if that's going to be a goal. I'd also recommend not settling down into a job for very long. It's probably not great for employers, but if you can shift from job to job every six months or so, I think you can get a fairly good idea of what that line of work holds for you. Try to invest a good chunk of time in something creative, whether it's got anything to do with what you want to do for a living or not. It might be writing, or painting, or music, but it might be gardening, or small engine repair, or cooking. Find something you really love to do, and spend time doing it every day if you can. If you can figure out a way to incorporate any of that in what you do for a living, you'll be miles ahead and you'll get a lot more out of your work.”
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